South Carolina's Ancient Heritage

You don’t hear this often coming out of an archaeological dig in the American southeast:

It’s some of the oldest stuff in the country. We definitely have a major find.

As reported by The State, a newspaper in South Carolina,

The site, about a mile below the Lake Murray dams, apparently was a longtime meeting and trading spot for migrant tribes, many of whose names and culture are unknown, local archaeologists say.

It seems that a federally-mandated review of lake operations caused a local utility to initiate the survey in 2006. The deeper researchers dug, the more layers of prehistory they revealed, with some artifacts thought to be as much as 13,500 years old:

Over eight months, each shovelful of dirt revealed new finds “” arrowheads, spear points, eating tools, pottery shards, dwelling posts, a hearth “” with eventually more than 35,000 artifacts recovered.