{"id":221938,"date":"2026-04-07T13:12:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T13:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/221938\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T13:12:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T13:12:28","slug":"flagler-archaeology-students-dig-into-st-augustine-artifacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/221938\/","title":{"rendered":"Flagler archaeology students dig into St. Augustine artifacts"},"content":{"rendered":"

One man\u2019s trash is another student\u2019s learning opportunity, especially if that trash dates back more than a century.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what archaeology students at Flagler College are learning this semester while they conduct research on artifacts found during a recent dig at the St. Augustine Lighthouse.<\/p>\n

The lighthouse team typically focuses on maritime archaeology, so digs conducted on land are rare. This excavation all started thanks to a happy accident.<\/p>\n

Chuck Meide, director of the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, says construction teams stumbled across \u201cartifacts\u201d while digging up dirt to build a new path to the museum\u2019s visitor center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBroken bricks, a lot of glass,\u201d Meide says. \u201cThey realized, \u2018Oh, we better talk to the archaeologist. This is probably a trash pit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A trash pit is exactly what it sounds like \u2014 a hole in the ground full of trash. But when that trash pit dates back more than 100 years old, researchers can learn a lot about the people who filled it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, before there was garbage service, the easiest way to get rid of your trash was to dig a hole,\u201d Meide explains. \u201cThat\u2019s what the [lighthouse] keepers were instructed to do. Dig a hole and throw your debris in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Meide and his team set out to do the inverse: Dig a hole and remove the debris. In the process they excavated shards of broken ceramics, glass, hunks of metal and larger pieces, like a kerosene lamp and a nearly 100-year-old battery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meide says all of the discarded items tell researchers information about lighthouse keepers past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For example, the team found an intact bottle of Lea & Perrin\u2019s Worcestershire sauce that likely belonged to lighthouse keeper Peter Rasmussen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was keeper from 1901 to 1924,\u201d Meide says. \u201cHe was famous for his clam chowder recipe. \u2026 His recipe called for a fourth of a bottle of Lea & Perrin\u2019s Worcestershire sauce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hands-on archaeology<\/p>\n

Meide worked with Flagler College archaeology professor Lori Lee to get the artifacts his team dug up into the hands of local students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s students are working on a range of projects, from examining ground penetrating radar scans of a Green Cove Springs cemetery that has fallen into disrepair<\/a> to studying the history of St. Augustine\u2019s Fort Mose<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lee says the experience of working on local projects can teach students a lot about Northeast Florida\u2019s vibrant history.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a big help for the archaeology team at the Lighthouse and Maritime Museum.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great students are getting to benefit from this archaeology and they\u2019re getting to learn and have a great hands-on authentic classroom experience,\u201d Meide says. \u201cIt\u2019s also great for us because we don\u2019t really have the time to do the analysis to do that right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"The archaeology team at the Lighthouse Museum dug up a lot of pieces of glass and pottery. Researchers can learn a lot about how people lived based on their trash. | Noah Hertz, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n

Jazmin Adams, Lucas Finsel and Abby Mahon, three of Lee\u2019s students, have been hard at work cleaning, cataloging and learning as much as they can about the items found in the trash pit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve learned quite a bit \u2014 the students used a ceramic shard as an example. To the untrained eye, it looks like any random piece of broken pottery, but their research hints at a deeper story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an ironstone, and likely from a hotel,\u201d Mahon explains. \u201cIronstone is usually more utilitarian and less easy to break. This one is really kind of strange because of its design. It has molding \u2026 along with gold leaf plus handpainted and transfer print. You don\u2019t see that thrown on a lot, so that\u2019s interesting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finsel notes that the design and weight of the shard suggests it likely came from a large platter or something that sat on a shelf.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey may have inherited it from a hotel that was closing in town,\u201d Finsel adds. \u201cIt may have fallen off a shelf or got knocked over.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students\u2019 place the shard\u2019s origin to sometime around the late 1800s, and Finsel says that makes sense when you think about St. Augustine\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe late 1800s is really this transformation period for St. Augustine, and you see some of that in here where they go and experiment with crazy glasswares and ceramics,\u201d he says. \u201cMass consumerism is really smacking St. Augustine, where you get a lot of new wares and stuff getting ported down here, and you get a lot of people with money down here because they\u2019re vacationing here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adams, Finsel and Mahon all want to pursue careers in archaeology or museum work, and all three agree that it is rewarding to learn more about the people who lived in St. Augustine before them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to think about the past,\u201d Adams says, \u201cbut it\u2019s another to think about people like us sitting here right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

You might not give much thought now to throwing away trash or tossing cans and bottles into your recycling bin, but give it a few hundred years. Researchers may be examining it in the centuries to come.<\/p>\n

As archaeologist Chuck Meide puts it, \u201cEverything thrown away here is part of our story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One man\u2019s trash is another student\u2019s learning opportunity, especially if that trash dates back more than a century.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4372,43323,113,95437,116,118,117,99028,115,2663],"class_list":{"0":"post-221938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-archaeology","9":"tag-distribute","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-flagler-college","12":"tag-jacksonville","13":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","14":"tag-jacksonville-news","15":"tag-jaxtdy1","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-st-augustine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}