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| Judge holds conical pottery |
Mandy Catoe
mcatoe@thelancasternews.com
Every winter for the past two decades, USC Lancaster archaeologist Chris Judge has spent two weeks in a Darlington County swamp, digging square holes 2 meters long, 2 meters wide and a meter deep.
With flat shovels, he and his crew methodically skim thin layers from a sandy mound called the Johannes Kolb Site. Layer by layer, they sift each shovelful, separating dirt from clues about our history. They then sort, identify and piece together details about long-ago life along the Pee Dee River.
The excavation has unearthed 200,000 artifacts so far. They fill 900 banker's boxes, many of them stacked high in Judge's lab at the Native American Studies Center on Lancaster's Main Street.
This week, for the first time ever, he will be displaying his work.
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| Chris Judge |
"My nose always hits the glass when I am trying to get a closer look and I can't touch it," he said earlier this week as he was preparing his work for the exhibit.
Judge will open his exhibit, "Share a Little of that Human Touch" with a guided tour this Friday at 1:30 p.m. The sensory and interactive display is part of Native American Studies Week, which runs from Monday through Saturday.
Judge, 57, keeps his long, greying hair pulled back in a ponytail. He is dressed in jeans and boots, more suited for the wild than an office.
He is eager to broaden the audience for archaeology and wants people off the street to come in and touch the past. He looks part rock star, part professor, and his passion about his work spills out as he talks.
"Academic archaeology is not accessible," he said.
"This is," he said, smiling as he rolled a broken spearhead around in the palm of his hand.
As he talked, he named the archaeological period associated with each artifact on a table in his lab – a beaver skull, stone tools, spearheads and broken pieces of pottery called "sherds." These artifacts tell the story of people who lived along the Pee Dee River on the Kolb site. He wants people to come in, put their hands on the past, and feel a connection.
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| Sharpening beaver teeth for wood work |
Back 12,000 years
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| Nut cracker |
Judge and a crew of archaeologists, volunteers and students began exploring the area to locate the homesite of German settler Johannes Kolb, who lived there in the early 1700s. They found much, much more.
"From the Ice Age really up to the mid-20th century, there were for the most part, people there," Judge said. "That, to me, is exciting."
The findings include artifacts dating back 12,000 years ago to the last Ice Age. Judge's work found evidence that Native Americans lived on the river banks long before Kolb built a home there in 1740, and slaves lived there a century later.
"Every prehistoric archaeological culture known is present at the Kolb site," Judge said.
As curator, Judge will limit the focus of his exhibit to the prehistoric period
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| 9,000-year-old spearhead |
Social media is all abuzz in anticipation of the show. The "Share a Little of that Human Touch" display has been trending this past week on Facebook.
Life-size mastodon
USCL art professor Brittany Taylor-Driggers spent hours painting a life-size mastodon on the wall. It's 15 feet long and 10 feet high at the shoulder. Opposite the mammoth creature are a spear and a bow and arrow – tools of the ancient hunters.
Looking at the small spear next to the huge mastodon, Judge shook his head and said, "I would have been a vegetarian."
As curator, Judge will limit the focus of his exhibit to the prehistoric period with findings from the Kolb site and other excavations from South Carolina.
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| Brittany Taylor Driggers |
Judge was hired in 2006 to help build the university's new Native American Studies program. In 2012, he oversaw the building of the 15,000-square-foot Native American Studies Center.
"Chris Judge is a legend in South Carolina archaeology circles," said Dr. Stephen Criswell, director of Native American Studies Center. "Everywhere you go around the state, people know and respect him. We are lucky to have him at USC Lancaster."
The center's purpose is the study of South Carolina's Native Americans, their histories and cultures, while offering visitors a chance to view galleries, observe archaeology and attend educational classes.
Since it opened five years ago, more than 30,000 visitors have toured gallery exhibits and attended monthly Lunch and Learn presentations.
The single largest collection of Catawba Indian pottery is on display in the Lindsay Pettus Gallery at the center. In 2016, the center hired Dr. Brooke Bauer, the first-ever Catawba with a PhD to bring an authentic voice to the program.
"This exhibit will dip far into the past and tell us about life in South Carolina before the arrival of Europeans," said Criswell. "It’s another great step toward telling the full story of the state’s Native Americans and of South Carolina in general."
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| Excavated pottery |
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| Ancient weapon made with egg stone. Woven by Catawba Native Beckee Garris |
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| Square Holes (Judge photo) |
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| Tariq Ghaffar |
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| Iron Oxide from Sandstone |
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| Excavated sherds pieced together |
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| Katie Shull |
Monday
• 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Lecture: "20 Years of Archaeological Research at the Johannes Kolb Site," by Christopher Judge, NASC Room 106.
Wednesday
• 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Film: "Square Holes: Digging the Kolb Site," NASC Room 106.
Thursday
• 1:30 p.m. Exhibit opening: Piedmont American Indian Association's Tribal Exhibit, NASC Duke Energy Gallery. Lower Eastern Cherokee Nation, curated by Chief Gene Norris and Victoria Norris, will run through March 1, 2018.
Friday
• 10-11:30 a.m. Quarterly meeting of the Council of S.C. Professional Archaeologists, Cultural Arts Center, 307 W. Gay St.
• Noon-1 p.m. Lunch and Learn lecture "Archaeology of the Southeastern Archaic Breaks New Ground," hunter-gatherers of the archaic period (11,000 to 3,000 years ago) in S.C. and Florida. Dr. Kenneth E. Sassaman from the University of Florida, Cultural Arts Center, 307 W. Gay St.
• 1:30-2:30 p.m. Exhibit opening: "Share a Little of That Human Touch." Guided tour by curator Dr. Christopher Judge, NASC.
• 3-4:30 p.m. Lecture: "Big Picture Archaeological Research in South Carolina and the Southeast and Beyond," Dr. David G. Anderson from the University of Tennessee, Cultural Arts Center, 307 W. Gay St.
Saturday
• 9 a.m.-4 p.m. 2017 Native American Studies Festival, with Native American arts and crafts vendors, Native American music, primitive technology demonstrations, exhibit tours.
All events are free and open to the public. All locations are within easy walking distance of the NASC within the Lancaster Cultural Arts District. For more information, call the NASC at (803) 313-7172 or visit www.usclancaster.sc.edu/NAS/.html.
Follow Reporter Mandy Catoe on Twitter @MandyCatoeTLN or
contact her at (803) 283-1152.
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