The Maritime Research Division offers Artifact Identification Workshops open to the public. These one-day, 8-hour workshops are aimed at the sport diver community, but are appropriate for anyone interested in learning more about South Carolina artifacts.  The workshop focuses on how to identify and date artifacts using a diagnostic approach to field identification.  This is something that everyone can do.  With some simple descriptions, artifacts can be identified in a manner useful to both hobby collectors and archaeologists. Our workshop is designed to help collectors better understand and identify artifacts so that they can appreciate their collections even more from an archaeological and historical context, but also to report finds more accurately to archaeologists and researchers.

The workshop features a mixture of lectures and activities designed to help identify some of the types of artifacts found in South Carolina.  Division staff give lectures and lead hands-on sessions about bottles, historic ceramics, Native American pottery and projectile points, and other historic cultural material.  Workshop students have the opportunity to get real, practical experience in identifying and understanding a variety of cultural materials.

Workshops are open to a maximum of 15 students to ensure that each student has the opportunity to work one-on-one with instructors and get the most out of the day.  The workshops are highly interactive and students work in groups to identify the archaeological material during the hands-on sessions.

The MRD also offers our workshop to groups and organizations.  To schedule a workshop for your group, please call (843) 762-6105 or email us at mrd@sc.edu.