Anthropology Students and Faculty Attend the Southeastern Archaeological Conference
The 2024 Southeastern Archaeological Conference was held in in Williamsburg, VA November 13 – 16. SEAC was founded in the 1930s, and is regarded as a premier regional organization in the Archaeology field. At SEAC, anthropologists from all over the world meet to share research and ideas, and advance the work of Archaeology in the Southeast.
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology encourages faculty, staff, and students to participate in professional and scholarly activities throughout the year, and SEAC is one of many conferences our community engages in! See below some of our very own represented at this annual event!
Dr. Dru McGill
Title: Community-Driven Partnerships in the Preservation and Documentation of Oberlin Village, Raleigh, North Carolina
Oberlin Village is an historic African American neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in the 1850s by free Black families, the community thrived as a postbellum municipality into the twentieth century. The Friends of Oberlin Village (FOV) is a non-profit created by community descendants, with missions to preserve the historic resources and memories of the village by building community-driven partnerships with nearby heritage professionals, such as archaeologists, historians, and artists. This presentation discusses successes and challenges in recent collaborative efforts to document historic resources in Oberlin Village, and a new state-wide project to document historic cemeteries in North Carolina.
Greer Taylor, M.A. Student
Title: Cemetery Photogrammetry: Historical Archaeology Data Collection Preliminary Results from Oberlin Cemetery, Raleigh, North Carolina
Photogrammetry involves creating three-dimensional models using photographs of an object which can provide more detailed documentation than the photographs alone. This technique could be used to record and assist in the future preservation of grave markers. This poster presents the preliminary results of photogrammetry in Oberlin Cemetery, located in the historic African-American community of Oberlin Village in Raleigh, North Carolina. It has recently been mapped with geophysical tools by local professionals and rejuvenated by volunteer clean-up initiatives. I aim to contribute to the Oberlin community and the ongoing rehabilitation of Oberlin Cemetery through photogrammetry.
Parrish, Wesley, Dr. Dru McGill, Dr. John Millhauser
Title: Portable X-Ray Fluorescence and Clay: An Examination of the Effectiveness of Using pXRF for Archaeological Ceramic Clay Sourcing Studies
Six different wild clay sources from North Carolina were made into test tiles and analyzed using a Portable X-Ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometer to determine the device’s ability to differentiate between clay sources. Results showed that even with the addition of tempering material, the pXRF was able to differentiate between clay sources. Although additional analytical work is needed to determine pXRF’s ability to detect whether archaeological ceramics were manufactured with local or extra-local clay sources, this study provides a sampling 107 methodology and baseline set of data that can influence future work in the compositional analysis of archaeological ceramics. Patty, Nathan (nbpatty@crimson.ua.edu, Univ
Travis Corwin, M.A. Student
Title: The Underground Digital Archive: Documenting the life and labor of field archaeologists in the 1990s
This poster discusses the content of The Underground Digital Archive and the reasons behind how and why it was created. The Underground was a zine/newsletter that was widely circulated among CRM archaeologists primarily working east of the Mississippi River between 1993 to 1995. The archive, which includes copies of the zine and related ephemera, is not only a record of the everyday lives of field archaeologists but an important document to the history of labor organizing in archaeology.
Waitt, Kyra (M.A. Student), Jane Eastman, Eileen G. Ernenwein, Brett Riggs
Focusing the Lens: Developing a Framework for Geophysical Data Interpretation of Mississippian Residences at Watauga
This poster presents an interpretive framework for identifying residential features in geophysical prospecting data in support of ethical, minimally invasive, and cost-effective archaeological research. At this stage, I focus on the identification of residential features, structures, and areas dating to the Middle Mississippian period. Once the framework is fully developed, I will apply it to magnetometry and GPR data collected by a team from Western Carolina University and East Tennesee State University at Watauga (31MA89), an ancestral Cherokee mound site in Macon County, NC. If successful, this framework may aid the interpretation of magnetic data at similar Mississippian sites in the Southern Appalachian region.
Ernenwein, Eileen , Brett Riggs, Jane Eastman, Kyra Waitt (M.A. Student)
Exploring Mississippian Community Patterns at Watauga Through Geophysical Survey
Situated in the upper Little Tennessee River Valley of southwestern North Carolina, the Watauga Site features a Middle Mississippian period center with remnants of two platform mounds and a presumed plaza between them. Noninvasive surveys, including ground penetrating radar, magnetometry, and UAV-based LiDAR, were conducted in summer 2024 over more than three hectares. Together, these data provide insight into mound construction, the ceremonial structures within them, and the layout of domestic structures. This poster highlights preliminary findings and future prospects.
Borgardt, Devon (M.A. Student)
Synthesizing Archaeological Date: Plantations along the Lower Cape Fear, North Carolina This project focuses antebellum plantations along the Lower Cape Fear River basin (Brunswick, New Hanover, and Pender Counties, North Carolina) from 1725 to 1861. The research involves examining known and unknown archaeological sites associated with these plantations using historic maps, LiDAR data, and previous archaeological work. Together, I will use this data to enhance our understanding of the historic and archaeological resources associated with these plantations.
To learn more about SEAC or review the entire 2024 program, please visit https://www.southeasternarchaeology.org/annual-meeting/details/
