Carolina Community Archaeology

10/01/2025

✨ When archaeologists uncover artifacts, it’s seldom that a complete piece comes out of the ground.

Most finds are fragments—broken, discarded, or left behind after use. In the event a whole piece shows up, it often means it was intentionally placed in the ground.

In this video, Dr. Katherine Seeber is working through the cataloging process, showing a series of ceramic fragments found at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park.

This artifact is an Indigenous Hilton Head Island artifact.

📌 Stay tuned to Dig Mitchelville’s next post to see how these pieces fit together.

Cuando los arqueólogos descubren artefactos, rara vez aparece una pieza completa en el suelo.

La mayoría de los hallazgos son fragmentos: objetos rotos, descartados o dejados atrás tras su uso. Si aparece una pieza entera, a menudo significa que fue colocada intencionalmente en la tierra.

En este video, la Dra. Katherine Seeber muestra una serie de fragmentos de cerámica encontrados en el Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park durante el proceso de catalogación.

Este artefacto es un artefacto indígena de Hilton Head Island.

📌 No te pierdas la próxima publicación de Dig Mitchelville para ver cómo encajan estas piezas.

09/30/2025

09/29/2025

🎉 National Hispanic Heritage Month!

✨ Did you know? Another way to explore possible connections between Indigenous peoples of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the Lowcountry is through shell rings.

In the Southeast, Indigenous Cusabo communities built shell rings along the coast. Similar sites appear across Central and South America (and elsewhere), and this overlap shows how Native peoples connected through coastal life, language, and tide knowledge 🌊🐚

🎉 ¡Mes Nacional de la Herencia Hispana!

✨ ¿Sabías que? Otra manera de explorar posibles conexiones entre los pueblos indígenas de Centro y Sudamérica, el Caribe y el Lowcountry es a través de anillos de conchas.

En el sureste, las comunidades indígenas Cusabo construyeron anillos de conchas a lo largo de la costa. Sitios similares aparecen en Centro y Sudamérica (y más allá), y este traslape muestra cómo los pueblos originarios se conectaban a través de la vida costera, el lenguaje y el conocimiento de las mareas 🌊🐚

Narrated by Matthew Sanger, Tribal Liaison and Archaeologist at the Smithsonian.

Narrado por Matthew Sanger, Enlace Tribal y Arqueólogo del Smithsonian.

09/25/2025

🎉 Happy National Hispanic Heritage Month!

✨ Did you know? Another way to explore connections between Indigenous peoples of South America, the Caribbean, and South Carolina is through 🌊 water.

The tides and ocean topography carried boats north from the Caribbean, and Indigenous peoples like the Cusabo were skilled water travelers and used rivers and the sea as vital routes of movement and settlement. Some of the earliest Indigenous communities in the Southeast were established along rivers like the Savannah River and the Mississippi River.



🎉 ¡Feliz Mes Nacional de la Herencia Hispana!

✨ ¿Sabías que? Otra manera de explorar conexiones entre los pueblos indígenas de Sudamérica, el Caribe y Carolina del Sur es a través del 🌊 agua.

Las mareas y la topografía del océano llevaron barcos hacia el norte desde el Caribe, y pueblos indígenas como los Cusabo eran viajeros expertos en el agua, usando ríos y el mar como rutas vitales de movimiento y asentamiento. Algunas de las primeras comunidades indígenas en el sureste se establecieron a lo largo de ríos como el río Savannah y el río Mississippi.

09/19/2025

🎉 National Hispanic Heritage Month!

✨ Did you know? One way to explore possible connections between Indigenous peoples of South America, the Caribbean, and the Lowcountry is through language.

Linguistic anthropology suggests that Arawakan languages, spoken across northern South America and the Caribbean, are also reflected in the Cusabo language of South Carolina. 🌎

This is just one thread of evidence. Throughout Hispanic Heritage Month, we’ll be sharing more ways these connections appear in Lowcountry history and archaeology.

🎉 ¡Mes Nacional de la Herencia Hispana!

✨ ¿Sabías que? Una manera de explorar posibles conexiones entre los pueblos indígenas de Sudamérica, el Caribe y el Lowcountry es a través del lenguaje.

La antropología lingüística sugiere que las lenguas arawak, habladas en el norte de Sudamérica y el Caribe, también se reflejan en el idioma Cusabo de Carolina del Sur. 🌎

Este es solo un hilo de evidencia. Durante el Mes de la Herencia Hispana compartiremos más formas en que estas conexiones aparecen en la historia y la arqueología del Lowcountry.

09/12/2025

Actor Djimon Hounsou, who starred in ''Amistad,'' hopes his run/walk event will help promote Black history and Afro descendants' ties to Africa.

09/02/2025

📖 Word of the Day | Palabra del Día
After archaeologists finish Shovel Test Pit (STP) surveys, the next step is often opening test units (unidades de sondeo). These small squares help confirm what STPs revealed and guide where bigger excavations should happen. 🏺

Después de completar los sondeos con pala (STP), el siguiente paso suele ser abrir unidades de sondeo (test units). Estas pequeñas excavaciones confirman lo que revelaron los STP y orientan dónde deben realizarse excavaciones más grandes. 🏺

08/28/2025

When you think about the Reconstruction period, maybe cowboys aren’t the first thing you think of, let alone Black cowboys. During the Reconstruction era, the cattle industry in the American West was big business that employed many cowboys to drive cattle to market. Around 25% of these cowboys were African American. As early as the colonial period, enslaved people had worked as cattle herders (cowboys), and that continued through the Civil War and into Reconstruction. Black cowboys contributed to many aspects of the nation’s cowboy culture, from music to rodeoing, and even dime novel cowboy lore. For example, Nat Love, famed Black Cowboy from Tennessee, published a memoir of his experiences entitled Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as 'Deadwood Dick,' by Himself.

Learn more about black cowboys by visiting here: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/cowpoke-history.htm

IMAGE: LOC

08/27/2025