Archaeological Investigations 2005-2012: Georgia State Railroad MuseumSavannah Visitors Center &Savannah History Museum

Between July 2005 and January 2010 Coastal Heritage Society (CHS) archaeologists undertook 34 archaeologi­cal projects in the Savannah area, with one additional project conducted in 2012. These efforts were only part of their Curatorial Department duties, which also involved the creation and development of museum exhibits at the Savannah History Museum; signage, exhibit, and master plan development at three established venues and two new venues; myriad archaeological public outreach efforts, and assistance with management of the society’s collections.

Of the 35 archaeological projects, 31 were located at venues operated by CHS, including the Savannah History Museum, the Georgia State Railroad Museum (including the Savannah Children’s Museum), Battlefield Park (now Tricentennial Park), and Old Fort Jackson. Two projects, the “Savannah Under Fire” Revolutionary War Battlefield investigations, were archaeological surveys located throughout downtown Savannah that were funded by two National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program grants. Two other projects, the Railroad Ward and a relocated house in the railroad neighborhood, were located on property owned by CHS.

All CHS-operated venues at the time of fieldwork were National Historic Landmarks and or National Historic Landmark Districts. Rita Folse Elliott, CHS Curator of Exhibits and Archaeology, served as the Principal Investigator and Field Director on the projects during July 2005-January 2012. Frank King, CHS Archaeologist, assisted with projects prior to the fall of 2005. Laura Seifert, CHS Archaeologist and Museum Technician, pro­vided field, lab, and graphics assistance during January 2007-December 2010.

The impetus for 33 of the 35 archaeological projects was construction, renovation, restoration, and/or rehabilitation projects. Archaeologists sought to fulfill two primary goals of every project; to answer specific site demands for archi­tectural and construction details, and to discover broad and specific patterns of human behavior as revealed through the archaeological record. The latter truly defines archaeol­ogy and its nature as a sub-discipline of Anthropology and reflects attempts to refocus from the artifactual and archi­tecturally-heavy emphasis of the pre-2005 archaeological investigations throughout the site.

This report details 17 Coastal Heritage “archaeology small projects”. These include Projects 2-5, 7-9, 11-14, 16-19, 38, and 42 as detailed in the table of contents. The remain­ing small projects reports for Projects 22-32 were written circa 2010 by Laura Seifert in two separate documents and produced later (Seifert 2012a, 2012b). One “archaeology small project” (not included in the 35 project total) was in transition in July 2005. This soil remediation project report was written by King in 2005 and revised later by Seifert in 2007 (King 2007).

The larger-scale CHS archaeological projects conducted during 2005-2012 were written by Elliott as separate re­ports. These include two Revolutionary War battlefield projects and an associated elementary school curriculum funded by the National Park Service (Elliott and Elliott 2009, 2011; Elliott 2011); the Battlefield Park Spring Hill project (Elliott 2011b); three excavations at Old Fort Jackson (Elliott 2012a); and data recovery excavations on multiple city lots in the Railroad Ward (Elliott 2012b). Figure 1.1 shows the general locations of the archaeo­logical projects conducted around the Savannah History Museum, Battlefield Park, and the Georgia State Railroad Museum. (See Appendix A for specific grid coordinates of datum points located throughout these areas.)

All artifacts recovered from the 35 projects undertaken during July 2005-January 2012 were prepared for curation according to current standards. They were washed and placed (by lot number/field accession number, by proj­ect) in acid-free bags with acid-free tags inside acid-free boxes. Hard-copy inventories of each project accompany each artifact assemblage. Project reports are housed in the Curatorial Department as digital and hard copies and also accompany the artifact assemblages. Project artifacts are listed (by lot number/accession number, not by in­dividual artifact) in the CHS collections object database (PastPerfect) for collections management purposes. Project artifacts are curated in the CHS collections, which are housed in a combination of areas including on-site in the Savannah History Museum (Curatorial Department) and the Georgia State Railroad Museum, and at an off-site stor­age location.

A Georgia Archaeological Site Form has been completed or updated for each of the following: Fort Jackson, the Georgia State Railroad Museum complex, the Railroad Ward, and for areas in Savannah that were part of the Revolutionary War project funded by the National Park Service. These site forms are filed in the database at the Georgia Archaeological Site File (GASF) housed by the University of Georgia in Athens. Hard copies of reports will be distributed to the following locations: GASF (Athens), Historic Preservation Division (Georgia Department of Natural Resources) (Atlanta), as well as these locations in Savannah, Georgia: Georgia Historical Society, Bull Street Library, and Coastal Heritage Society (Curatorial Department, Central Office, Preservation Department). Attempts will be made to make digital copies of all reports available via the Internet.

This report details the 17 “small archaeology projects” mentioned previously. For clarity among these vastly dif­ferent projects, each project was given its own chapter. The chapters stand alone, with their own acknowledgements, introduction, area-specific history, methods, results and interpretations, recommendations, and citations. A general history of the site is provided below.