Archaeologists found the latest artifacts of the 1779 Battle of Brier Creek – such as a broken bayonet and two iron grapeshot from an artillery-sized shotgun blast – as well as indications of soldiers’ graves, during work to establish an interpretive trail through the site near the Savannah River in Screven County.

Brier Creek Revolutionary War Battlefield Association members heard about 2024’s spring to summer finds from field archeologist Daniel T. Elliott during the association’s Sept. 6 semiannual banquet. Members and guests filled the ballroom at Forest Heights Country Club in Statesboro. From there, the battlefield is about 40 miles to the northeast, in the Tuckahoe Wildlife Management area on the Georgia side of the river and along its Brier Creek tributary.

Association members meet at the battlefield site each March for a memorial service around the anniversary of the battle. But this offsite fall banquet gave them an opportunity to socialize and to listen to Elliott, who through his nonprofit Lamar Institute was contracted to do preparatory archeological research while charting a course for the trail.

Although a glass-topped case of small Battle of Brier Creek artifacts, mainly found in digs at the site 10 years ago in which Elliott also participated, was on display during the reception and banquet, he showed the latest finds only as photos in a slideshow.

“We did find several hundred metal objects relating to the battle,” he said. “We’re still doing the lab work on that, so I don’t have the final answers.”

Technology and techniques deployed in this year’s archaeological research included LiDar, or “light detection and ranging” from an aerial vantage point; ground-penetrating radar and metal detectors used at the surface; and old-fashioned “shovel tests” at regular intervals.

Additionally, an expert handler brought in two trained human remains detecting dogs, not to dig at potential gravesites but because Elliott sought to avoid digging there and to route the trail respectfully away from graves, he explained.

Much of the work was done from late May to mid-July, with Dan Elliott and his wife Rita F. Elliott, who is also a Lamar Institute researcher, and one helper he mentioned operating metal detectors and shovels. But preparatory steps, such as a controlled burn, began earlier.

“Back in the spring, right before we started our work, a helicopter flew over with a LiDAR machine and made a really detailed LiDAR map of the area,” Dan Elliott told the Statesboro Herald. “It will pick up subtle differences in the landscape, let you erase the tree cover. It came up with a map where you could see this line going down the ridge. We went out there and found it and just followed it.”

That line turned out to be the original Savannah-Augusta Road, which was in use from the 1730s until it was abandoned circa 1800, after which it faded from public memory.

“There was a lot of battle debris along the road,” he said.

 

One tragic day

Having previously destroyed the bridge over Brier Creek, better equipped British and Loyalist troops turned and surprised American Patriot forces, including militiamen from Georgia and North Carolina and some Continental Army troops, on March 3, 1779. It became a rout, with Patriots fleeing across the creek and even attempting to swim the river. The association’s website gives an estimate that more than 250 Americans died; the British acknowledged 16 deaths among their troops.

When directed through the area 245 years later, human remains detecting dogs “went cuckoo at one end of the causeway,” which formed an apparent bottleneck for those in retreat, Elliott said. Two different “cadaver dogs” in 2014 had found some of the same probable burial sites, of which more than 20 are now known.

 

Expanded site

Elsewhere, the various stages of the archaeologists’ work turned up new finds that expanded the known area of the battlefield on its southern end.

Rita Elliott found the first of two grapeshot, or “canister” balls discovered. A slide was captioned: “Evidence for any artillery has been elusive, until …  2024 Rita finds a cast iron canister shot!”

Larger than musket balls – comparable in size to golf balls – grapeshot were fired in clusters, like a shotgun blast, from a cannon.

However, the same slide also included a May 17, 1940 Augusta newspaper brief, datelined “Sylvania,” about a tenant farmer named C.W. Thompson plowing up a four-pound cannon ball on a farm near the banks of Brier Creek.

But the two grapeshot found this year are apparently the first artifacts of artillery used in the battle found during intentional archaeology.

“They were both found right within a few inches of each other,” Elliott said. “We’re pretty sure that they’re being shot by the British at the Patriots.”

Musket balls, mostly made of lead, are the most common kind of artifact found, numbering into the hundreds, some forming evidence of a “musket ball factory” in an encampment, as well as others fired in combat or simply dropped. A pommel end from a small sword and a set of clasps from an apparent stack of cartridge boxes were also pictured among the newly dug artifacts.

Among the more impressive finds, a broken-tipped, rust-encrusted bayonet, with a curve down from its barrel mount, is more like a French design than the standard, straighter British bayonet, Elliott showed with comparative illustrations.

“So, what did we learn?” he summed up. “Well, we used high-tech stuff and traditional archaeology to find new parts of the battlefield that nobody knew were there. We mapped out what we’re recommending as a trail route that dodges impacting really important things and goes close enough to the other things that you can interpret those areas and have places for people to sit down and rest on this trail.”

 

State-funded trail

In other words, there will be benches near markers presenting detailed information about the archaeology, aspects of the battle and its place in the American Revolution.

Mostly following the old road, the interpretive trail will extend at least 1.5 miles, he said. Cecil Christopher, chairman of the Brier Creek Revolutionary War Battlefield Association board of directors, said the total expected length of the trail, including walking trail aspects, is 2.4 miles.

The Georgia General Assembly budgeted $200,000 this year for the BCRWBA, which is a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit, to develop the trail and also undertake preliminary work for improvements to the access road, Christopher said in an interview. The association works with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which controls the Tuckahoe WMA, in planning improvements, but the association itself hires the contractors, including Elliott’s group and a separate firm that supplied the LiDAR flights.

During the banquet, BCRWBA President Stephen Hammond presented Battle of Brier Creek commemorative charge coins to state Sen. Max Burns, Sen. Billy Hickman and Rep. Lehman Franklin for their support of the trail project and other efforts to upgrade the site, as well as one to Elliott. The association’s longer-term goals include raising money to fund a visitor center and museum at the site.

Hammond announced that in 2025 the association will be converting its traditional March memorial service to a one-time funeral service for those buried at the site and those who died elsewhere as a result of the battle. No historical record has been found of funerals held for the fallen Patriots at Brier Creek after the battle, he noted. The service is slated for March 8, a Saturday.

 

GS Museum on Main

People attending the banquet or its reception also saw a sample of the “The Fight for a Star and a Stripe: The Battle of Brier Creek,” exhibit sponsored by the Georgia Southern University Museum and created last semester by some of the university’s Public History Program graduate students for the GS Museum on Main, housed at the Visit Statesboro center, 222 South Main St.

Two of those students, Caleb Hartshorn and Abigail Hughes, and GS Museum Director Brent Tharp were there to discuss the exhibit, which remains open to the public April 2024-April 2025. Students worked with a National Park Service illustrator to develop “graphic novel-style” illustrations meant to appeal to a younger audience.

The exhibit features a playable board game with illustrations of British troops and American soldiers and militiamen on the playing pieces. But caution, players, those special dice were designed to give the British the advantage, since the odds were stacked against the Patriots on that tragic day in 1779, Hartshorn explained.