Native history
Early
c. 3000-100 BCE (dated quarry sites c. 1500-600 BCE)
DeKalb County
General area only

Soapstone Ridge

A band of soapstone-bearing rock in south DeKalb, Fulton and Clayton counties where people quarried stone for bowls and other goods for more than a thousand years. It has been on the National Register since 1973.

See it on the map All Early records

The record

Wikipedia (citing Daniel Elliott's 1986 study) counts at least 17 quarry sites and 23 workshop sites across about 25 square miles, with dated Late Archaic quarrying between about 1500 and 600 BCE. DeKalb County's Soapstone Ridge Historic District guidelines describe quarries, workshops and habitation from the Late Archaic into the Early Woodland (roughly 3000-100 BC), producing stone bowls, atlatl weights, boiling stones and pipes, and call it the county's first large-scale manufacturing industry. The New Georgia Encyclopedia notes that about 3,500 years ago soapstone bowls from dozens of north Georgia quarries were traded as far as the central Mississippi valley and the Florida Keys. The ridge was listed on the National Register on May 7, 1973 (No. 73002138) with site locations restricted. The county's overlay district, about nine square miles, is bounded generally by the South River on the north and east and Conley Creek on the south, and requires archaeological review before development.