First Builders

Photo (c) William C. Judge

As lots are cleared and new homes rise on our island, it's easy to forget that that others were here long before us, leaving behind one of the oldest and largest archeological ruins in North America, just across the North Edisto River. The Fig Island shell ring seen above - an ancient site built up of hundreds of years' worth of clam, oyster and other shells along with fish bones, pottery and primitive tools - is one of thirty such sites along the southeast coast between South Carolina and northern Florida. It was first excavated in the late 1960's, although the entire complex wasn't fully identified until 2002. Nearby is the smaller Pockoy Island ring, still under excavation in Botany Bay.

Aerial view of Fig Island 1 (courtesy National Park Service)

Fig Island occupies a narrow peninsula jutting from Edisto Island into the river and, dated to about 4000 years ago, is the largest and one of the oldest of the southeast's rings. Besides a main, circular shell ring, two smaller, connected structures surround it, making it the most complex of known rings. The main ring, Fig Island 1, had steep midden walls rising as high as twenty feet surrounding a 470-foot-wide open central area; Fig Island 2 and 3 (which is actually C-shaped, rather than fully circular) featured ramps leading up from their central areas to a shell path connecting the two. Excavations of all three rings have never revealed evidence that they were permanently occupied.

Courtesy South Carolina Humanvitae

So what were these mysterious structures used for, and who built them? Although theories are many, pottery shards obtained from all three Fig Island rings indicate the site was regularly visited by Late Archaic-era inhabitants who traveled seasonally between forested uplands and coastal sites, at a time when sea levels were some three feet lower than today. The lack of evidence of permanent structures leads some archeologists to consider shell rings as monumental or ceremonial sites for social or spiritual purposes. Radiocarbon dating on Fig Island indicates that more than 750,000 cubic feet of material was deposited in a relatively short time span, indicating deliberate intent rather than the accumulated detritus of household middens.

Although the meaning of Fig Island remains elusive, its archeological importance has led to its designation as both a National Historic Landmark and a National Historic Site, with limited access overseen by the National Park Service, mostly for research teams. But you can enjoy an armchair visit to Fig Island here.

SING OUT

The structure pictured above may not look like much but it is, in fact, a National Historic Site and was once the heart of African-American social and religious life on Johns Island. Moving Star Hall, on River Road opposite Fields Farms, was built just after the First World War as a "praise house" for Black farming families, one of the few surviving such houses in the southeast. Before the Civil War, white plantation owners allowed their enslaved workers to build such houses at a time when few Blacks had the resources to build their own churches or were not allowed to travel to services elsewhere.

Moving Star Hall, c. 1920 (courtesy SC Picture Project)

Moving Star Hall, built by Blacks who managed to raise seven dollars to buy the materials, was a relative latecomer to the dozens of praise houses that once dotted Johns Island. It was built well after Emancipation and just as Johns Island was being connected to the mainland by the first Limehouse Bridge over the Stono River - a wood-and-creosote swing bridge that stood just to the west of today's soaring concrete affair.

Moving Star Hall was the headquarters of the Moving Star Association, a mutual benefit society that helped raise money for families who couldn't afford to treat their sick, who were struggling to feed themselves after a bad harvest, or who couldn't pay for funeral and burial services for their dead. Meetings of the Association were held three evenings a week. And on Sundays, rollicking, foot-stomping "ring shout" gospel singing filled the air. "That hall be full of people. Every Sunday," one surviving community member told historians in the 1960's. "It give me strength, spirit to carry on."

The Moving Star Singers, from left: Janie Hunter, Mary PInckney, Benjamin Bligen, Ruth Bligen and Loretta Stanley

The Hall became most famous for the Moving Star Hall Singers, who came to national attention during the folk music revival of the 1960's and who were first recorded by the musicologist Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. The group performed all over the United States during the 1970's and 1980's, including at the White House, and recorded several albums of traditional African-American gospel music. The names of some of the singers still appear in street names along River Road in honor of Janie Hunter, Ruth and Benjamin Bligen, James Mackey, and other singers.

(View a brief clip of the Moving Star Singers here.)

By the late 1960's, much of the Association's social outreach had been transferred to the Progressive Club a mile or so south on River Road, founded by Esau Jenkins, who was a frequent preacher at Moving Star Hall. But gospel study classes and worship services still take place at Moving Star, with all invited. "Whether you are white, whether you are dark like myself," John Smalls said back in the 1970's, "or a different color, come in. Anytime you come, you is in. So sing, shout, get happy." *

(* Quote from "Ain't You Got A Right To The Tree Of Life?", Simon & Schuster, 1966)

Jewels of the Marsh

While much attention is justly focused on the endangered, seafaring loggerhead turtle population that nests here every summer, a less threatened cousin that spends all its time on the island also faces threats from habitat loss and human activity. The Carolina diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin centrata), with distinctive circular markings on its carapace, inhabits the brackish waters of our salt marshes and tidal creeks, feeding on crabs, snails, fish, oysters and mussels. It's the only turtle species known to prefer brackish water.

Its attraction to crab pots is one threat, sometimes trapping and drowning the animal. Encounters with motorized boats are another potential cause of mortality. Habitat loss from warming and rising water levels, or from human development along estuaries and inlets, is an increasing challenge for diamondbacks, which are found all along the Atlantic coast from Cape Hatteras to Florida. Although not considered endangered, terrapins are an important indicator species for water quality, with populations all along the coast monitored regularly.

The term "terrapin" is applied to land-based turtles, as opposed to marine species like the loggerhead. Carolina terrapins are active nearly all year round, living in burrows dug in mudflats and hibernating there during colder months. Its shell ranges from gray to a light green or brown, and is marked by concentric growth rings that indicate age, which can be measured in decades. One male specimen found on Kiawah had originally been tagged in the 1980's and was found still active and healthy twenty-five years later.

Like their seagoing relations, diamondback females lay their eggs, starting in late spring, in nests dug in sandy banks above the high tide line, which may bring females looking for nesting sites disastrously in contact with vehicular traffic along roads built too close to the water. The nests are often raided by raccoons, foxes and seagulls.

But the good news is that Carolina terrapins have recovered from near-extinction in the early twentieth century, when their pale yellow meat was considered a delicacy. They were eagerly hunted to supply restaurants and fish markets, bringing high prices that climbed even higher as it became more difficult finding them by digging our their hibernation burrows. Today, although legally harvestable, they're thankfully no longer considered suitable for the dining table and no commercial hunting permits have been issued by South Carolina for many years, allowing populations to rebound.

All photographs courtesy John D. Willson, Virginia Tech Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Conservation.