ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. (WKRG) — Ahead of construction of a new football stadium, students at the University of West Florida found ancient artifacts on campus as part of an archaeological study.
The artifacts date as far back as 600 A.D., offering students a chance to piece together moments of history found beneath the university campus.
“With the development of our new football stadium, they need a place to be able to have a retention pond, and there’s only a few specific areas where they can put that in for it to be able to do what it needs to do to go to the certain drainage points,” UWF Archaeology Institute Faculty Research Associate April Holmes said.
After the stadium’s infrastructure plans were reviewed, Holmes said an archaeological survey was required on the site before construction could proceed.
“We were able to determine that there was a couple of different periods where the site was being occupied by Native Americans in the area,” Holmes said. “And they, actually spanned at that time, we were looking at most of what we were recovering was from the woodland period, which is, roughly 1000 BC to 1000 A.D.”
UWF archaeologists have been identifying and studying archaeological sites on campus since the late 1980s. Graduate students Dominick Skultety and Abigail Bauman said it is an unbelievable feeling to hold a piece of history in their hands.
“It’s just that kind of tangible aspect of it. The ability to kind of, like, touch a piece of history, and to almost interpret something about that person’s life from it,” Skultety said. “That’s kind of what drew me.”
“You’re holding the entire knowledge of the world when you’re doing stuff like this, it’s amazing. One of my favorite quotes growing up was always that, ‘If you don’t learn your history, you’re doomed to repeat it,’ and what better way to learn the history by actively participating and finding it,” Bauman said.
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