Construction crew at UGA unearths artifacts
Submitted by Sammy Smith (sammy@thesga.org)
Photograph by David Manning, and from onlineAthens.com website.
Lee Shearer’s August 18th, 2009, story published by onlineAthens.com, notes that a construction project on the University of Georgia campus in Athens has revealed archaeological artifacts. The article begins:
A renovation project on one of the University of Georgia’s oldest buildings has turned into an archaeological treasure hunt, and after weeks of digging, the treasure pile just keeps growing.
The construction project is at New College, a building on north campus.
The excavators also have found a brick floor no one knew existed buried 7 feet below New College’s present ground level, and the remains of what may be a garden wall outside of the building facing Herty Field.
Another building may have stood on the site even before the original New College was built in 1819, said Janine Duncan, campus planning coordinator for UGA’s Physical Plant.
Shearer notes:
But even though the workers with Garbutt Construction Co. of Dublin aren’t digging the artifacts out as slowly and painstakingly as archaeologists would, they’re being as careful as they can while still meeting their construction schedule, [Campus Architect Danny] Sniff said.
Comments?
Gee, to imagine they found what “no one knew existed”. However could that be, for SURELY they followed the law–GEPA. And SURELY they followed the Campus Preservation Guidelines that the Board of Regents paid to have drawn up and established in 2005 (see http://www.usg.edu/ref/planning/campus_preservation/campus_preservation.pdf) Because had the University of Georgia followed the law, it would have had archaeological investigation done before any construction took place. That would have allowed archaeologists to save not only the artifacts-which is the ONLY thing the construction company is able to do, but would have uncovered and documented part of the University’s and Georgia’s rich history. The archaeologists would have done this by not only saving the artifacts, but much more importantly uncovering and documenting the clues tied to the artifacts like the relationships between them and other clues in the soil. Now, thanks to the lack of foresight on the part of the university, and the inability to follow GEPA, the entire site, just like a crime scene, is destroyed forever.You would think an institution of higher learning, AND the Board of Regents would get it.