Lamar Institute Inc

My Story

By Daniel Thornton Elliott.

I became involved with the LAMAR Institute as a budding graduate student in Athens, Georgia. Many anthropology students at the University of Georgia were engaged in reservoir salvage archaeology in what is today Lake Oconee. Lamar phase farmsteads and villages were abundant in this region of central Georgia, as were many other types of archaeological sites that piqued my interest. My particular focus was on soapstone and its exploitation in the Archaic period. In the years to follow I drifted towards the 18th century and a series of intriguing settlements in South Carolina and Georgia. The primo settlement was Ebenezer in Effingham County, Georgia, where Rita Elliott and I spent many days, months and years trying to figure that place out. Now after a couple of decades we think we have some great ideas but we lack financial backing to implement them.  My latest expansion has been in battlefield archaeology and military archaeology in general. What my research has taught is that there is more out there that we do not know that what we know. It is a race against time in more ways than one. I want to spend the rest of my time making a difference and helping future generations enjoy and appreciate the past. Before I become another skeleton in the closet.