Collection of papers on Stanley South pays tribute to archaeologist's career

By Marshall Swanson

Stanley A. South’s five decades of award-winning work in historical archaeology and other areas has influenced an untold number of his colleagues far from his home state of South Carolina.

The research professor and archaeologist with the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC is perhaps best known for his work at the 16th century Spanish settlement of Santa Elena in Beaufort County.

South conducted the work with Chester DePratter, another research professor at the institute, and as a result of their efforts, the site was designated as a National Historic Landmark last year.

Now a group of South’s former colleagues who collaborated with him on that and other projects throughout his career have published a book of papers in tribute to the man they say helped them interpret “patterned clues from the past to the present through archaeological research.”

In Praise of the Poet Archaeologist: Papers in Honor of Stanley South and His Five Decades of Historical Archaeology, was published by The Council of South Carolina Professional Archaeologists. The volume was edited by Linda Carnes-McNaughton and Carl Steen based on papers presented at a 2002 symposium of the Society for Historical Archaeology in Mobile, Ala.

One of the papers by John L. Idol Jr., a retired English professor at Clemson University, discusses South’s poetry that reveals “the man behind the scientific façade” and quotes from a number of his poems. “After a lifetime of publishing a number of books and many articles on archeology, it was refreshing to see my poetry published in a volume of archaeological papers,” South said.

Other chapters cover such things as amusing remembrances of visits by South’s Santa Elena crews to a Beaufort watering hole known as The Yankee, the archaeology of World War I U.S. Marine Corps training on Parris Island, and South’s musings on energy theory as underwriting evolutionary theory, which he said, “All archaeologists deal with, whether or not they admit or recognize it.”

The volume, which will be followed by South’s autobiography later this spring, is available from the Council of South Carolina Professional Archaeologists for $20 by contacting Carl Steen, P.O. Box 50394, Columbia, SC 29250.

3/05