Lecture Series

An interdisciplinary team of students and faculty from East Carolina University is investigating a set of diverse maritime cultural sites on the south eastern seaboard that represent either a preservation risk or a potential resource to be showcased for heritage tourism.  The project represents a partnership with private, state and federal stakeholders.

Dr. Rachel Briggs is a Teaching Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill and specializes American Indian foodways, gender, and the emergence of complex societies in the Southeastern United States. Dr. Briggs will speak about how archaeologists have traditionally used the apex of Mississippian societies to model the genesis of these socially complex organizations.

What's going on in North Carolina archaeology? Come hear State Archaeologist John Mintz discuss the past, present, and future of archaeology in North Carolina and the OSA's role in preserving our cultural heritage.

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Shane Petersen is an archaeologist with the Environmental Analysis Unit of the NCDOT. Shane will speak about his ongoing research on one of North Carolina’s most important prehistoric resources.

In our third Lunchtime Lecture, Mr. Hughes investigates Moravian culture through local pottery production at the eighteenth-century town of Salem in the piedmont of colonial North Carolina. Salem’s congregation-owned pottery (1771-1829) represents one of the most thoroughly documented pottery production sites in North Carolina and has been the subject of archaeological investigation since the 1950s.

In our second Lunchtime Lecture, Mr. Southerly and Mr. Casserley dive into inter-agency partnerships to discover, research, and protect the hallmarks of North Carolina’s maritime cultural heritage: shipwrecks. North Carolina waters have long been known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, with thousands of shipwrecks occurring over hundreds of years. These shipwrecks hold information about changing technologies and cultural and physical landscapes.

Rivers have served as the super highways of civilizations for centuries, and the Cape Fear is no different. In our first Lunchtime Lecture of the month, Mr. McKee will discuss how natural and artificial changes to the Cape Fear River affects the archaeology of one of North Carolina’s oldest ports, Brunswick Town. Established in the early 18th century, Brunswick Town was a blossoming colonial port town until it was demolished by British troops in 1776. The town was never rebuilt, but the site was used to construct Fort Anderson during the Civil War.

In our featured Archaeology Month evening lecture, Dr. Moore will examine the changing paleo-environments of the Southeastern Coastal Plain and the ways in which humans adapted to their shifting world many millennia ago. His recent publications include articles on identifying ancient animal blood residues from stone tools in South Carolina and Georgia, and the possible impact of a comet fragment at the end of the Paleoindian Clovis period. Dr.

Dr. Linda Carnes-McNaughton is the Program Archaeologist and Curator for the Cultural Resources Management Program at Fort Bragg and formerly the Archaeology Supervisor for NCDNCR Historic Sites Section. Dr. Carnes-McNaughton will speak about her recent archaeological research at the Overhills Estate, a lavish vacation home and hunt club for the Rockefeller family which was eventually sold to the Army and incorporated into Fort Bragg.

Shawn Patch is an archaeologist and geophysical specialist with New South Associates, Inc., a cultural resources consulting firm. Shawn will discuss archaeological insights on various historic cemeteries in North Carolina and beyond. This presentation includes examples using ground-penetrating radar to identify unmarked graves and better define cemetery boundaries, as well as data from various marker inventories.