American Artifacts

On August 1, 1776, at the height of the Revolutionary War in Esseneca Town, South Carolina, Cherokee and British Loyalists had just ambushed Major Andrew Williamson’s militia. After suffering defeat from the surprise attack, the American militia regrouped and counter-attacked, devastatingly burning down Esseneca (and every other Cherokee town and farm in the region) in the process. With little to nothing remaining of the Cherokee civilization, the militiamen built Fort Rutledge over the scorched earth, naming it after John Rutledge, the then president of South Carolina. Today, the Archaeology from the Era of Fort Hill Plantation and the Revolutionary War Creative Inquiry project, led by Dr. David Markus from the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, is working to uncover artifacts from the lost and forgotten Native American and colonial frontier history that lies beneath Clemson University’s grounds.

“As we lead up to the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, we thought we’d try and locate [Fort Rutledge] and incorporate Native American perspectives into how we memorialize and talk about the site on campus, because we are on, what was at one point, a Cherokee sacred landscape,” Markus said. The Creative Inquiry project is an extension of the Archaeological Field School, a higher-level anthropology course taught by Markus, and allows students to participate in both excavation fieldwork and lab analysis of artifacts.

Gavin Schrantz, a senior anthropology and history dual degree student, participated in the 2021 summer field school. She and her fellow Creative Inquiry team members discovered an ax head, battle ammunition and colonial era building materials, such as bricks and hand-wrought nails. After digging for hours a day, the students developed a greater appreciation for the physical intensity and difficulty of fieldwork. Though there were days when they did not find anything exciting, the moments when they did made their efforts more than worth it. “It was extremely satisfying and thrilling because you unearthed this piece of history that no one had seen for decades,” Schrantz said. Among the dirt and clay, the students also found pottery and arrowheads that now serve as evidence of a civilization that was thought to be lost for good.

Schrantz’s most notable finding was a belt buckle-like ring excavated from brick rubble on the second to last day in the field. Although she initially thought it was a revolutionary era ring, its Victorian style indicated that it could have been left behind around 1908 after the Daughters of the American Revolution completed the fort’s monument construction.

Over the years, aside from the modern monument, Fort Rutledge’s remains have disappeared or were flooded due to the construction of Lake Hartwell. Because of this, the fort’s exact location is unknown. However, Margaret Milteer, a senior anthropology major, may have pushed her team one step closer to the location of the fort. “As we were digging in this one-by-two-meter rectangle of land, [I noticed that] the one side of the soil was a much darker color, whereas the other side was the kind of bright, good old South Carolina clay. [The soil distinction] was a straight line that extended exactly where we thought one of the walls would be. We think this is a record of a trench, either from the bastion or wall of the fort,” Milteer said.

After a productive summer, the Creative Inquiry students moved to the lab during the fall to clean, analyze, catalog and build a timeline around the artifacts. By taking a closer look at their findings, they can more accurately identify an object’s age, material and what culture it came from, helping them develop an interpretation of what actually took place on campus grounds centuries ago.

Due to the project’s holistic nature, students learn to appreciate material culture from the moment an object comes out of the dirt through its exhibition in a museum. “Having participated in Clemson’s Archaeological Field School and the Lab Analysis Creative Inquiry will make us more competitive candidates [for professional opportunities],” said Milteer, who hopes to work as a field technician before attending graduate school for historical archaeology. Schrantz anticipates pursuing museum studies at the graduate level and agrees. “This is not something that every university has or something that most people do at the undergraduate level, so it’s an incredible opportunity that we’ve been provided with that will certainly help continue education and careers,” Schrantz said.