Projects

Digging Savannah Projects

Below are the Digging Savannah technical reports from our excavations. You can download them in pdf form.

An Archaeological Investigation of the Waters and Delegal Cemeteries on Skidaway Island, Georgia, 2014,

appendix-b-artifact-catalog (For the Delegal Cemetery)
appendix-c-artifact-catalog (for the Waters Cemetery)

An Archaeological Investigation of the Benedictine Monastery and Freedmen’s School on Skidaway Island, Georgia, 2015 (Phase 1)

artifact-catalog-monastery-ph1

Benedictine Monastery and Freedmen School Site: Phase 2 Research Design, 2016

Phase II Interim Report Benedictine Monastery and Freedmen School, Skidaway Island, 9Ch78

Artifact Catalog for Monastery site, Interim Phase II report

Excavations in the Carriage House Basement of the Sorrel-Weed House, Spring 2017

Archaeological Excavations at the Sorrel-Weed House, Savannah, Ga, Final Report, January 2018

Project and Artifact Gallery

Screening material from a dig site at the Benedictine Monastery and Freedmen’s School on Skidaway Island.

Two people take measurements with a tape measure and compass in a wooded area.

Marking out a dig site at the Benedictine Monastery and Freedmen’s School on Skidaway Island.

Colorless glass stopper with maker’s mark in metal. (Photo credit: Laura Seifert)

This molded aqua glass bottle stopper would have had cork around the shank, allowing the bottle to seal. (Photo credit: Laura Seifert)

Students look at materials and artifacts. There are many five-gallon buckets in the foreground.

Armstrong students fieldtripped to the CSS Georgia conservation lab on Hutchinson Island. On the far right is Jim Jobling, the Texas A&M conservator. Foreground is some of the many buckets containing artifacts submerged in river water awaiting conservation. (Photo credit: Laura Seifert)

A barge with two large cranes anchored in the river.

Archaeologists worked from this barge to recover the CSS Georgia. Professor Seifert took this picture from Old Fort Jackson during the “Raise the Wreck” Festival. Digging Savannah was a festival participant.

A pair of corroded shackles in a plastic tub in yellow liquid.

Shackles found on the CSS Georgia. Conditions on the ironclad would have been miserable, especially at the height of summer. These might have been used to punish sailors who broke rules. Reproduction shackles can be seen in the upper left corner. This photo was also taken on the October 2015 student fieldtrip to the conservation lab. (Photo credit: Laura Seifert)

A field trip group explores ruins of a plantation house.

Ruins of the Roebling House from the plantation located on Skidaway Island before the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.

A man and woman work at an archaeological dig site inside an old building.

Excavating the second half of the “coal-hole”, likely a late 19th century trash pit.

historical marker: in this cemetery many victims of the great yellow fever epidemic of 1820 were buried. Nearly 700 Savannahians died that year, including two local physicians. Several other epidemics followed. In 1854 The Savannah Benevolent Association was organized to aid the families of fever victims.

A historical marker in a Savannah-area cemetery commemorating the Great Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1820.

Student Projects

Below is a sample of the student research projects produced by undergraduate research assistants. These projects were presented at a Georgia Southern Student Scholars Symposium (GS4).

Kaitlynn Perry’s (2022) presentation titled Sampling Colonoware Variation in an Urban Slavery Context, for the Student Research Symposium, Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus

Kaitlynn Perry’s (2021) research poster titled Colonoware and the Archaeology of Urban Slavery, for the Student Research Symposium, Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus

Raymond Phipps’ (2019) research poster titled A Glimpse into the Lives of Urban Enslaved Persons in Antebellum Savannah, for the Student Research Symposium, Georgia Southern University, Armstrong Campus

See More Student Project in the GS4 Archives