We are excited to announce that Katherine G. Parker, PhD Graduate Student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Emily A. Schwalbe, PhD Graduate Student at Northwestern University, have been awarded this year’s Grant-in-Aid!

The Grant-in-Aid program helps provide funding to Graduate Students working on projects related to South Carolina archaeology! Learn more about the program here.

Read on to learn about Katherine and Emily’s work!

Katherine G. Parker
Mapping Moonshine in the South Carolina Lowcountry
Graduate Student, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

The broad goal of my dissertation is to understand the role of moonshine in structuring the landscape and identities of those involved in its production in the South Carolina Lowcountry. In terms of the archaeology, moonshine has received limited attention compared to other landscapes involved in the materialization of Southern identity and power inequalities. Moonshine distillation sites, or still sites, are a ubiquitous feature in rural southern spaces, including the portion of Francis Marion National Forest (FMNF) where this project is focused. What is unique about still sites in the FMNF, as compared to other areas in the region, is (relative) preservation of this landscape from its use at the height of clandestine distilling during the state dispensary system (1893-1907) and Prohibition (1919-1933) eras as a federal conservation area managed by the U. S. Forest Service. The expected data for this project are twofold: one dataset will include the recorded locations of all still sites identified from this survey effort, which will be used in spatial analyses, while a second dataset will include the documented findings and recovered material culture from each individual still site, which will be used for broader still site interpretations and assessments.

Emily A. Schwalbe
Navigating Power: An Archaeological Examination of South Carolina Waterways
Graduate Student, Northwestern University

My dissertation project is designed to investigate how people use and experience water differently through the lens of race and status, focusing on the 17th-19th century South Carolina Lowcountry. I propose an archaeological examination of Lowcountry rice plantations to address the following question: how did everyday interactions with waterways simultaneously reinforce and challenge the power structures embedded in the plantation system? My dissertation project builds upon South Carolina’s established history of plantation archaeology by extending analyses of everyday life into the water. I will use multiple lines of evidence, including remote sensing data, underwater and terrestrial artifact collections, archival data, and GIS analyses, to better understand where and how people were interacting with waterways in the past. This analysis will contribute to archaeological understanding of how water and inequality were experienced in everyday life in the South Carolina colonial plantation system.

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