Our first offering of the AMDA class was at the Charles Towne Landing State Historic Site (CTL), South Carolina. Our local host was the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism. Twenty-four students completed the 16-credit course. Both the classroom and field sessions took place at CTL.
In addition to demonstrating the robustness of metal detecting for delineating and sampling the many historic loci of CTL, the field work also yielded items for museum display (once their analysis is complete). A significant example was the recovery of an 1814 slave tag. There are less than 100 such tags in any museums, and the CTL museum had none before our discovery. The CTL archaeological staff GPS mapped all MDFs, and the analysis is ongoing.
The instructors at the first class were Chris Espenshade, Terry Powis, Patrick Severts, Garrett Silliman, and Sheldon Skaggs.