A study of maritime and nautical sites associated with St. Catherines Island, Georgia

Recent historical archaeological studies on St. Catherines Island, Georgia, by David Hurst Thomas of the American Museum of Natural History have involved the discovery and systematic study of the 400-year-old Mission Santa Catalina de Guale. This mission is the oldest known settlement in Georgia and was located by using the state-of-technology-transfer remote-sensing instrumentation. These non-destructive surveying techniques enabled Thomas to locate the mission, identify specific structures, define the mission boundaries, and develop sets of correlative remote-sensing signatures to specific mission archaeological features for middle-range theory building.

This research herein is an extension of the recent historical archaeological studies of St. Catherines Island, and it focuses on the search for maritime and nautical sites associated with the Island. The major goal of this research was to add the maritime dimension to the St. Catherines Island historical research with specific emphasis on the Spanish Colonial Period. This was accomplished by developing and testing models for maritime and nautical sites for the Spanish, British, early American, and modern occupation periods of the Island.

Maritime model building for St. Catherines Island through the use of archival research developed sets of perceived archaeological indices for anticipated maritime sites and assigned correlative magnetic signatures to these expected sites. The testing of the maritime model through remote-sensing fieldwork has developed sets of remote-sensing signatures that can be used as baseline reference information. These signatures have produced a framework for middle-range theory building for maritime and nautical sites associated with St. Catherines Island.