Hilton Head Island 4000 Years Ago? We are rich in history here!

Posted by Joan E. Diamond at 7:22 PM Read our previous post

I've lived on Hilton Head for years and still wonder sometimes as I drive from property to property what it was like before humans inhabited Hilton Head.  I guessed at most a thousand years ago that this island was vacant of human life but after some research I realized that estimation wasn't even close.

About 30 years ago, a piece of prehistoric history was unearthed on Hilton Head Island.  A worker digging a water main stumbled upon a fragment of a clay bow.  The discoverer of this piece of pottery, Jerry Weckhorst, immediately knew it was very old and most likely Indian.

Weckhorst immediately handed the fragment of pottery and others subsequently found to the Museum of Hilton Head Island.  Mike Taylor, then executive director of the museum, recognized the piece as millennia-old, fiber-tempered pottery which was the FIRST kind made in North America.

Taylor then alerted Michael Trinkley, an archeologist from the nonprofit Chicora Foundation. Trinkley suspected he’d come upon one of the few nearly intact archaeological sites of prehistoric coastal island Indian life. The find dated from the period known as Stallings, between 3500 and 1000 B.C.

It is estimated there are still thousands more buried in Fish Haul Creek Park.  Fish Haul Creek Park is now owned by the town and recreational archaeologists are not allowed to scavenge.