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ATLANTA - An archaeologist says excavations in southern Georgia have turned up beads, metal tools and other artifacts that may pinpoint part of the elusive trail of the 16th-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto.

Dennis Blanton of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta was scheduled to present his findings Thursday to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Mobile, Alabama.

Excavations since 2006 in rural Telfair County uncovered remains of an Indian settlement along with nine pea-sized glass beads and six metal objects, including three iron tools and a silver pendant. Blanton says the artifacts are consistent with items Spanish explorers traded with Indians.

In a research paper prepared for the conference, Blanton wrote that the site "not only holds evidence of Hernando de Soto's initial passage through Georgia in the spring of 1540, but that it is a probable point of direct contact" with American Indians.

Blanton, who revealed his initial findings in 2007, said he knows linking the site to de Soto is controversial. That's because the artifacts were found 90 miles (145 kilometres) southeast of where many experts believe de Soto crossed the Ocmulgee River near Macon.

Historians have worked for years to pin down and mark the path of De Soto's explorations in the southeastern U.S. from May 1539 until 1543, which included the first European sighting of the Mississippi River.

De Soto, who along with half of his 600 men died on the four-year quest for gold and other riches, is credited as the first European to explore the interior of present-day Georgia.

He and his men arrived nearly two centuries before the English founded the last of the original 13 colonies in 1733.

The few known written accounts by de Soto's companions are short on landmarks other than rivers and long-vanished Indian villages.