Collectors Survey

The Collectors Survey is an on-going project to locate, analyze and record data held in public and privately owned collections of prehistoric American Indian artifacts. The survey is conducted primarily in South Carolina but local collections removed from the state may also be included.

Gathered artifact data is entered in a Macintosh LC 475 on an excel 4.0 worksheet. Data is entered by counties where collected and also by the river drainage system. Stone tools are entered according to type and lithic material. Lithic data can be manipulated to give statistics, ratios, distributions, etc. Pottery type distribution is plotted on a series of state maps using Aldus Superpaint 3.5.

Archaeological sites associated with these collections are also recorded when possible; to date over 800 have been recorded.