ArchaeoBus at Fort Hawkins for week
This week, 24–31 October, 2011, the SGA’s ArchaeoBus is at Fort Hawkins and open to the public, while excavations are in progress. This is the first time the ArchaeoBus has visited active excavations! Fort Hawkins, on a hill above the Ocmulgee National Monument and downtown Macon, dates to 1806, before Macon was founded. On the 31st, attend a Press Conference at 3:00PM, when you can see all that was found during the week, and tour the ArchaeoBus. At 5:00PM, the first Fort Hawkins Halloween Hauntings will begin, with ArchaeoBus tours a major highlight of this free, fun, family event.
Passport In Time volunteers from any era are invited to the Passport In Time (PIT) Reunion at Scull Shoals on Saturday, April 30th, 2011, between 10AM and 4PM. The Reunion is being held in conjunction with the Scull Shoals Festival at the old mill site on the Oconee National Forest in Greene County. The big event is jointly hosted by the Friends of Scull Shoals, Inc, and the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests.
Join National Military Park Historian Jim Ogden for a two-hour walking tour exploring some of the “hidden” history at the Moccasin Bend National Archeological District on Sunday, March 13th, beginning at 4 PM.
Rebecca Burns uses photographs and archival information to tell the history of Atlanta in her 2010 book Atlanta: Yesterday & Today. The author tells Atlanta’s story by neighborhood, with thematic sections, rather than through a single chronological storyline. The lively text is augmented by historical and modern images to convey “the character, moxie, and extraordinary history that combined to earn Atlanta its status as the capital of the New South.” Consider how the order and organization of a history may affect how the reader perceives the places and times discussed.
Georgia State University began contemplating thesis topics she was approached by the curator of the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History. The curator asked if she would interpret the Lacy Hotel collection housed at the museum which she had previously researched and analyzed as an intern in 2007. Melissa thought her familiarity with the artifacts and history of the Lacy Hotel would make for a great thesis topic and provided the opportunity to start The Lacy Hotel Project which uses the combination of archaeological and historical data to document civilian life during the Civil War. 
On Sunday, November 7th, the Friends of Scull Shoals hosted their first tour of the herb walk dedicated to the memory of Dr. Durham. The Friends bought the land from a timber company, and it’s adjacent to the Oconee National Forest. Needless to say, pines predominate on the property, but other species of plants grow among the pines.
The Flat Rock Archives Slave Cemetery Dedication and Libation Ceremony held October 30, 2010, paid tribute to the ancestors of their community through honor, celebration, and history. With a large turnout including news crews and Georgia Public Broadcasting, the community honored the Flat Rock historical church site, built in 1823, by blueprinting what was once the foundation and inviting people into the space. The crowd also visited the Slave Cemetery where a libation ceremony was held to honor the Flat Rock descendants’ ancestors. The celebration offered a realistic view into the past for the African-American community. SGA’s local chapter, the Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society, has been involved with preserving and caring for the cemetery through volunteer efforts since 2008.
Are you curious about the native plants that nineteenth-century Georgia herbalists used in their concoctions? Mark Sunday, November 7, on your calendar, and plan a trip to the Scull Shoals Education Center, just off GA 15 between Athens and Greensboro, and join horticulturist Debbie Cosgrove on a guided tour of the Herb Walk on the grounds created by the Friends of Scull Shoals. Cost is $5.00 per person.
The Flat Rock Archives and Museum is hosting its 1st Annual Commemorative Ancestors’ Walk and Community History Celebration Saturday, October 30, 2010. Flat Rock Archives and Museum invites you to join efforts to restore, preserve and protect the historic Flat Rock Slave Cemetery—the resting place of more than two hundred slaves and ancestors. The cemetery is east-southeast of Atlanta, and south of Lithonia proper. Events begin with a walk/race that starts at 8 AM; events continue all day.
The SGA met on St. Simons Island, east of Brunswick, on a lovely fall weekend in mid-October, and explored archaeological sites there and in the SSI area. Enjoy dozens of pictures from the tour in the full story. The SGA thanks all who organized the trip, discussed the places we visited, and gave us permission to visit them—and to all non-members who joined our tour.
Eighteen years of research by history professor Loren Schweninger at the University of North Carolina—Greensboro has produced an online database is called the Digital Library on American Slavery. Data are drawn from court cases from across fifteen states, with over 1100 records from the state of Georgia.
Rice was an extremely important commercial crop in antebellum coastal Georgia. Yet, today, there’s very little rice grown in that area. This Weekly Ponder briefly considers the economic history of rice-growing along the Southeastern Coast, and looks at modern rice-farming in the USA a bit, too.
The Greater Atlanta Archaeological Society’s March meeting will be on the Tuesday the 9th, at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, at 7:30 PM. The speaker will be GAAS’s own Allen Vegotsky. Allen will discuss Dr. Lindsey Durham (1789-1859), a physician who worked in the Scull Shoals community, south of Athens. Allen’s innovative presentation will take the form of a one-act play, and Allen will play both the Doctor and a narrator.
Historical archaeologists can use data from archival records, which are unavailable to archaeologists working with prehistoric data. How does that make a difference? This issue is examined using notes made by French historian Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831 in a letter to his mother, which has only recently been published in English translation.
Georgia’s Jekyll Island has an interesting past, detailed here. The Island is owned by the the people of Georgia and managed on their behalf by the Jekyll Island Authority. It’s a natural and cultural treasure most of us don’t know enough about.
Every once in a while news about the archaeology of southeastern North America is reported in mainstream publications. In June, the New York Times includes a report on carvings found on the wall of a cave in southeast Kentucky which may be an extremely early version of Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary. The final syllabary had 85 characters, each representing a syllable.
Dick Brunelle has revealed the answer to the challenge he posed to readers almost two months ago, since no one logged in and submitted the answer. He asked people who made a brick he saw in LaGrange with “LACLEDE KING” stamped on it. As a tease, he noted: The brick is more closely related to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, than it is to covered bridges in Georgia. Ed. note: You must read the full story; it’s wonderful!
In the nineteenth century, banks around the USA commonly issued their own currency, like this five-dollar note from Ocmulgee Bank of Macon. Banking standards affect capitalization of projects and the economy in general. Read more about the Panic of 1857 by clicking [More].