Over the last few months I have completed a draft of an interim report of the 2015-2018 work I've been directing at 38FA608. As explained in the report, it is mainly a descriptive effort that provides basic details about the various stages of the work we've undertaken, the excavation methods employed, the units excavated, and the materials recovered so far. The report discusses the initial discovery and documentation of the site, the 2017 and 2018 seasons of field school, and the backhoe trenches that were excavated as part of the Big Broad Trenching Project.

If you've followed what's been going on at the site through my blog and the videos, you'll find much of what's in the report to be familiar. There are things you haven't seen, also: descriptions of each feature, for example, images of all the projectile points recovered so far, and some images of the prehistoric pottery. I also report the four radiocarbon dates that have been obtained so far and the single OSL date.

What you won't find in this report is analysis. The report is written, rather, to present and organize information about the excavation work at the site so that analysis of the materials and deposits can be undertaken. Those analyses are what's next.

This is a draft report, meaning that the information in it is subject to change. I have been through the contents several times, but there are certainly still errors and omissions. I will make supporting documents (including raw data) available in the "Documents" section of the Broad River Archaeological Field School website as I have time. 

I'm happy to report that the 2020 season of the Broad River Archaeological Field School has begun. We spent our first day in the field last Friday and will return to work on site 38FA608 most Fridays this semester. This will be the third season of field school at the site, and it is the biggest group so far: I have ten undergraduates, a graduate student, two staff that I hired, and several folks from the Heritage Trust Program at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources that will participate as their schedules allow.

We spent the first couple of hours of the field school in the classroom introducing ourselves, going over the syllabus, rounding up forms, and talking about expectations, etc. I gave a presentation on what we've done at the site so far. Then we loaded up the screens and some other equipment and got everyone out to the site by about 10:45.

My main goals for the first day were to: (1) relocate the block and remove a good portion of the backfill from it; and (2) assess and deal with some slumping of the unexcavated/unprotected portion of wall that that occurred since the last field school in 2018. 

By the end of the work day on Friday we had reached the floor of Unit 6 in the block. I estimate it will take us at least two more hours to remove the remainder of the backfill from the block.​

The slumping that had occurred at the wall included Feature 5, which was unfortunate. I had documented the exposed portion of Feature 5 in my profile of the original machine cut surface, but we had not yet been able to excavate units to straighten that section of the wall so that it could be better protected. In profile, Feature 5 appeared to be a shallow pit lined with fire-cracked rock (FCR) similar to the nearby Feature 4 (which remains partly unexcavated). Given its stratigraphic location, it almost certainly dated to the Late Archaic period.

We're in the process of removing the slumped sediment and screening it. We've recovered a lot of large pieces of FCR that would have originally been in Feature 5 as well as a Savannah River point. The slumped sediments also contained a complicated stamped rim sherd that would have come from above the level of the feature.
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This year, as in previous years, each week several students will write blog posts about their work. Those posts can be found here.  I will be producing weekly videos as well. I'll post those videos here.  Here's the first one:

Back in December, I wrote a short post about Hutton Pulitzer's attempts to get me to take down or edit content related to his involvement in Swordgate. I wanted to take a few minutes this morning to provide more information and an update of what's been going on with this matter since last fall.

If you're not familiar with Swordgate, it was the debacle that ensued after Hutton Pulitzer made the public claim that a "100% confirmed" Roman sword had been recovered from a shipwreck off of Oak Island. That was in December of 2015. Over the course of the next several months, I and many others gathered a large body of evidence that conclusively showed that his claims about the sword were nonsense. Independent analysis of the sword by the television program The Curse of Oak Island reached the same conclusion. A lot of bad behavior on Pulitzer's part followed.

I hadn't really thought much about the sword story or Pulitzer's activities over the last couple of years until he emailed me in October of 2019 demanding that I remove use of his name ("Jovan Hutton Pulitzer") from all my content. In his communication, he asserted that he had trademarked his name and that my use of it violated his rights.  He threatened to have my material taken down if I did not comply with his request voluntarily.  He CC'd this communication to various departments and individuals at the University of South Carolina (my employer).

Following that communication, I consulted with an attorney specializing in intellectual property law. His conclusion was that Pulitzer's threats were baseless. I chose to not respond.

Pulitzer followed up his October communication in November with a document that he sent to various individuals at the University of South Carolina and elsewhere. That document contained numerous untrue statements about me and was apparently sent in an effort to damage my reputation. His letter was clearly defamatory, and I am currently exploring my legal options for addressing that aspect of his behavior. 

Following his November communication, my attorney sent a letter in December to Pulitzer's attorney (Steve Green) informing his that his claims of trademark infringement are baseless (indeed, Pulitzer has only applied for -- not received -- trademark status for his name) and that I would defend myself and my reputation against his claims.

Steve Green responded with a letter dated December 18, 2019, alleging that I have participated in a "well-planned Civil Collusion" to cause harm to Pulitzer. Green also argued that Pulitzer's communications to USC could not constitute tortious interference because he followed the proper procedures for filing a complaint about a state employee.  The letter asked for nothing specifically other than to have a phone call to discuss the matter.  

I indicated to Steve Green that I would be willing to discuss the matter, but that I preferred to do it writing (i.e., via email) rather than over the phone. My reasons for this were several: (1) Pulitzer/Green have not demonstrated to me that they are willing to have a discussion based on verifiable facts -- every substantive communication so far from them has contained inaccurate information; (2) Pulitzer has demonstrated (and bragged about) his penchant for recording conversations and then trying to use them for his benefit; and (3) I remain confused about their claimed legal basis to compel me to remove or edit anything. And so that's how the current conversation started.

First (1/13/2020), Green wrote that what they wanted was removal of an unspecified "libelous article" that they said presented as fact that Pulitzer had engaged in crimes.  Along with that, they also wanted me change the URLs of my blog posts so that Pulitzer's name wasn't in them. 

In response, I wrote this on 1/13/2020:

Mr. Green,

As a starting point, please provide me with a list of my blog posts which you are referring to. I have never, to the best of my knowledge, written anything about Pulitzer that is untrue. So as a preface to any discussion I would like to know, specifically, exactly what you allege is "libelous."

Andy

Steve Green responded (1/13/2020) that I should, basically, remove Pulitzer's name on all sites I own or operate. So, rather than providing specific posts/statements that they allege contain inaccurate information, they simply assert that I should take down everything with his name in it.

Here is my response (1/13/2020):
 
Mr. Green,

I admit that I am now confused, as we seem to be right back where we started when Pulitzer first contacted me last fall claiming trademark/copyright violation. As my attorney communicated to you in his letter, Pulitzer's trademark/copyright claims are baseless.

When I did not respond to Pulitzer's trademark/copyright claims, he sent a defamatory letter to my employer, again demanding that I take everything down with his name in it. That letter contained numerous false statements. I am sure that the procedures for filing a complaint to the University of South Carolina do not include making false statements about an employee.

Then, you sent a letter alleging that I was involved in some kind of conspiracy and that you wanted to talk to me on the phone. I responded that I would rather have the discussion in writing, and this email exchange we are having demonstrates why: you first said that you wanted removed the "huge libelous article presenting as fact that my client engaged in crimes of the nature such covert/secret nude recordings, or pillaging artifacts and such" and when I asked for clarification which "article" that was, you reverted back to ""remove all posts with J. Hutton Pulitzer in it."

If there are specific posts with inaccurate information, as you allege, I would be happy to discuss them. In order to do that, however, you have to tell me which posts you are referring to and which parts of those posts are inaccurate. There is really no other way to have a discussion about your allegations. You have claimed that I have knowingly made false statements about your client. I have not. If you really disagree, please tell me which statements are false.

I have no plans to take down any material based on Pulitzer's allegations of trademark/copyright infringement, which are baseless.
 
And to be absolutely clear: I did not create the "Critical Thinking" channel on YouTube, I did not create any of the content on that channel, and I do not control that channel. Is it not my content to take down.

Green's response (1/14/2020) was, frankly, amazing.  First, he asserted that they had learned from YouTube that I did indeed own the Critical Thinking channel and he would provide the evidence in the email (spoiler alert: he did not provide the evidence, and I don't own that channel). Next, he told me the case actually isn't about trademark anymore. Then, he asserted that "each statement provided to your University, State Investigators, Academic Boards and such are all based on information and screenshots taken directly from your owned and managed blogs, etc." Then, he offered a pdf that showed some of his evidence of "Civil Collusion."  I won't reproduce the pdf, but I will tell you that it consisted of screenshots of links that I posted on the J.Hutton Pulitzer page on the Argumentative Archaeologist website. Specifically, he pointed to a post written by Carl Feagans (that no longer exists) and posts (by Jason Colavito and I) about the infamous "plying us with porn" piece that Pulitzer wrote about Kevin Burns following Burn's statement that he bought the "Roman sword" partially in an effort to discredit Pulitzer.

It's worth taking a second to highlight this aspect of what's going on here. Jason Colavito and I both wrote posts about Pulitzer's piece, which came out on February 2, 2016. The fact that we both wrote about it on February 3 is, apparently, his evidence of "Civil Collusion" (as if all the newspapers writing reviews of the same bad movie on the day after it comes out are all colluding).  The fact that Pulitzer has since deleted the original post doesn't change the fact that he wrote the post and it remains part of the Swordgate story. I directly quoted Pulitzer's words in my post about it, as did Jason in his. As far as I know, my post contains no inaccuracies: it was accurate then and it's accurate now. I provided Green with a screenshot from Pulitzer's original post just in case Pulitzer had forgotten what he wrote.

I've spent much of the last two weeks getting my ducks in a row for this year's field school, which starts tomorrow. It's going to be a busy season: the undergraduate enrollment is full, and I've also got one of my graduate students enrolled and another who will be attending some of the time. I'll have two staff members and assistance from some personnel from the South Carolina Heritage Trust. The staff members I hired for the season will be paid from the donated funds I raised in anticipation of the 2019 season of the field school, which did not materialize. I would again like to thank those that donated to the effort: your dollars will not be wasted.

I'm looking forward to this semester's work as a substantive change from last semester. My ongoing engagement with pseudo-archaeology becomes tiresome, especially when I'm also teaching "Forbidden Archaeology."  I get tired of hearing the same dumb arguments over and over again and listening to the same baloney claims about "rewriting history." My grouchiness with the idiocy has bubbled up a couple of times during the last several days -- I'm just not in the mood. I officially resigned my position as an administrator of the Fraudulent Archaeology Wall of Shame group on Facebook after I identified it as one source of my burnout with these topics (Carl Feagans is now running the show there). This morning I got an email from someone wanting Graham Hancock's contact information so he could tell him where the Ark of the Covenant really is (I declined to provide assistance, reasoning that anyone who can find the long-missing Ark of the Covenant has the research faculties to locate an email address). I just need to take a breather and sit on the bench for a few minutes.

And that bench, for me, is 38FA608. I hope to be posting weekly videos of our work again this season on my YouTube channel. Given the number of participants, this may be the biggest season yet.

Also, I spent much of November and December working on an interim report of our work at 38FA608 so far. I'll make that available online when it's done, and I'll tell you about here.

Here is quick video from the site yesterday, taken as DuVal Lawrence and I moved some equipment and took a look around to size things up. Stay tuned!