There’s an ‘amazing’ archaeological discovery at Hilton Head’s Mitchelville. What is it?
An archaeological team has made a significant discovery at one of the most prominent cultural sites in southern Beaufort County.
The “amazing” find could change what historians know about Hilton Head Island’s Mitchelville, the first self-governed town of formerly enslaved people in the United States, said Ahmad Ward, executive director of the Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, a nonprofit.
The team, including lead archaeologist Katherine Seeber, recently uncovered a hearth that was buried in the ground where the nonprofit was initially planning to build a stormwater retention pond, Ward said.
The hearth, which is made of bricks, is the only intact Mitchelville structure that the nonprofit knows of, Ward said.
The discovery “has to stay,” Ward said, and will become a standing feature for park visitors.
“I don’t think we can underestimate the value of ... finding those bricks,” Ward 3 Town Council representative David Ames said last month. “The fact that something actually remains that people can look at and connect to is incredible for Mitchelville.”
Mitchelville was founded in 1862 as a freedmen village on the north end of Hilton Head. The area was devastated in 1893 after a major hurricane made landfall near Savannah.
Ward had previously thought that all of Mitchelville’s old structures were wiped out during the storm. That’s why the hearth, he said, is a “big deal.”
The nonprofit is working to create a new park where Mitchelville once stood and is planning a $22.8 million fundraising campaign to help fund the project.
An ‘amazing’ find
Last November, Seeber and her team found a line of bricks set into the Earth in a wooded area of the property.
Seeber, Ward said, has been Mitchelville’s principal investigator for archaeology since 2018.
When she sat down to remove the bricks this past August, Seeber realized they were a part of a full-fledged hearth that was buried a “good three to four feet” under the ground, Ward said.
It was “amazing,” he said.
The nonprofit, Ward said, figured that it should preserve the hearth where it was discovered. The bricks date back to the Mitchelville era, Ward said, and may be up to 160 years old.
(Archaeologist Michael Trinkley had originally found the bricks in the 1980s, Ward said, and Seeber previously thought that Trinkley had excavated the hearth and brought it somewhere else. That was not the case.)
Why is this important?
Seeber and her team, Ward said, believe that the hearth was connected to a Mitchelville home.
That’s significant, Ward said, because historians — for now — think that hearths in Mitchelville were not connected to homes.
The recent discovery “could change how we interpret a lot of what we know about the site,” Ward said.
The hearth, he added, may have been used to “cook” tabby. Tabby is a type of concrete made of lime, sand and water, according to the National Park Service.
When making tabby, people create lime by burning oyster shells.
What’s next?
The hearth, Ward said, will become a key fixture of the new park whenever it opens.
“This is not going to come out of the ground,” Ward said.
This story was originally published November 3, 2021 at 3:16 PM.
