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 spent this week along the Broad River with colleagues from the South Carolina Heritage Trust and some of my own students doing fieldwork associated with a research grant I received from USC. The grant, titled "Finding the Family in South Carolina Prehistory," was focused on exploring the potential for buried archaeology in alluvial landforms in the vicinity of 38FA608. Several seasons of hand excavations there have revealed about 3 m of stratified cultural deposits spanning at least 6000 years, all protected within a sandy "natural levee" deposit.

I believe I've mentioned the grant before, but only in passing. In brief, the strategy was to use a backhoe to excavate a series of short trenches spaced about 100 m apart along about a mile of deposits. The sediment sequences revealed in the walls of those trenches provide information about how the alluvial landscape along this section of the river formed and developed and which areas have (or have the potential to contain) well-preserved archaeological sites. We cleaned, drew profiles, described sediments, and photographed a wall of each trench. Carbon was scarce, but I obtained a few small samples from buried strata that I think will help me construct a preliminary depositional chronology. I'm most interested in locating sites with good potential for preserving evidence of family- and group-level behaviors in the Early and Middle Holocene (hence the name of the grant), but I want to be able to tell the rest of the story as well.

The weather was not our friend early in the week. We got soaked by heavy rain all day on Monday, and intermittently on Tuesday afternoon. The remainder of the week was better, perhaps even relatively pleasant by the standards of South Carolina in late May. 

It was a hectic week, but we got everything done and learned a tremendous amount in a short time. I owe a huge debt of thanks to Sean Taylor at the South Carolina Heritage Trust for kicking in resources (both human and machine) and expertise at his disposal. I'm also thankful for the continued generosity and hospitality of the landowner. The analysis of the materials and information will begin immediately, starting with cleaning/cataloging the artifacts we collected, digitizing the profiles, and selecting samples for radiocarbon dating, etc. I still have a day or so left in the field to map in some trench locations and take a few final notes. I'll write about it as I have time, and will produce one or two videos showing what we did. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy some photos from our week and some of my initial thoughts on what we saw:

We've only got two more days left in the spring 2018 season at 38FA608. The weather looks good for this Friday, so I may end up threading the needle with yet another season with no time lost to rain.

While we're in good shape to finish up in the block on Friday, Unit 13 is going slower than I'd hoped. It just won't stop being interesting. As you will see in the video from Week 11, I took two students out for an extra day to work on the Late Archaic deposits and try to keep things moving along. There is still work to be done before we reach the Middle Archaic zone, and there's no telling what we'll run into down there. If the broad pattern of field archaeology holds, we'll find something extremely interesting this Friday that will bring the whole endeavor to a screeching halt.

The video for Week 11 is a long one, as it includes footage from an extra field day. I resisted the temptation to pose on a lawn chair in the back of the pickup truck. Enjoy!

We're officially in the "end times" of this season's fieldwork at 38FA608. After last Friday, we have just two more days to actively excavate at the site (the students will be doing lab work while I'm at the SAA meetings, and the last day will be reserved for buttoning things up and backfilling).

We made good progress last Friday, ending the day with Features 11 and 12 exposed in profile. Feature 11 is a relatively deep, midden-filled pit, while Feature 12 is a shallow basin associated with some large pieces of fire-cracked rock. As I'll discuss at some point in the future, both of these kinds of features are well-known from sites of similar age. Analysis of the contents of the features will help us understand activities at the site as well as refine the chronology of site occupation. 

As you can see in the video, Unit 13 refuses to stop becoming more interesting. Both of the Savannah River points from Friday came from an area of slightly darker sediment that is probably a feature. I'm planning on spending tomorrow working at the site with a couple of volunteers to keep things moving along in Unit 13.

I'm happy to report that my campaign to raise money to support next year's field school has passed a quarter of the goal of $4000. My sincere thanks go to Mike Morgan, Ken Kosidlo, and two anonymous donors for their generous contributions and support.

Enjoy the video!

I've started a GoFundMe campaign to support the planned 2019 season at 38FA608. If you've been following along with my blog posts, the students' blog posts, and the videos from this year, you have some sense of the value of sustaining the work at this site. We've shown that site 38FA608 preserves an extraordinarily fine-grained record of human behavior dating back at least 6,000 years.  The archaeological deposits protected within the levee provide a rare opportunity to understand the activities of individuals and small groups deep into South Carolina’s past and integrate those data into the larger narrative of Eastern Woodlands prehistory. They also provide a wonderful opportunity to educate students and the public in the use and importance of careful and systematic field methods to understand the human past. 

The site is the real deal.

I would like to keep the field school going as a yearly spring offering through the University of South Carolina.  To do that, two main things need to happen:

(1) student enrollment needs to be sufficient;

(2) I need to have funds to support the work.

After two seasons of work at the site, I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to be successful out there in terms of supplies, equipment, time, energy, and strategy. An important component of what I've been doing is hiring some experienced help to manage working in the two areas of the site (the block and the wall) at the same time. This year I hired one of the students from the 2017 season to act as a kind of "field sergeant," helping with direction, basic instruction, and quality control in one of the excavation areas. It helps with continuity, and also helps that student get some supervisory experience. I plan to continue that in the future (with different students).

I set up the GoFundMe with a goal of $4000.  That money will be used to : 

(1) pay a student field assistant ($1190); 

(2) pay student lab workers ($1280); 

(3) purchase expendable equipment and supplies to continue stabilizing the site ($557); and 

(4) rent a vehicle to transport students to/from the site ($973). 

Specific research goals for the 2019 season will be developed as materials and information from the 2018 season are processed, analyzed, and integrated with those from the 2017 season. My suspicion that there is a Late Archaic (ca. 2000 BC) house at the site grows stronger as the 2018 work continues (more on that later).

Sustained, publicly-accessible research on sites like 38FA608 has the potential to address numerous interesting questions as well as engage the community and help educate the next generation of southeastern archaeologists. Please consider contributing to these goals if you value our work and would like to see it continue.

Thank you!

Last week was spring break at USC, so I put off producing the video from Day 8 of the field school until today. We had a small crew but beautiful weather, as usual (at some point I'm sure my luck will run out). Work focused on the excavation of Feature 3 (exposed in the machine cut wall), Feature 11 (encountered in the block), and Unit 12 (still piece-plotting down through the intact deposits to reach Feature 13.  Enjoy the video!

I spent my morning putting together the video of last Friday's field work. The work continue to go well, even as things become more and more complicated. We've started dealing with the Late Archaic features, the excavation of which is my primary research goal this semester. I had to rush a bit on the editing of this one for personal reasons, but it's done and posted. Enjoy!

We had an eventful day in the field last Friday, so this week's video is longer than usual. Every project like this reaches what feels like a "hinge point" where you can start accurately sizing up what you can and can't get accomplished.  We won't be able to do everything I wanted to do at 38FA608 this semester, but we'll be able to do a lot of it. Fingers crossed the weather continues to cooperate.

We finally took the large rocks out of the floor of Unit 5. One of them turned out to be something unexpected (I won't spoil is so you can enjoy the moment with us on the video). The other turned out to be . . . well, watch the video for that also.

My arms and hands began blooming with poison ivy rash at about 2:00 on Saturday morning. Last week it took a couple of days before I started to feel the irritation. My folk theory is that the lack of rain allows the oils to build up and concentrate. Spring is aggressive and early here: plants and animals move into the excavation areas during our week-long absences from the site.

Enjoy the video!

My house is still a sick ward, so I think the best contribution I can make to archaeological science today is to type out a few thoughts about a pair of papers that came out last week. The papers ("Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ∼12,800 Years Ago," parts 1 and 2) lay out evidence for an anomalous episode of widespread burning that coincided with the onset of the Younger Dryas. The papers are unfortunately behind a Journal of Geology paywall. As you might expect from the mental image that the title conjures, the papers have gotten a lot of play in the media.

I'm going to play the sensationalism card with this image:

These papers are complicated, synthesizing a lot of data and information. I count 27 authors, including my South Carolina colleague Christopher Moore. There is a lot to digest here. I'll leave it to others to evaluate the parts of the papers that are outside my area of expertise. What I'm most interested in how the claims of widespread burning mesh with the Late Pleistocene archaeological record of eastern North America.

But first, what do the papers say? In the first one ("Ice Cores and Glaciers") the authors present data suggesting anomalous peaks in "combustion aerosols" in ice cores layers from several continents dating to about 12,800 years ago.  Those concentrations, presumably caused by combustion of organic matter, coincide with anomalous concentrations of dust and platinum which the authors associate with a cosmic impact. This is a good summary of the scenario that they envision:

For the uninitiated, the Younger Dryas was a temporary and rather sudden return to glacial conditions that occurred, for some reason, as the earth was coming out of its last glacial period. The causes of the Younger Dryas are a subject of debate, with the majority view being that the change was caused by an interruption in global ocean circulation patterns. These "Biomass-Burning" papers add to a growing body of scholarly work arguing for an alternative scenario, attributing sudden global cooling to a "nuclear winter" effect caused by atmospheric dust and smoke on a massive scale triggered by cosmic impacts.

The second paper ("Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments") examines dated sediment cores from numerous locations for the presence of peaks in charcoal and soot that would have been deposited as impact-related wildfires burned at large scales. Based on that analysis, the authors conclude that about 9% of the Earth's biomass was burned at the Younger Dryas boundary.

Nine percent is a big number no matter how you slice it. That's a lot of stuff on fire. I'll leave it to the climate people to evaluate how that number translates into changes in global weather patterns and weather that could have been a trigger for the Younger Dryas. We know the Younger Dryas happened, and we know that human societies would have had to have adjusted to it.  As an archaeologist who works in the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene, I immediately wonder how such a "biomass burning" scenario articulates with the archaeological record.

The burning would had to have been spotty (nine percent is not, after all, 100%). Even though the smoke and soot from combustion in the atmosphere is supposed to have contributed to the "nuclear winter" effect, however, direct evidence for it doesn't show up in every core.  There are several possible reasons for those absences, including post-depositional processes ("the soot was deposited but has been destroyed"). What intrigues me is the possibility that some of variability in the deposition of charcoal/soot could be linked to which areas were actually burned. Surely the wildfires would have been of varying scale and duration, and would have affected nearby environments in complex ways. We're talking about global climate change, but local/regional burning (which presumably would have taken place over a relatively short period of time). Creating some kind of geographic map of which areas were ostensibly burned would be useful for comparison to what we know/suspect about shifts in human population in response to the Younger Dryas.

I feel the "cosmic collision apocalypse" trope has been seriously abused, mostly by those outside of the actual scholarly debate. If there was an impact that triggered the Younger Dryas, it did not result in the extinction of human populations in eastern North America in any way that I can see. What I see instead is change in the distribution of populations and shifts in technology, subsistence, and mobility. Clovis doesn't "go extinct:" it changes into something else that actually looks a lot like Clovis (large, fluted, parallel-sided points similar to Clovis [e.g., Gainey/Bull Brook, Redstone] are the technological descendants of Clovis and post-date the Younger Dryas boundary). Large-scale time/space changes in the distribution of Paleoindian populations are something I've been interested in. So far, I haven't seen anything that looks to me to be a direct response to some kind of cataclysm.

But what would such a response look like and how we tell it apart from the alternatives? These are good questions to ask and not simple ones to answer. I am unconvinced that there is good evidence for some kind of significant, widespread post-Clovis population drop. In some areas of the east (i.e., the Northeast and the lower peninsula of Michigan), human populations actually seem to expand their range northward as the climate gets colder. Long story short: it's complicated.

We surely have the tools to investigate human responses to the larger patterns of climate change that characterize the Younger Dryas. I do not know, however, if the terrestrial sediment record, as it exists now or as it can be analyzed in the future, is fine-grained enough to develop a model of where in Eastern Woodlands large-scale burning would have occurred in the "nuclear winter" scenario. Likewise, it's not clear that the archaeological record is sufficiently fine-grained to track the short term responses of human populations to the new landscape that would have been created by widespread burning.  

That's all I've got for now. Fingers crossed a comet doesn't hit us before we get all this figured out.

In the week before SEAC, I had the students in my South Carolina Archaeology class sorting sherds in my lab. As the first part of a group/individual ceramic project, they were getting some experience identifying vessel portion, kind of temper, surface treatment, and decoration in sherds from a surface collection from Allendale County, South Carolina (the Larry Strong collection -- the same one I used to get some data for this Kirk paper). For the second part of the project, I'm going to supply them with the combined data and ask them to: (A) match the groups to named ceramic wares using information on excellent sites such as this one; (B) create a graphic depiction of change through time in temper, surface treatment, and the frequency of decoration; and (C) address in writing several questions linking the pottery to patterns of social/technological change. 

I'm posting some quick images of most of the rim sherds (and some decorated non-rims) here so they will be able to look at them without coming back to the lab repeatedly while they're working on their projects. I know that some of you will know what these types are -- please don't deprive my students of the joy of discovery!

​Also - hi students!