KERSHAW COUNTY, S.C. — In Kershaw County, there are some old mounds near the Wateree River.
Chris Judge is an anthropology instructor at the University of South Carolina (USC) Lancaster. He's been studying the Wateree River mounds since 1982 and said they are a lasting legacy of the Native American societies that lived in the area.
"Artificially constructed architectural features, early explorers tell us that the chiefs often had houses on top of these," Judge said.
Archeologists have been investigating Native American societies living along the Wateree River. He said documentation shows nine were mapped, but only one is visible now.
"These were central features of these communities and places where the chiefs lived, and you could kind of think of it in terms of the Washington monument, these are monuments that would be recognized and respected by people of the community," he said.
He wants to educate people on them and the history that sits there.
According to scholars, there's no exact time when the mounds were created, but they date back hundreds of years.
"Most artifacts we found are broken pieces of pottery, and the pottery is time sensitive, The styles and decorations and the way they are made changed through time so we can look at them and put them in a relative sequence of time over that period from 1200 AD-1670," he adds.
Judge will host a free event at Liberty Hill Community Center on Saturday at 10:30 a.m. It's an opportunity to help teach more about these amazing structures. People can bring in items for identification.