S.C. receives $320,000 archaeology grant

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South Carolina has received a $323,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to assist archaeologists in identifying and classifying design motifs on artifacts.

The two-year grant will be used for a collaborative project involving the S.C. Heritage Trust and the University of South Carolina called “SnowVision: A Machine-Learning Based Image Processing Tool for the Study of Cultural Heritage Collections.”

Archaeologists and University of South Carolina scientists, specialists and scholars have been working on the SnowVision software for four years, according to a news release from the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. The technology will assist researchers studying paddle-stamped motifs on pottery dating from A.D. 1-800.

“This is an incredibly impressive grant,” said Ken Rentiers, S.C. DNR deputy director for the Land, Water and Conservation Division. “This collaborative project has the potential to impact Native American research across a 2,000-year period.”

As many as 1,820 sites with this pottery have been recorded across South Carolina, Alabama, Florida and Georgia. The grant will provide SnowVision software to scholars and others working in laboratories, museums and classrooms throughout the Southeast that will help match and analyze the pottery pieces recorded in collections.

The S.C. Heritage Trust Program, established in 1974, is administered through the natural resources department.