Submitted by Kevin Kiernan (kevin.kiernan@gmail.com)

Historic Preservation of Prehistoric, Colonial and Plantation Structures on the Coast

We are looking forward to welcoming a large crowd of you to the Society for Georgia Archaeology’s Fall Meeting, Friday-Sunday, 15-17 October 2010. The meeting formally begins in the Frederica Room at Sea Palms Resort on Saturday morning (Registration 8-9 am; short orientation talks start at 9 am, before heading out on the tours). [At the end of this article are suggestions for activities if you arrive early enough on Friday the 15th.]

This year’s theme is Historic Preservation of Prehistoric, Colonial and Plantation Structures on the Coast. Instead of the traditional set of formal papers, we are holding a moveable feast of archaeological sites with discussions led and sustained by professional archaeologists and other knowledgeable members of SGA.

Agenda overview

Saturday

Sunday

Click here for downloadable version of the agenda, perfect for posting. Meeting attendees may pick up dead-tree versions of the agenda, with map, at the Saturday morning orientation.

Details: Saturday, 16 October, site visits

Hamilton Plantation slave cabins—Cassina Garden Club

The grayscale map of the Evelyn Site is a composite of Preston Holder’s 1937 WPA map, showing 5 mounds, a farm house, and a farm road; a 2010 topographical map with GIS markers for Holder’s mounds B, C, and D; and the plat showing how the land was divided into properties in the late 1960s for the modern neighborhood.

Holder’s 1937 map, the 1968 plat, and a 2010 topo map.

As the composite map shows, the surviving Indian mounds are completely integrated into the modern neighborhood.

Keith Stephenson stands on Mound D in the Heritage Estates neighborhood.

The Spanish Mission gateway is from the 1930s, when this area was known as Santo Domingo State Park.

After parking, we will take a wooded path down beside the Brunswick-Altamaha Canal, which was dug by hand all the way from Brunswick harbor to the Altamaha River by slaves and Irish immigrants in the first half of the 19th century.

The Brunswick-Altamaha Canal, looking North from 99.

The impressive, well-preserved, tabby ruins at the end of the path were once thought to be the ruins of the Spanish mission of Santo Domingo de Talaje, but are now believed to be the remains of Hugh Frazer Grant’s sugar mill at Elizafield Plantation.

Elizafield tabby ruins.

Archaeologist Ray Crook will draw connections between these ruins and the comparable ones on Sapelo Island.

[Dinner is on your own, and there are many fine restaurants and casual watering holes where you can enjoy yourselves. Find helpful information online here.]

Details: Sunday morning, 17 October, Site Visits

Site manager Steven Smith will talk about the Fort and the Spanish mission and show us the culturally eclectic artifacts in the museum, and then show us the grounds.

Fort King George.

Bill Merriman, President of the Ashantilly Center, will discuss tabby making and show some of Spalding’s original tabby exposed in the stairwells.

The Ashantilly Center

Bill Merriman ignites a lime-burning rick at Ashantilly.

The Sugarworks falling into the Creek.

At the Carnochan Sugarworks cane was crushed in the rotary octagonal mill. Mules climbed the ramp up to the top floor of the Mill House. The cane juice was boiled to a concentrated solution in the boiling house. In the curing house the solution cooled and sugar crystals were formed. The crystals were separated from the syrup by filtration. The sugar and part of the syrup were packaged for sale. The excess syrup was sent to the distillery for fermentation and distillation.

Sugarworks diagram extracted by Fred Cook from Georgia’s Disputed Ruins (1937), ed. E. Merton Coulter.

We will also look at the tabby slave settlement at The Thicket.

Slave Settlement at The Thicket.

Realizing the importance of historic preservation of the Thicket, the developers and the neighborhood association have recently fenced off the Carnochan sugarworks and the slave settlement.

Thank you for coming to the Fall 2010 meeting of the Society for Georgia Archaeology.

Optional: Friday, 15 October, activities

Those of you arriving early on Friday are cordially invited to visit the old Hofwyl-Broadfield plantation; Fort Frederica National Monument; and the Harrington Graded School.

Vista at Hofwyl-Broadfield.

The museum includes clear displays of rice cultivation, and one of the many beautiful trails is an old rice dike leading to an observation deck overlooking the old rice fields.

Old Rice Dike.

Open 9-5. Be sure to say you are an SGA member to get the group rate of $3.50.

Vista at Fort Frederica.

Jon Burpee, Chief of Interpretation at Fort Frederica National Monument, invites SGA members and friends to visit Frederica, where he can bring you up to date with the latest research on the town and fort. Open 9-5, $3.00 for adults.

Harrington Graded School.

Built in the 1920s by African-American tradesmen for their children and grandchildren, the Harrington Graded School is now the focus of urgent historic preservation as a “Place in Peril” in the vanishing history of coastal Georgia.

The Friends of Harrington School, Inc., have invited members of SGA to visit between 5-7 p.m. Friday night. Drive north on Frederica Road, past Sea Palms, and turn right onto Harrington Road at Bennie’s Red Barn. The Harrington School House is a few blocks down on the left. For more information please click here.

Credits: Overlay map of Evelyn by Christopher Thornock; photographs by Kevin Kiernan.

Where to find it

Click above to go to a larger Google interactive map of the area.

Posted online on Saturday, October 9th, 2010