Playing in the water and digging in the dirt ...

Evidently it's true: All you need to know in life, you learn when you're young. It is as a child that I learned that two of the best things in life are digging in the dirt and playing in the water. Whether it's making mud pies and serving them up on grandma's heirloom china or digging in the sand at the beach to cover your feet, digging in the good earth and diving in the great waters yield treasures.

There are buttons and sticks and rocks and dead earthworms just ready for the finding. There are shells and long ago lost trinkets and other people's stuff just waiting to be plucked. Pieces and chunks of porcelain and glass, and occasionally, if you're really lucky, an intact coin or pipe or button.

Yep. This spring has definitely been a good one for playing in the water and digging in the dirt …

For instance, I read in the Jacksonville Times-Union this past Saturday that archaeologists are searching the remains of a sunken ship off the coast of Key Largo to learn the identity of the ship's origin. That's not unlike our crews from the University of South Carolina and Eastern Carolina University who have been scouring their well-laid underwater grids off a bluff in Marion County for remnants of the CSS Pee Dee. See other stories on the subject
by visiting this one ...


In the same issue of the Times-Union was a story about Florida college students facing bugs and dirt and heat to uncover traces of a long-lost native village, believed to be at least 400 years old. To read the Times-Union articles, click here.


That search for a lost time and place near present-day Jacksonville is not unlike the one going on at the end of Charleston's Tradd Street.

There, the Mayor's Walled City Task Force and the Charleston Museum are unearthing old Charleston. Here, two of my nieces, Emily, right, and Kristina, left, had the opportunity to shove "Bob" the sifter around a bit.
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Here, Emily looks over a find, possibly an intact brass button.



What remains on the wire after the dirt is filtered away are treasures, waiting to be plucked, bagged and tagged, for later cleaning and interpreting. Maybe one day something we found there will be displayed in the Charleston Museum.

I thank the folks at the dig site for letting me and Emily join the College of Charleston students, of which Kristina is one, in their summer field study. I thank them for letting me spend a few hours sifting through the findings with them. Their work there is of interest to any student of history or of life. Read more about that project here, where a student archeologist is blogging: http://walledcitytaskforce.org; and read more about the Charleston Museum atwww.charlestonmuseum.org.

Here, students, professors and museum officials look over one section of work.


Rediscovering what was tossed or lost is what archeology is all about. Yep, digging in the dirt and playing in the water really can be great fun.

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