GEORGETOWN - A Coastal Carolina University archaeologist, anthropologist and seven students are working to unearth history at an excavation site at the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge.
The dig is going on not far from the Visitor’s Center on U.S. 701, just over the Georgetown County line near Youhannah Lake and the Great Pee Dee River.
Cheryl Ward, Ph.D., director for CCU's Center for Archaeology and Anthropology, is heading the excavation field school.
She showed News13 on Tuesday afternoon just some of the artifacts students have un-earthed so far, including medicine bottles from the mid-19th century, pieces of pottery, and nails.
"We are still in the process of analyzing," said Dr. Ward. "But we've already got a good chronological span from at least the time before the Civil War up until even when you could return Coke bottles for money," she said.
The school is a hands-on archaeological dig experience that introduces students to the practice of archaeology from designing field surveys to digging test pits, undertaking modest excavation, and composing scholarly reports.
The field school began with a dig on the Conway Riverwalk at the Kingston Presbyterian Church parking lot.
The team uncovered artifacts from a 19th-century government shipyard.
The team has since moved to the Refuge where they discovered the remains of a cabin of undetermined period that may have been an old trading post.
Students have found pieces of old glass, a piece of what seems to be a lamp, a glass panel bottle, a tin bowl and a number of bricks, which the team believes to be the foundation and chimney.
The property being excavated is referred to as Yauhannah Bluff, used by Native Americans until the mid 1600s. In the early 1700s it was the site of a ferry crossing and the Yourhaney Plantation.
Carolyn Dillian, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in CCU's Department of History, is serving as crew chief and co-director.
For more information, visit Coastal’s Field School Blog, updated by students daily, at http://archaeologyatcoastalcarolina.wordpress.com.
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