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Archives For November 30, 2014

Faculty-Student Research Receives Support

By James Newhard
Posted on 18 December 2014 | 2:41 pm — 

Congratulations to the following archaeology students and faculty mentors, who have received support for research and professional presentations from the College’s Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities:

Academic Year Research Award
Alana Acuff (Anthropology) and Jami Baxley (Classics)
Mentor: James Newhard
Title: The Global Electronic Repository of Aegean Scripts (GERAS): post-processing 3D structured light scanning imagery
Research Presentation Grants
Olivia Adams (Anthropology)
Mentors: Maureen Hays, Kimberly Pyszka
Title: Landscape Archaeology and GIS: Understanding Cultural Adaptations and Tenant Farming in the Low Country, Hollywood, SC
Conference: South Eastern Archaeological Conference

Zak Bartholomew (Anthropology)
Mentor: James Newhard, Norman Levine
Title: The Development of a Legacy GIS for the Contextualization of the Linear B Deposits from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos
Conference: Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting

This Might Only Happen in Charleston

3 December 2014 | 2:52 pm By: Melissa Whetzel

Living history isn’t just a slogan at the College of Charleston. It’s true. Today construction workers unearthed a Civil War-era artillery shell that is believed to have been there for more than a century.

The shell, which is about a foot long, was removed by the Department of Defense. The area where the shell was found is part of the expansion of the Sylvia Vlosky Yaschik Jewish Studies Center, which includes a new vegan/kosher cafeteria. The expansion is expected to be complete in winter 2015.

Civil War artillery shell

“It is quite common to find Civil War artifacts on the peninsula, not always as spectacular as an unexploded shell, though they are found every once in a while,” explains archaeology professor Barbara Borg. “From time to time battalions of soldiers came through and camped in large numbers, so it is common to find horse hardware, ceramics, cookware, buttons and buckles from clothing, pewter silverware and, where preservation is really good, items made out of wood, like drumsticks and the wooden parts of brushes.”

 

WEBSITE: College of Charleston is home to S.C.’s only undergraduate major in archaeology.

Borg has directed the College’s Archaeological Field School for a number of years and says they have often worked on the peninsula finding many of these artifacts.

“Charleston and the Lowcountry are archaeological jewels,” says Jim Newhard, classics professor and director of the archaeology program. “I would hazard to guess that there are few places with richer archaeological heritage in the country than Charleston. Therefore we have a tremendous duty as stewards of this national treasure, to take the necessary precautions to ensure its survival.”

Newhard adv

ocates for a city archaeologist, tasked with preserving these finds. He also notes that while the Civil War and Colonial phases receive a lot of attention, the plantations up and down the Ashley and Cooper Rivers are a part of a broader story that includes American Indian habitation prior to the arrival of Europeans and Africans through to transformations in society in the decades following the Civil War.

 

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