Digging up the past: Archaeology at Fort Pulaski tells new stories of old times, land

At Fort Pulaski National Monument, visitors learn Civil War history while taking in the red brick arches and sprawling historic property, learning about how the gaping cannonball holes played a role in the coast’s portion of the war.

But this week, Laura Seifert, archaeologist and Cultural Resources Specialist, and Samantha Matera, another archaeologist at the site, presented at the Islands Library some of the findings their team has made digging up the past to tell new stories about the civilians who lived on-site years ago and how humans and nature have shaped the land on Cockspur and McQueens islands.

More than a barricade, workers’ village tells of civilian life on-site

Fort Pulaski is a National Monument operated by the National Park Service located on most of Cockspur Island and all of the adjacent McQueens Island between Savannah and Tybee Island.

Aside from the brick fortress and cannonball-marked walls of the fort, the historical site features a workers' village where the fort's residents, everyone from blacksmiths to carpenters, slept and had their quarters, had communal kitchens, and bigger houses where the commander had his own house and separate office building.

These civilian-built structures were initially constructed in 1829, and while they were supposed to be temporary many hung around going in and out of use for the next 50 years. A lot of them were originally built with wood and gave way to the coastal humidity, forcing them to be replaced with brick.

Findings from the workers' village remap what the community on the historical fort looked like, telling the mundane and human side of civilian life at the fort.

Laura Seifert (left) and Samantha Matera (right) discuss a map of the workers' village on Fort Pulaski.

Bringing to the surface new information from old items

Seifert and Matera passed around bone ‒ pigs and cows, typical of the diet at the time, as well as turtle, deer, squirrel and some kind of heron ‒ that would have been food. They also showed audience members parts of tobacco pipes, buttons, beads and pieces of ceramic plates and dishes, all of which tell the archaeologists a considerable amount about the people who used the items.

Matera said the team of archaeologists isn't always sure what they've found before rinsing the items off, and sometimes there's a decent pile of rocks on the side of the artifacts. But once they're nice and clean, the archaeologists can use their background knowledge, reference books, research from fellow professionals and newspaper archives to date artifacts and contextualize what they were doing on Fort Pulaski.

"The cool thing about some of the (pipes) we're finding at Fort Pulaski is that we're finding pieces that are decorated, we're finding pieces with company names on them ... they are helping us date really tightly," Seifert said.

From pipes, and documents from the era, Seifert explained that in the dark nights workers were isolated on the island since there was no bridge at the time. Smoking tobacco was not only a pastime, but a way to keep mosquitos at bay.

Beads and buttons on the island indicate the presence of women during the time. Seifert said they considered alternatives, looking into whether the beads could be from rosaries or men's clothing, but ultimately they were probably for jewelry and clothes. Moreover, there is some, albeit sparse, documentation of women such as newspaper clippings of a 10-year-old girl who passed away.

"It's expanding the stories," Seifert said. "It's not just men that were out there, but some of them ... had, probably, wives and children, and some of the some of the women may have been working there as well."

After the war, Seifert said there were large groups working on repairing and upgrading the fort, and during that time period there is much firmer documentation of many women on the island.

A piece of a dish archaeologists found at Fort Pulaski. This piece is larger than most that are found, and using the size, shape, design and any markings on it researchers can date the item and contextualize who used it at the site.

Storms, floods and dredging shaping the island

The location has been the site of several historical hurricanes in 1804, 1854 and 1881, Seifert said. The storms and floods they brought incurred building damage, and in 1881 a hurricane even took out the laborers' quarters. Using survivors' accounts, as well as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' analyses that take into account writings from survivors and historical tide data, archaeologists are considering how the items they find have been impacted by water.

Some of the island only has artifacts from relatively recently, Seifert said, because portions of the land were actually made using spoils from harbor dredging after the late 1800s. When the harbor was deepened in that time period, the leftover, dug-up materials were brought to expand the land mass near Fort Pulaski. That means humans not only left evidence of their historical presence through artifacts but also in the shape of the land itself.

Nowadays, storms and flooding are impacting the island, its historical property and archaeological work more than ever. Sea-level rise is making flooding more frequent throughout the Georgia coast, and when hurricanes do arrive they tend to dump more water on the coast than they did before.

According to Seifert, this year's rainy weather is manifesting in the high groundwater level. Sometimes, she and Matera said, they hit groundwater while digging and have to wait for the spot to dry out before they continue. In the future, she said flooding will continue to be a consideration while they continue archaeological work to tell more stories about the fort.