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 While all this was going on, there was a wide range of other Scull Shoals activities. In a 1995 seminar class on Scull Shoals, Dr. Charles Hudson's UGA Anthropology students each wrote on aspects of the community. In a Historic Preservation class, UGA graduate student Jay Womack prepared a 13-page précis of Mrs. Hunt's long, rambling historic document For four or five years, Dr. Ervan Garrison of the Geology Department of the University of Georgia has taught a shallow geophysics class at the site. He and his students are mapping the subsurface using ground penetrating radar which locates below surface soil anomalies that don't show above ground . We have been able to focus our excavations on places they predict will have features underground. The revised 1875 plat of the town has also assisted in this study.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mark Reinberger's University of Georgia Environmental Design students came several time for work days, cutting back the dense stands of privet, an Asian import, which like kudzu, has no native predators. The privet, now 25-30 feet high, has taken over the lowlands around the mill town and completely hidden the two Indian mounds and village area. As a result, one can now see from the downtown village area to the Oconee River, source of water power and transportation for the mill operations. Another UGA graduate student is working on ways to eradicate the privet as his dissertation project. Jimmy Alexander, a long-time archaeology volunteer and professional land surveyor brought his crew to town twice to make a detailed topographic map with the cultural features. E. H. Armor and Mrs. Pat Smith, life-long residents and Greene County historians, have been interviewed several times by volunteers for their recollections of the village, and for sources of additional material. Several teachers have classes at Scull Shoals. Dr. Kathryn Gray-White of Truett-McConnell College in Watkinsville, brings her American History classes for history on the hoof, since the Oconee River village was on the western boundary of the United States, before that treaty in 1802. Dr. Mark Williams brought his University of Georgia Archaeology Field School students to observe the PIT excavations, and assist towards the end of the season.
Classes from Georgia College at Milledgeville come each summer to observe the excavation projects. Boy Scouts, environmental groups, private school classes, and home schooled students come to enjoy the natural surroundings and learn as we work on-site. Area civic and interest groups come for tours, as have at least two family reunions of village descendants, black and white. Officials from the local government, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, and the Society for Georgia Archaeology have come to see the village and watch the archaeology in progress. We have hosted at least two major family reunions of descendants of the mill village. During the spring 2000 weekend digs, Friends of Scull Shoals invited the surrounding counties for tours as we worked, and they came! An interest is growing among the residents of the golfing communities around Lake Oconee, on the south end of the county. As the public tours are offered, more and more descendants of the villagers appear and are fascinated to learn with us. They often contribute information from their ancestors about the village.  |
