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Announcement: Spring 2017 One-Day-Per-Week Archaeological Field School

11/14/2016

14 Comments

 
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I'll be teaching a one-day-per week archaeological field school in the Spring semester. It's ANTH 322 (722 for graduate students) if you're interested. The site looks to be a really good one (I've written about it briefly before here, here, and here). I hope to kill three birds with one stone: research, teaching, and site preservation.

The site is along the Broad River north of Columbia. Weather permitting, we'll be out at the site each Friday during the spring 2017 semester. We will depart from campus each Friday at 8:00 and return by 4:00 (transportation provided). Students will bring their own lunch. There are no formal bathroom facilities on site. Each student will be required to have a small set of personal field gear (e.g., small toolbox, gloves, mason’s trowel, 5m metric tape measure, notebook, etc.). Other tools and field equipment will be provided.

This course will give you hands-on experience in basic excavation methods, techniques, and field skills, including:
  • grid systems and mapping;
  • controlled hand excavation;
  • documentation of cultural features;
  • description of sediments;
  • record keeping and photography;
  • strategy, logistics, and teamwork.
What has been learned about the site so far has come through some very preliminary fieldwork.  In the fall of 2015, archaeological materials were discovered eroding out of a 2.4 m (~8’) high, 10 m (~33’) long vertical exposure that had been created by the removal of fill dirt from a small portion of a natural levee. Cleaning and documentation of the profile revealed stratified, well-preserved cultural deposits including ceramic-bearing strata near the surface, pit features at various depths, and a horizontal zone of quartz chipping debris buried about 2 m (6.5’) beneath the surface. Artifacts show that the levee was used as a camp site over a span of at least 5000 years.
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A simplified profile of deposits exposed in the vertical cut.
At least some of the chipping debris (shown as Feature 1 in the profile drawing) can be fitted back together, suggesting that the deposit was created when prehistoric peoples sat at that spot to make stone tools.  The deposit is thought to be Middle Archaic in age (dating to perhaps 4000-3000 BC) because of a quartz Guilford point that was recovered from the slump at the base of the profile. 
Picture
Portion of in-situ deposit of quartz chipping debris (Feature 1) exposed in plan during straightening of the profile wall.
The goals of the excavations will be to: (1) continue straightening, documenting, and stabilizing the exposed vertical wall; (2) collect controlled samples of artifacts that can be used to understand the 5000-year-long occupational sequence of the levee; and (2) expose discrete cultural deposits so that they can be mapped and excavated.
 
Hand excavation will be used to straighten and plumb the vertical cut, exposing a long profile that will be documented during the field school. Dr. Christopher Moore (SCIAA) will assist in interpreting the exposed natural and cultural deposits. After exposure, straightened sections of the wall will be protected from further damage using landscape fabric and wooden buttressing.
 
Hand excavation blocks will be opened in two areas. One 3 m x 2 m excavation block will be placed on top of the levee a safe distance from the existing vertical exposure. Excavations will proceed in 10 cm levels in 1 m x 1 m units, screening all sediments and creating plan maps at the base of each level. Discrete deposits (such as hearth features, storage pits, postholes, or in situ deposits of chipping debris) will be documented and excavated.
 
A 2 m x 2 m excavation block will be opened near the base of the existing vertical exposure, enlarged as needed for safety.  The purpose of this excavation area will be to extend the profile vertically downward and explore any cultural deposits present beneath the presumed Middle Archaic zone.  

Enrollment is capped at 12.  This should be a lot of fun.  It's a great spot for a field school: it's close, it's known to contain complex and interesting archaeological deposits, and it's cared for by a very supportive landowner.

If you're a student interested in taking this course, please email me with any questions:  aawhite@mailbox.sc.edu.

Stay tuned!
14 Comments
pferk
11/14/2016 03:30:22 pm

wow. what fun. sorry iwill miss it.

Reply
E.P. Grondine
11/15/2016 09:06:30 am

Hi Andy -

"The deposit is thought to be Middle Archaic in age (dating to perhaps 4000-3000 BC) because of a quartz Guilford point that was recovered from the slump at the base of the profile. "

Any idea where the quartz came from?
Is the point related to what is called "Dalton Maritime Archaic"?

IMO, as the area of Columbia was subject to both flooding (from hurricanes) and very likely impact tsunami, your soil types are likely to be the most important information from this site. Particularly the sterile zone above your earliest find.

Reply
Andy White
11/15/2016 09:12:27 am

Hi E.P.,

Not to be insulting, but you're way off here. There's a huge time separation between Dalton and Guilford; the formation of a natural levee which contains chronologically stratified cultural deposits has nothing to do with a single sudden event like an impact; the quartz comes from everywhere here (it's a natural and ubiquitous inclusion in the Piedmont sediments).

Reply
E.P. Grondine
11/15/2016 09:22:40 am

Hi Andy -

There's nothing insulting in your reply. The data is what it is.

About the only commonality is the technology for working quartz instead of working chert. If you can locate a preferred quartz source, you would be in luck.

That said, once again, watch your soil strata carefully.
That information is very important to the people living there now.

Kenneth E Sassaman
11/17/2016 10:31:57 am

And let me add that there is no such thing as the "Dalton Maritime Archaic." Dalton is late Pleistocene tradition of the lower and middle Mississippi valley, lower Missouri valley, the Midsouth and lower Midwest, and much of the lower Southeast. The Maritime Archaic is a Late Archaic horizon of the maritime provinces of NE US and SE Canada.

E.P. Grondine
11/17/2016 09:17:54 pm

Hi Kenneth -

That "Dalton Martime Archaic" was from a museum label.
Its not something I just made up.

From my point of view, just more of the bad archaeology I have seen here in the U.S.

E.P. Grondine
11/15/2016 09:13:19 am

Hi Andy, once again,

Re: Columbia

I have heard that the major Mississippian complex at Columbia was leveled for a shopping center, which by now is likely nearly abandoned.

If this is so, a search through aerial photograph archives, early maps and colonial accounts, and reports from the time of its destruction would be of interest. If there are any open areas left near the site, they would provide nice places to excavate.

In Illinois we have Mound City, which has no city and no mound. I can not even find a photograph or map of it.



Reply
Andy White
11/15/2016 09:17:39 am

"The major Mississippian complex at Columbia" . . . which would be what?

"I have heard" does not constitute probable cause for me to go searching through historic documents. You'll have to do better than that.

Reply
E.P. Grondine
11/15/2016 09:27:39 am

Or perhaps it was something I read. fourteen years ago.

Check out the old county or city histories I have my plate full:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQm8AC66bSE&list=PLQFjoWZeHDMQln37vSd1heFOfte_O_Rhp

Andy White
11/15/2016 09:30:20 am

No thanks.

And with all due respect, please stop spamming my blog with that link to your video. You've posted it several times now. I've already watched it.

E.P. Grondine
11/15/2016 10:10:05 am

This thesis will probably have it, if you can get it:.

http://www.goupstate.com/news/20011124/burial-mounds-cover-clues-to-state39s-past-digging-back-to-500-bc

Seeing Indian Mound Road, and the Indian Mound Correctional Facility....

And here is a nice dig over by Camden:
http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/anth/Faculty/WAGNERG/Wateree.html

http://www.floridahistory.com/inset8.html

Reply
Andy White
11/15/2016 10:19:31 am

De Soto, and later Juan Pardo, went to the town of Cofitachequi. Most archaeologists here that I've talked to think that town is on the Missippissian site of Mulberry Mound (on the Wateree), not at the location of Columbia. There's new work happening there, so it will be interesting to see if they come up with an period-correct Spanish artifacts.

Reply
Andy White
11/15/2016 10:20:19 am

Or Mississippian site, as the case may be. Typing too fast.

E.P. Grondine
11/17/2016 09:28:07 pm

Hi Andy -

Thanks muchly.for the update.

I don't know enough about the watersheds in that area to from an estimate now. But I still think that an archival search for lost structures in Columbia would be fun.

It is very likely that it was not called "Rich Land" for nothing.




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