THE BERRY SITE

ARCHAEOLOGY AT WARREN WILSON COLLEGE

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Exploring Joara Foundation

ANNUAL ARCHAEOLOGY FIELD DAY
AT THE BERRY SITE

Morganton, NC. - Learn how native people and Spanish explorers lived and interacted in the 16th-century by visiting the Berry archaeological site on Saturday, June 25. Warren Wilson College, Western Piedmont Community College and the Exploring Joara Foundation invite the public to visit the site to see the results of the 2011 Warren Wilson College/Western Piedmont Community College Archaeology Field School. Tours and demonstrations will begin at 10:00 am, and run through 2:00 pm. The Berry site, located in northern Burke County, was the subject of the UNC-TV documentary “The First, Lost Colony” and has been featured in Smithsonian, National Geographic, American Archaeology and Our State magazines.

The site dates to the 15th and 16th centuries A.D. and has been identified as an ancestral Catawba Indian town. Archaeologists believe this site is the location of the native town of Joara, where the Spaniard Juan Pardo built Fort San Juan in 1567, twenty years before the “Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island. Pardo renamed the native settlement Quenca, after his hometown in Spain. Quenca and Fort San Juan represent the earliest European settlements in the interior of what is now the United States.

Archaeologists will be on hand to discuss the site and lead tours. Visitors will be able to view artifacts from the site along with other exhibits. Representatives from the Catawba Nation Cultural Resource Office will be present and Catawba crafts will be for sale. Visitors can also hear Native American stories told by Beckee Garris of the Catawba tribe and Freeman Owle of the Cherokee tribe. Catawba potters will demonstrate traditional methods.

Primitive skills experts Steve Watts, Schiele Museum of Natural History, Gastonia, North Carolina; Mark Butler; and Cheryl Baskins will demonstrate how native people crafted their weapons and tools. Fuzz Sanderson will demonstrate primitive fire skills. Courtney Long, Western Piedmont Community College, will demonstrate Spanish ceramic methods.

Children's activities will include pottery making, blowguns, the chunkey game, face painting and temporary tattoos.

This event is open to the public. There will be a $5.00 entrance fee per car, $12 for vans and $20 for buses. Refreshments will be available on site.

Western Piedmont Community College complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Please notify the Disability Access Office at 438-6050 by June 22nd if you require accommodations.

To visit the Archaeology Field Day, take I-40 to Morganton. Take exit 105; turn right and proceed through town following signs for NC 18/NC 181. From K Mart plaza, continue north on Hwy. 181 for 4.1 miles to Goodman Lake Road on right. Take Goodman Lake Road 1.6 miles to end; turn right on Henderson Mill Road; go 1.9 miles to the Berry site on right; follow parking signs. For more information go to www.joarafoundation.org or call 828-439-2463.

Tamara Beane to Discuss Cherokee
Pottery Traditions at Western Piedmont

MORGANTON, NC- Western
Piedmont Community College
(WPCC) is pleased to host
Tamara Beane, foremost
replicator of prehistoric Native
American pottery of the
southeastern United States, as
she discusses Cherokee Pottery
Traditions at 7 p.m., Thursday,
April 14 in the College’s Leviton
Auditorium. Beane will share her
pottery experiences and
introduce pieces exemplary of
various southeastern Native American forms. Her presentation is made possible through a Burke Arts Council Grassroots Grant award to the Exploring Joara Foundation. The public is invited to attend this free event.
Growing up in California, Beane was mainly exposed to southwestern Native American pottery, but after moving to Alabama, she discovered a profound appreciation for southeastern Native American pottery, its complex forms and varied patterns. Beane was introduced to hand-dug clay through hiking and canoeing experiences. “My husband is a Park Ranger and an archaeologist,” replied Beane, “Our shared passion for the outdoors and experimental archaeology led us to dig clay and make handmade cookware.”
In 1986, Beane’s pottery was shown at the Southeastern Archaeology Conference, connecting her to a wide audience of museum curators and archeologists. Beane considers herself more of a replicator than a traditional folk potter; however, her personal art pottery combines southeastern Native American forms with contemporary arts and crafts inspired surfaces.
Most importantly, she sees herself filling an important role as a liaison between Native Americans and archaeologists. “Many Native Americans know their ancestry and are working potters but do not have access to historical pieces. I am able to connect the pottery discovered by archaeologists with the Native American potters to show them what a whole pot would have looked like,” said Beane.
While working closely with Brett Riggs, University of North Carolina professor, and Barbara Duncan, Museum of the Cherokee Indian education director, Beane reintroduced native pottery styles to the Cherokee Nations in both Oklahoma and North Carolina. She also helped Ian Thompson, archaeologist with the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma, model the Choctaw pottery revival after the Cherokees. “My experiences on the Cherokee reservation were a shared learning experience,” continued Beane. The use of carved wooden paddles for decorative surfaces resulted in a resurgence of these tools during her workshops. “Many of these tools had been passed down through generations, and the workshops created a forum to share oral histories.”
Beane is a member of the Southern Highland Crafts Guild and the Craftsman Guild of Mississippi.
For more information about this event or future professional crafts workshops, visit www.exploringjoara.com, www.burkearts.org or contact, Courtney Long, WPCC professional crafts coordinator, at 828-448-3552.
Western Piedmont Community College enrolls approximately 4,000 students annually in pursuit of college transfer degrees, two year associate degrees and diplomas. More than 10,000 students enroll each year in continuing education courses for professional development and personal enrichment. The College also provides programs for high school completion. Western Piedmont received recognition for Exceptional Institutional Performance based on standards established by the North Carolina General Assembly. To learn more, visit www.wpcc.edu.

EXPLORING JOARA FOUNDATION RECEIVES BURKE ARTS COUNCIL GRANT

MORGANTON, NC- The Burke Arts Council recently awarded Grassroots Grant funding to the Exploring Joara Foundation (EJF), according to Courtney Long, Western Piedmont Community College Professional Crafts coordinator and NC State GlaxoSmithKline Fellow. Founded in 2008 through an association with Warren-Wilson College, the Exploring Joara Foundation is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization committed to the public archeology and the study of Native American and Spanish settlements in the upper Catawba and Yadkin river valleys between 1450 and 1700.
The foundation’s name comes from the Native American town of Joara that was visited by Spanish expeditions led by Hernando DeSoto (1540) and Juan Pardo (1566-1568). Pardo built Fort San Juan at the Native American town of Joara in the Catawba Valley in 1567. Locally known as “The Berry Site,” Joara was located just outside the modern city of Morganton, NC off Hwy 181N.
Both Native American and Spanish pottery are critical components of the archeological research at the Berry site and within the Western Piedmont region. Archeologists are able to identify the local pottery, called “Burke,” as ancestral to the pottery still being made by Catawba Indians today. The Grassroots grant will provide needed funding to continue educating the public about the parallel traditions of Native and Euro-American folk pottery in the state.
A public exhibit will be staged Friday, April 29 through Monday, May 23 at the Burke Arts Council’s Gallery. The exhibit will link the 500-year-old pottery from the Berry site along with modern Catawba Indian potters and Burke County students. The exhibit will focus on the pottery of Native Americans in the Catawba River Valley with a focus on the Catawba Indian pottery of upstate South Carolina, created by the descendents of the people of Joara.
“Catawba Indian potters have one of the longest continuous pottery-making traditions in North America,” said Long. “Few Catawba Indians are actively working and living in Burke County today. The need to connect the county’s early pottery heritage with the Catawba Indian nation will help re-establish the tribe’s bond to its ancestral land and sense of place.”
The Exploring Joara grant will also bring potters Caroleen Sanders and Tamara Beane to present pottery- making programs for students in several Burke County public schools, including Freedom High School and Patton High School. In addition, programs will be offered in Western Piedmont’s Professional Crafts Clay Program.
Sanders, a respected member of the Catawba Nation, carries on the traditional pottery craft learned from her mother and grandmother. Beane, the foremost replicator of prehistoric Native American pottery in the eastern United States, recently worked in collaboration with the Museum of the Cherokee Potters Guild to teach modern Cherokee potters how to make their traditional stamped pottery.
Western Piedmont Community College’s Professional Crafts Clay students will also learn Native American methods of processing local hand-dug clays to be used in the workshop series. “It is exciting that our students will learn ancient techniques and forms generally seen only in museums and books,” continued Long. “This unique experience will help introduce students to both contemporary and traditional pottery methods.”
To learn more, visit www.exploringjoara.com, www.burkearts.org, or contact Long at 828-448-3552. Western Piedmont Community College enrolls approximately 4,000 students annually in pursuit of college transfer degrees, two year associate degrees and diplomas. More than 10,000 students enroll each year in continuing education courses for professional development and personal enrichment. The College also provides programs for high school completion. Western Piedmont received recognition for Exceptional Institutional Performance based on standards established by the North Carolina General Assembly. To learn more, visit www.wpcc.edu.