A New Year at the Southeast Maritime Conservation Laboratory

With the winter weather this month grounding many of our maritime operations, the staff at the Southeast Maritime Conservation Laboratory have been busy settling into the new location in Winterville whilst processing the artifacts from our recent Q4 project. This time the team continued normal survey operations utilizing acoustic sonar and GIS probability-based predictive models to investigate the high-probability areas of the Riverfront Project. The project was also expanded to include a recon of the northern Cooper River where potential submerged prehistoric sites have been subject to a loss of integrity from overdevelopment and recreational activities.

Now that new data has been collected from the RP area and chemical consolidation has wrapped up for the ironware artifacts, pottery, and historic earthenware from this project, our team looks to the northern Cooper River in the coming months to systematically document the potential new site areas. The artifacts recovered from the recent project represent two distinct assemblages coinciding with previous site investigations. The historic component of the site confirms its past presence along the embankment where overdevelopment has created upper layers of soft alluvial sediments on top of the site in recent years. The prehistoric component is further off the Cooper River shelf with localized assemblages of fiber-tempered friable pottery. Remaining spatial coverage in the project area will be tested to determine the northern and easter extent of the known site areas in our Spring and Summer projects for 2026.

In other news, our organization would like to welcome the addition of our newest Maritime and Mortuary Archaeologist, Hampton Routh! Hampton will be taking the lead on offshore operations when it comes to navigating project areas and operating safety protocols on the water. He will also accompany our individual teams in the field for submerged site documentation, as well as in the Southeast laboratory with chemical consolidation of artifacts. Please join us in welcoming our newest member aboard!

We hope everyone enjoyed this past Holiday Season and are looking forward to what the New Year brings. We hope to see you out there!