Archaeology

I’ve been on two archaeology digs. The first one was in Destin, the summer of my freshman year at Valdosta State, before I began my summer job as resident staff at Kanuga in Hendersonville, North Carolina. It came to a screeching halt when we found a human tooth on the fifth day, so we no longer puked our hangovers into the woods at the pits (we had two) we surveyed then excavated five centimeters at at time, sifting the dirt through framed screens suspended from tripods. The two most valuable things I learned on that dig were how to shotgun a beer and the best hangover remedy: Alka-Seltzer Plus cold medicine dissolved in Gatorade will set you right when a Bloody Mary isn’t an option.

The second dig was my senior year at Augusta State, on the banks of the Savannah River, the silver bluffs, if you will. One of my classmates and I took our lunch break down by the river, away from the rest of the class so we could smoke a bowl before returning to work. On the last day, Eric brought his camp stove, and we made quesadillas on the riverbank.

On that dig, we also took a field trip out to Stallings Island, where the University of Florida had a dig. Stallings Island, on the state line, is one of the oldest pottery sites in North America, and it’s the most heavily looted. Georgia and South Carolina both claim it.