As part of our 2024 ECU Field School, we documented numerous features on the historic 18th century waterfront at Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site, NC. Research focused on the unexplored southern waterfront area and shoreline.
In June 2024, ECU Maritime Studies ran part of its Summer Field School at Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson State Historic Site. For one week, the research team investigated the targets from our 2021 sonar survey along the shoreline in addition to associated waterfront sites in the undeveloped forest of the historic sites southern boundary. Nine new sites, two potential features, and over 40 artifacts were discovered during the 2024 field school.
Archaeological features originally located in the 2021 sonar survey are now much more exposed from erosion of the coastal salt marsh bordering the historic site.
These sites were located by using a GIS overlay of the archaeological basemap created by Dr. Stanley South that incorporates the map of Brunswick Town by Claude Joseph Sauthier in 1769. The basemap indicates the various lots of the port town as well as the various structures built in each. Our field school focused on lots 23 and 24 along with their associated features in the river and marsh area. Additional work was completed on 31BW376**13 (Wharf 01; Roger Moore's Wharf) as well as revisiting four sites interpreted by Dr. South in the 1960s.
Sites added to the OSA database:
31BW376*23*1 31BW376**16
31BW376*23*2 31BW376**17
31BW376*23*3 31BW376**18
31BW376*24*1 31BW376**19
31BW376*23*3
In this one week of fieldwork, the team completed preliminary Phase I documentation on the majority of Brunswick Town's southern waterfront. Each wharf site shown by Sauthier was located along with the structures in waterfront lots immediately adjacent to these locations. It is probable that these terrestrial sites are associated with waterfront activity and possibly represent warehouses or other port infrastructure (merchant's offices, etc.).
Numerous diagnostic artifacts were recovered from the wharf fill and are currently undergoing conservation at the Queen Anne's Revenge Conservation Laboratory in Greenville, NC. Included in the recovered finds are several glass liquor bottles, a delftware bowl with written text, a barrel head with initials carved into the top face, a partial pipe bowl and stem with makers marks, and an English brick with incised mortar that matches the construction evident on the ruins of St. Philips Church located just to the north.
Of the new sites identified, six are considered imminently threatened due to observed erosion impacts. This erosion is caused by dynamic wave action from both natural (climate change, intensifying storms) and cultural (ship undertow/wakes) factors. The sites include 31BW376**16, three submerged and intertidal colonial-era timber-crib wharves (31BW376**17-19), as well as a terrestrial coquina stone and brick building foundation at the land terminus of the southernmost wharf (31BW376*23*1), and brick chimney fall with foundation depression (31BW376*24*1) with artifacts scattered from the site towards the river. The impacted features include an unknown intertidal wooden structure near 31BW376**17, and a possible ballast stone lined causeway at the upper marsh area
We plan to continue monitoring of these sites while we plan for future excavation and data recovery at targeted locations on the waterfront.
View local media coverage of our work below:
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