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EXPLORING JOARA
Excavating the past , shaping the future in western North Carolina
BY KIM WEAVER
w . UNC alumnus Robin
Beck was a young boy, he loved roaming
the Morganton-area farm owned by his
uncle and aunt, James and Pat Berry, in
the North Carolina foothills. The land has
been in the Berry family since before the
Revolutionary War.
As Beck (B. A. political science
’91) walked around kicking up dirt,
he was amazed at the arrowheads and
pieces of pottery he found. The budding
archaeologist would then match those pieces
of pottery with pictures in books at the
neighboring McDowell County Library.
At the time, Beck said, he had no idea
of the significance of what was underneath
his feet.
Years later, Beck went on to pursue
a l’h.D. at Northwestern and became an
assistant professor of anthropology at the
University of Michigan. He would join two
UNC archaeology alumni to document the
earliest European settlement in the interior
of the United States on the Berry land.
Fort San Juan was established at the site
of the American Indian town ofjoara in
1567, two decades before The Lost Colony at
Roanoke Island, 40 years before Jamestown.
Explorer Juan Pardo named the
Spanish settlement Cuenca after his
hometown in Spain. It lasted less than 18
months before the relationship between
die Indians and the Spanish soldiers took a
disastrous turn. The fort was burned to the
ground, as were other forts built by Pardo.
One Spanish soldier escaped and brought
news to the Spanish colonial capital at Santa
Elena, S.C. (today’s Parris Island), that the
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experiment was over.
The North Carolina Office of
Archives and History, in explaining the
historical marker erected in Morganton,
wrote: “The Berry site witnessed one of the
longest periods of sustained contact between
Europeans and the peoples of North
America’s interior until the 17th century.”
Beck and his Tar Heel colleagues
David Moore (Ph.D. ’99), a professor of
archaeology' and anthropology' at Warren
WiLson College in Swannanoa, N.C.,
and Christopher Rodning (Ph.D. ’04),
an associate professor of anthropology at
Tulane University, formed the Exploring
Joara Foundation to support their long¬
term work at die Berry site. (Moore came
to UNC from the University of California
at Berkeley to pursue graduate studies, and
Rodning came from Harvard.)
The slogan of the Exploring Joara
Foundation is “Unearthing the forgotten
past.” It is a unique partnership, one
committed to a strong outreach component.
Summer camps, field schools, teacher
workshops and an annual archaeology
festival allow the scientists to share their
finds with the public and to have students
participate regularly in their work.
Moore, who has been excavating at
the site since 1986, said the story of Fort San
Juan andjoara has great significance beyond
a pretty 12-acre field in Burke County,
which today is surrounded by a tree farm.
“The story here is exciting. It’s
compelling. It’s fascinating,” said Moore,
who served for 18 years with the N.C.
Office of State Archaeology. “It’s important
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for people to understand real Native
American history' — the heroics, the
tragedies, the disappointments. . . . This is
a site at which you have an episode of the
classic Colonial encounter that happened
thousands of times as Western Europeans
began to colonize the rest of the world.”
The three scholars are now dipping
their toes into heritage tourism. Exploring
Joara is building an Archaeological
Interpretive Center at Catawba Meadows,
a 200-acre city park along the banks of the
Catawba River in Morganton.
The center is being developed on the
tbotprint of a significant ancestral Catawba
Indian town that also is currently under
archaeological study. It will include a
palisade, a garden, an exhibit hall and two
replica Indian dwellings. Archaeologists
can then share what they’ve found at both
the Catawba Meadows and Berry sites at a
location that is more accessible to the public.
Catawba Meadows will be the focal point
for a Western North Carolina “archaeology
trail,” which would link together other
important historical sites.
“This is a really important economic
development project for our region,”
said Sam Avery (education ’77), a former
history teacher, a native ofBurke County
and chairman of the Exploring Joara
Foundation. “We’re excited about what
this will do for tourism. . . . This will bring
history to life.”
• THE OLIVE JAR CONNECTION
A series of coincidences, connections
and what Beck jokingly calls “a lot of
18 ■ COLLEGH.UNC.HnU ■ FALL2013 ■ CAROLINA 'ARTS & SCIENCES
