The Exploring Joara Foundation has announced Spring Dig Dates at the Berry Archaeological Site in Morganton, North Carolina. For just $35 per day, you can dig at a unique 16th Century Archaeology Site. For details and exact dates, you can visit
exploringjoara.org.
If you don't want to get your hands dirty, you can come for a free public tour from 10 to 12 p.m. on field work Thursdays. Here is the
calendar with dig dates listed.
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| Archaeological.com photo |
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Original story published in 2013 from University of Michigan's Michigan News:
The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior
of what is now the United States were discovered by a team of
archaeologists, providing new insight into the start of the U.S.
colonial era and the all-too-human reasons spoiling Spanish dreams of
gold and glory.
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| Archaeologists studying a ceremonial mound in a Native American town
called Joara discovered an inland fort built by a Spanish expedition in
the New World near present-day Morganton, North Carolina (Photo:
University of Michigan archaeology) |
Spanish Captain Juan Pardo and his men built Fort San Juan in the
foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in 1567, nearly 20 years before
Sir Walter Raleigh's "lost colony" at Roanoke and 40 years before the
Jamestown settlement established England's presence in the region.
"Fort San Juan and six others that together stretched from coastal
South Carolina into eastern Tennessee were occupied for less than 18
months before the Native Americans destroyed them, killing all but one
of the Spanish soldiers who manned the garrisons," said University of
Michigan archaeologist Robin Beck.
Beck, an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Anthropology
and assistant curator at the U-M Museum of Anthropology, is working with
archaeologists Christopher Rodning of Tulane University and David Moore
of Warren Wilson College to excavate the site near the city of
Morganton in western North Carolina, nearly 300 miles from the Atlantic
Coast.
The Berry site, named in honor of the stewardship of landowners James
and the late Pat Berry, is located along a tributary of the Catawba
River and was the location of the Native American town of Joara, part of
the mound-building Mississippian culture that flourished in the
southeastern U.S. between 800 and about 1500 CE.
In 2004, with support from the National Geographic Society and the
National Science Foundation, Beck and his colleagues began excavating
several of the houses occupied by Spanish soldiers at Joara, where Pardo
built Fort San Juan. Pardo named this small colony of Spanish houses
Cuenca, after his own hometown in Spain. Yet the remains of the fort
itself eluded discovery until last month.
"We have known for more than a decade where the Spanish soldiers were
living," Rodning said. "This summer we were trying to learn more about
the Mississippian mound at Berry, one that was built by the people of
Joara, and instead we discovered part of the fort. For all of us, it was
an incredible moment."
Using a combination of large-scale excavations and geophysical
techniques like magnetometry, which provides x-ray-like images of what
lies below the surface, the archaeologists have now been able to
identify sections of the fort's defensive moat or ditch, a likely corner
bastion and a graveled surface that formed an entryway to the garrison.
Excavations in the moat conducted in late June reveal it to have been
a large V-shaped feature measuring 5.5 feet deep and 15 feet across.
Spanish artifacts recovered this summer include iron nails and tacks,
Spanish majolica pottery, and an iron clothing hook of the sort used for
fastening doublets and attaching sword scabbards to belts.
Fort San Juan was the first and largest of the garrisons that Pardo
founded as part of an ambitious effort to colonize the American South.
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who had established the Spanish colonies of
St. Augustine and Santa Elena in 1565 and 1566, respectively,
spearheaded this effort. Of the six garrisons that Pardo built, Fort San
Juan is the only one to have been discovered by archaeologists.
During the brief time the Spaniards were at Joara, Beck says, they
were actively prospecting for gold but never found it. Yet the gold was
there: in the early 1800s, American settlers found so much just lying on
the surface near rivers that a 17-pound gold nugget was used as a
doorstop and a U.S. mint was established in Charlotte, triggering the
first gold rush in U.S. history.
Had the people of Joara given Pardo's soldiers more time to discover
this gold, Spain would probably have launched a full-scale colonial
invasion of the area, England would have had difficulty establishing its
foothold at Jamestown, and the entire southeastern part of what is now
the U.S. might instead have become part of Latin America.
Why did the Mississipians wipe the Spaniards out so quickly? Beck and
colleagues argue that originally, the Spanish bartered with the natives
for food.
"The soldiers believed that when their gifts were accepted, it meant
that the native people were their subjects," Beck said. "But to the
natives, it was simply an exchange. When the soldiers ran out of gifts,
they expected the natives to keep on feeding them. By that time, they
had also committed what Spanish documents refer to as "indiscretions"
with native women, which may have been another reason that native men
decided they had to go. So food and sex were probably two of the main
reasons for destroying Spanish settlements and forts."
Moore said the significance of Fort San Juan extends far beyond the Carolina Piedmont.
"The events at Fort San Juan represent a microcosm of the colonial
experience across the continent," he said. "Spain's failure created an
opening that England exploited at Jamestown in 1607, when America's
familiar frontier narrative begins. For Native Americans, though, this
was the beginning of a long-term and often tragic reshaping of their
precolonial world."
From the University of Michigan's Michigan News
