Catawba Cultural Preservation Project

Mailing Address
POBox 750
Rock Hill, SC 29731

Located at:
1536 Tom Steven Rd.

Email:
info@ccppcrafts.com

Phone:
803.328.2427

Fax:
803.328.5791

Archaeology in the Middle Catawba Basin

A Rich and Varied Heritage

Many different kinds of people have lived in the Middle Catawba Basin in the last 12,000 years. We trace the footsteps of our Indian, African and European ancestors in the buried, unwritten pages of time in order to reconstruct the past.

The Catawba Cultural Preservation Project has an ongoing research program in archaeology which provides educational opportunities for schools, civic groups, avocational archaeologists and the general public through participation at the Cultural Center on the Catawba Reservation.

At the end of the last ice age, groups of nomads traveled the rivers and streams of York County, gathering plants and animals for food from the rich resources of the area. These first immigrants became less mobile over time, remaining longer in the valleys and on the hilltops. In the great flood plains; cornfields, house patterns, hearths and deep trash deposits give archaeological evidence of later, more permanent settlements. When immigrants from Europe and Africa arrived they established new and different societies. Stone grist mills were built on the river banks. Log farmhouses replaced the earlier wattle and daub houses, African foods entered the diet. Merchants sold and traded goods from Europe. Cotton was grown, ginned and taken to the coast. All of the people left bits of material from their life ways in the soils of York County which we may now discover through archaeology.

Archaeological sites in the nation are being vandalized and disturbed in record numbers. The archaeology program at CCPP offers the opportunity to record and investigate, and learn more about sites before they are destroyed. We urge landowners and developers, farmers and hikers to contact the CCPP Archeology Department to report archaeological sites that have been located, particularly those that are endangered.

Site reports are kept confidential and so not attract trespassers to your property. We conduct both historic and prehistoric research on an ongoing basis, under the sponsorship of the Catawba Cultural Preservation Project.