The Topper Site, an extensive and important Clovis site (ca 12,500-12,900 bp) with a controversial preclovis occupation (ca 15,000-50,000 bp) in South Carolina, is the focus in the new Time Team America program airing July 15, 2009. The opportunity to see Topper should make many archaeologists and others interested in the original colonization of the Americas eager to see this program.

Time Team America excavation leader Chelsea Rose digs at the Topper Site. Photo by Meg Gaillard

Topper is one of the few stratified Clovis period sites anywhere, buried about two feet below the current surface, and of unknown size and shape. At this site, Clovis people quarried a fairly high quality stone material, and made stone tools to take away elsewhere, between about 12,500-12,900 calibrated years ago. That's exciting in and of itself—there are very few intact Clovis sites at all, let alone one so large and dense. The controversial part is that excavator Al Goodyear believes that there is a preclovis site beneath the Clovis, dated to between 15,000 and 50,000 years ago.

Preclovis sites are gaining some ground in archaeological circles these days—but not preclovis sites dated to 50,000 years ago. Accepting a date that old would take a great deal more than one site with some pretty iffy artifacts, because if true, it would overthrow much of what archaeologists have learned about the way the world was populated. Read more...

Today's Archaeology Quiz of the Week is on Otzi the Iceman, that poor old fellow discovered eroding out of a glacier in the Europeans Alps.

Reconstruction of the Iceman's Clothing, as displayed in the Museum Bélesta (Ariège), France.
Photo Credit: Gerbil

Trivia Quiz: Otzi the Iceman Trivia Quiz

Cheat Sheet: Otzi the Iceman, summary of research to date

Additional Resources

Moss and the Iceman

Death of an Iceman

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This week, the much-anticipated Time Team America begins its premiere season on PBS, five weeks over the summer during which public television viewers will get a first-hand look at high-tech archaeology in the United States.

The first program, airing the evening of Wednesday July 8th (8 pm EDT, check local listings), features ongoing investigations at Fort Raleigh, North Carolina, the site of the first English colony in the American continents. The site is perhaps more famously known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, and its legend about Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas, and the mysterious disappearance of the colony has inspired untold numbers of American children into learning about the past.

Time Team and Fort Raleigh

Time Team America's hour long video on Fort Raleigh documents three days of excavations, assisted by geophysical survey. The test area is located at an area of the island that had been identified as containing historic artifacts of the right age about 10 years ago. Two large trenches are excavated over the three days in this area, opened using a backhoe to strip off the wind-blown sand believed to have been deposited on the area after the American Revolution. Backhoe stripping is a perfectly legitimate technique, which I suspect will surprise some viewers; its good and bad points aren't described here, but someday I might get to that.

Time Team America digging team leader Chelsea Rose and digging team member Jeff Brown carefully sift through the soil as they excavate at Fort Raleigh National Park on Roanoke Island. In addition to searching for artifacts, they are looking for subtle differences in soil texture that would indicate decayed wooden structures built by Roanoke’s legendary lost colonists. Photo by Crystal Street

The video does a good job of presenting the story, cramming an enormous quantity of information into an hour. Discussions of the site and excavation progress are held between the members of Time Team America and First Colony Foundation members Nick Luccketti and Eric Klingelhofer. Historical information about the site comes from historian Karen Kupperman, Jim Holt of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and the iconic historical archaeologist Ivor Noel Hume, who excavated at Fort Raleigh in 1991. The current five-year-long project of excavations are being run by the First Colony Foundation, assisted by members from Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown, two important historic colonial sites.

I like that there is considerable amount of discussion given over to recreating the colony, both with drawings and discussion of the context for both the colonist and local Native American situation. Tiny fragments of artifacts discovered during the dig are also described and the whole vessels recreated, which is a nice feature.

I have one minor bone to pick: I'm a bit confused about what exact geophysical survey method is being used. There are several that it could be, but I personally don't know enough about the various techniques to recognize this particular method. Geophysicist Meg Watters does a great job of explaining how the methodology works at the ground beneath the surface, but a name for the method would have been nice. It may be simply too arcane an issue to fit into the short amount of time and dense information within the program. (As an aside, I would love an illustrated list of these methods, so if anybody knows if such a thing exists, or would be willing to work with me to get one together, please drop me a line).

On the Website

The PBS website for Time Team America's visit to Fort Raleigh has a slew of great resources: TTA member Julie Schlabitsky writes about what it's like to meet Ivor Noel Hume; Eric Deetz describes how to section a posthole; and of course you can see the video itself in its entirety. And they provide an update for the ongoing research at Fort Raleigh. What they haven't got is a bibliography, which I've assembled because that's just the kind of a girl I am.

Bottom Line

I thoroughly enjoyed the video, and am thrilled to see this fabulous opportunity to showcase archaeology with all its warts and glories; the website contains lots more information, and all in all, I'm glad to see that Time Team America is off to such an auspicious start.

More Information

• Time Team America: Fort Raleigh, the PBS Webpage where you can watch the video
• Bibliography for Fort Raleigh at About.com
• Description and History of the Colony at About.com
• The First Colony Foundation
• National Park Service: Fort Raleigh
• Jamestown Rediscovery
• Colonial Williamsburg

The About.com Archaeology Quiz of the Week is on Archaeological Dating Techniques, the methods used by archaeologists to discover how old things are. Are you ready to give it a try?

Clock in D'Orsay Museum, Paris, France.
Photo Credit: Tom Burke

Trivia Quiz: Archaeological Dating Techniques Trivia Quiz

Cheat Sheet: Timing is Everything: A short course in Archaeology Dating Methods

Context is Everything: A brief introduction to context in archaeology

Radiocarbon Dating, an introduction to the concept

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