New book by Stan South looks back at 53-year career

By Marshall Swanson

During his career, Stanley South has shot off the head of a menacing rattlesnake with a pistol, been chased by an alligator, exploded Civil War ordinance on the beach in North Carolina, and used scuba gear to help recover artifacts from Civil War blockade runners submerged in shark-infested waters.

Then there was the time he discussed the likelihood of archaeological ruins on the moon with Ronald Reagan and made home-made wine out of parsley, not to mention various other fruits and vegetables.

And that’s just the half of it.

Actually, the bulk of his 53 years in archaeology reflect his pioneering work at some 30 digs in North and South Carolina that have contributed immeasurably to the states’ history and led to several of the projects being designated as National Historic Sites.

He also developed a method for dating pottery sherds that became an industry standard (the Mean Ceramic Date formula), and served as secretary-treasurer of the Society of Professional Archaeologists when it lobbied Congress to get the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act passed into law.

The law provides for up to 1 percent of the cost of any federally funded project to be spent on mitigating damage to cultural resources and is largely credited for the explosion in American archaeology since its passage.

It’s all documented by South, an archaeologist with the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at USC, in a new autobiography, An Archaeological Evolution (Springer), published this past April. The 418-page volume that also partially doubles as a history of archaeology in America charts South’s life from the day in 1928 he was born on Groundhog Day in Boone, N.C., a 77-year journey with no plans for retirement in sight.

“I’ve always thought it would be ideal if I could be out on a site somewhere working and drop dead,” said South with a laugh, adding that he’s always said he’d like to depart this world “with a shovel in his hand.”

Actually, most of his work nowadays entails working a transit to plot archaeological artifacts found at digs, directing crews who are doing the trowel work, and then creating maps of sites.

South has had two heart bypass operations, but has said he wants to keep on digging, researching, and writing. Right now, for example, he is continuing work on a couple of books that he’s had in progress for several years.

South is perhaps best known in the Palmetto State for his work with colleague Chester DePratter on Santa Elena, the 16th century Spanish settlement on what is now the golf course at the Parris Island Marine base near Beaufort.

But he’s also worked some 30 other archeological projects in the two Carolinas, including Charles Towne Landing, Fort Moultrie, and Ninety Six in South Carolina, and Brunswick Town, Old Salem, and the Moravian settlement of Bethabara near Winston-Salem in North Carolina. He began his career studying under Joffre Coe at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In May and June of this year, he returned to Ninety Six with DePratter, James Legg, and Mike Stoner to investigate a 1776 fort built around the town to defend it against Cherokee Indians. South first found the fort in 1971 but anticipated money to continue his research there didn’t materialize until recently.

South is a historical archaeologist (as opposed to an anthropological archaeologist) who works on problem-oriented research from the time Europeans discovered America. His work often seeks to answer specific questions, such as, “Why did the Spaniards settle at Santa Elena in the first place?”

He thinks of himself as a rarity—there aren’t many positions in America today for fulltime, state-funded university archaeologists who do problem-oriented research—but is confident his type of work will continue through the Research Division at the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.

“There are pressures from the Legislature and elsewhere to focus mainly on what has to be done (in cultural resource management) but I’m hoping problem-oriented research can be a major function of the institute in the years to come,” said South, who has generated more than $1 million in grants during his career.

“Historical archaeology gives us a wonderful opportunity to examine the particulars of history and then project them against the broader scope that historians have written and other records have left us to gain a better understanding of how cultures evolve,” South said.

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