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ECSC Home  Magazine Home Magazine Articles 50,000 years ago in SC
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50,000 years ago in SC |
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February 2010
By Marc Rapport
Waterfront Property in South Carolina has been popular for a long time — maybe 50,000 years or more. That may be the age, according to radiocarbon dating, of some of the hand-fashioned stone chips archaeologists are carefully uncovering on an isolated bluff along the Savannah River in Allendale County. That is the famous Topper Site, where a University of South Carolina-led team of researchers spent a quarter-century or more digging into the past.
But there’s more — much more — all across the Palmetto State. “Every old Southern family has a box of arrowheads they’ve found over the years,” says Al Goodyear, the director of the Topper Site dig and a USC professor. “What they’re finding is evidence of continuous human occupation in South Carolina for at least the past 13,000 years.” That’s about the timeline for the Clovis period, now generally accepted as the earliest period of human occupation of what is now the United States.
The 50,000-year possibility at Topper has drawn national and international scientific and media attention as researchers explore the possibility that man has occupied North America far longer than previously assumed, and the Topper Site is a classic example of where to look for evidence.
Those sites are typically near sources of water and food “where a stream system or wetland meets uplands, especially on a river or the coast,” says Sean Taylor, an archaeologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR). “Those kinds of eco-tonal boundaries [transitional zones] are where prehistoric people loved to settle, and people still like to build their houses there today.”
Taylor’s job is to oversee archaeological matters on the 270,000 acres under SCDNR jurisdiction, including 17 culturally important properties purchased by the agency’s Heritage Trust program. “These include everything from 4,000-year-old shell rings to colonial towns and Revolutionary War sites to an 1820s stone bridge and Civil War earthworks,” Taylor says.
Preserving the past helps tell the large sweep of history — the first human occupation, the arrival of Spaniards in the 1500s, the great struggles of the Revolutionary and Civil wars — and it pieces together a picture of everyday life.
 Every artifact tells a story
“Archaeology is not just about collecting artifacts, although that’s a fun and exciting thing,” says Taylor with SCDNR. “The main objective to us is that they tell us a story about the past, something we didn’t know or maybe something we thought we knew, but we really didn’t.” For instance, Taylor says, written accounts imply that the Spaniards who settled at Santa Helena on what is now Parris Island thought themselves too fancy to eat shellfish. But archaeologists have found Spaniard pits full of shells. “So, were they really too good for that?” Taylor asks.
In fact, oyster roasts apparently have been a Lowcountry pastime for thousands of years. One big piece of proof is a shell pile so large it forms a small bluff along a creek at Edisto Beach State Park.
“It’s called the Spanish Mount, but it’s not from the Spaniards,” says David Jones, archaeologist for the S.C. State Park Service. “We really don’t know if it’s a permanent or periodically used site, or if it was used ceremonially. What we do know is that it dates to 3,000 to 4,000 years ago and that there’s a huge accumulation of oyster shells, along with a lot of pottery remains.”
Another of Jones’ favorite artifacts is a simple stone pipe found at South Carolina’s first permanent English colonial settlement, now preserved as Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site. “It has the initials ‘W.E’ on it. We know from the written records that there was a pipe maker in London at that time named Will Evans. We think it might have been made by him,” Jones says. “That’s a very solid, very tangible connection to the past.”
Arrowheads and objects such as pottery and pipes seem to be the most found items, and for good reason. Other things rot.
“We know that the people DeSoto [the Spanish explorer] encountered had arrows tipped with bones and fish scales and antlers, and they also used wooden containers,” says Chris Judge, a Native American studies instructor at USC-Lancaster. “But those things dissolve in the ground very quickly.”
The public’s vital role, rights
“There are only so many archaeologists, but there are a lot of people with an interest in the past,” says Erika Heimbrook Shofner, a researcher at The Kolb Site in Darlington County. The arrowheads and spear points exposed by South Carolina farm plows and shovels also tell an important story.
“If someone hadn’t brought to DNR the things they were finding at the Kolb Site, for instance, we would have never known about it. And without their support, we wouldn’t have the financing to do this work, either,” she says.
Public participation in archaeology remains key, agrees Goodyear at USC. He points to Clariant, the corporation that owns the Topper Site, for its outstanding cooperation, as well as the backing of his own organization — the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology (SCIAA) at USC.
Individual property owners also are vital to preserving the Palmetto State’s cultural history. They needn’t worry about losing their property, the state’s archaeologists stress. The SCIAA has photographed hundreds of artifacts and then returned them to the property owners who found them.
“It’s a touchy subject, but as professional archaeologists, we’re the only ones who really do know how to ‘destroy’ a site properly,” says Jones of the State Park Service. “That’s why we encourage people not to dig up their own sites.
“That said, there’s never going to be a law that prevents someone from digging on their own land in South Carolina, nor should there be,” Jones says. “I’d just encourage folks who think they have something to contact the SCIAA to get a site form and get it registered.
“That, hopefully, will encourage them to take a little pride in it and protect what they have.”
For help with artifact or possible archaeological site identification, contact the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at (803) 777-8170. The institute’s Web site is at cas.sc.edu/sciaa .
See Additional Photos Below
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Volunteers work at the 50,000 year level at the Topper site. Discoveries here have received international attention and have been covered by CNN, National Geographic, The New York Times and Science Magazine.
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Excavation plotting shows how artifacts relate horizontally, within a time period, and also how artifacts are uncovered vertically, revealing the passage of time.
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| Digs at Charles Towne Landing have uncovered Native American, Revolutionary War, and plantation history. Visitors to the park can often talk with archaeologists and see these digs in progress. |
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