Archaeologists Chester DePratter (left) and Victor Thompson (right) have mapped the early colonial Fort San Marcos by running ground penetrating radar and using other high tech equipment. 
 
 Five centuries ago, two Spanish warships sailed to a marsh bank in the Lowcountry, a coastal jungle haunted by panthers, bison, elk and people the sailors considered savages. The bank was a foothold into the New World also sought by the French. The ships carried wood posts and planking to build a fort. 
 
 Today, researchers using radar, electric currents and magnetic waves have pinpointed exactly where they built it. Ground-penetrating radar and magnetometers located the outlines of the lost Fort San Marcos near Beaufort, amid the footprint of a church, courts, shops, taverns and farms that comprised the 1566 settlement of Santa Elena. 
 
 Archeologists knew about where it was, but the organic residue remains of the 16th century structures were buried underground in the midst of 16 acres that also are the site of the earlier French settlement of Charlesfort, on the edge of a golf course in today’s Marine Corps Recruit Depot. 
 
 Now archaeologists have the key to dig deeper into a past that some call the “lost century” of the state’s history, some 104 years before English settlers landed at Charles Towne on the banks of the Ashley River about 50 miles north. In other words, they can now begin to bring that history to life. 
 
 “This work will allow us to tell the story of the land that would eventually become the United States. Santa Elena is an important part of this history that lends insight into how colonial powers in Europe vied for control over this corner of the New World,” said Victor Thompson, University of Georgia anthropologist, who worked with University of South Carolina archaeologist Chester DePratter at the site. 
 
 Fort San Marcos founder Pedro Menendez de Aviles “didn’t leave us with a map of Santa Elena, so remote sensing is allowing us to create a town plan that will be important to interpreting what happened here 450 years ago and for planning future research,” DePratter said. 
 
 The breakthrough in June came after a number of failed attempts to locate the site with exploratory digs. The finding is scheduled to be published this week in the Journal of Archeology Science Reports, according to a University of South Carolina news release. 
 
 Fort San Marcos was built in 1577. Menendez’ crews got it up in six days because of the threat that a Native American tribe would attack. It allowed the Spanish to restore Santa Elena, which settlers had abandoned the year before when it was attacked. 
 
 The fort was a large bunkhouse of barracks and storerooms with cannon platform on one end, according to the release. It had 11 mounted cannons, the largest weighing more than 5,400 pounds. 
 
 After five years, the wooden posts surrounding the fort rotted, and a new fort, also called San Marcos was built on the nearby shoreline. 
 
 The restored Santa Elena grew to nearly 400 residents, impressive enough to be named the capital of Spanish Florida in 1571. 
 
 But after English privateer Sir Francis Drake began attacking Spanish settlements, the settlement was abandoned in 1587 for Fort Augustine in today’s Florida. 
 
 Among other remains image-mapped at the site are what the archaeologists described as a vast array of possible wells, houses, posts and ditches. 
 
 “Santa Elena is providing once again an unprecedented view of the 16th-century landscape. This is one of the best sites for remote sensing that I’ve ever had the privilege to work on,” Thompson said. 
 
 Reach Bo Petersen at 843-937-5744, @bopete on twitter or Bo Petersen Reporting on Facebook. ||||| Improved technology helped archaeologists finally locate a 16th-century Spanish fort on what is now Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. 
 
 Archaeologists had been looking for San Marcos, one of several forts built on the Santa Elena settlement, for more than 20 years. The location was nailed down using radar and magnetometers. 
 
 The machines have been in play for archaeologists for years, but the computer programs interpreting the data have vastly improved in recent years, said University of Georgia archaeologist Victor Thompson. Thompson has worked on the site with University of South Carolina archaeologist Chester DePratter, whose search for San Marcos began in 1993. 
 
 The general location of the fort had been noted using documents archived in Spain. There was a drawing of the fort and a written description but nothing detailing the location. 
 
 Traditional digging methods had failed to find the fort. 
 
 “We can’t go to a map and say ‘oh, this is where Pedro Menendez lived or this is where that fort was or this is where anything was,’ ” DePratter said. “So we have to figure it out.” 
 
 The fort was founded in 1577 by Pedro Menendez Marquez. The outpost went up in six days, with large pieces already made off-site to protect against an attack by Native Americans. 
 
 Though the actual wooden materials have long become part of the earth, the fort could be found by identifying the large post holes required to support the two-story structure and from other signs of human interaction. 
 
 “Anytime humans occupy an area for an extended period of time, they alter the physical characteristics of the subsurface,” Thompson said. “If floors become compacted, we can see that. If posts were dug in but then removed, we can see that. 
 
 As long as there is some physical change that accompanies those behaviors, then we can image it.” 
 
 Santa Elena was founded in 1566 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles. Its whereabouts remained a mystery until 1979, when archaeologists found evidence while digging on the Parris Island golf course. 
 
 DePratter and Thompson have been working on the site this summer with a small team of doctoral students and undergraduates. 
 
 They are working to map the entire town of Santa Elena, believed to have included some 60 homes as well as a church, shops and taverns. They believe they are also close to knowing the location of Pedro Menendez de Aviles’ home, which can be distinguished from the other home sites by high-end Chinese wares no one else in the settlement could have afforded, DePratter said. 
 
 He believes they have also found another governor’s home nearby. 
 
 The team is working in open fields that were once fairways of the golf course, since moved to accommodate the archaeological work. 
 
 DePratter began his search in 1993 digging small test holes all the way to the golf course clubhouse. He uncovered a pottery kiln — a chamber where the wares were heated and hardened — but no fort. 
 
 DePratter returned five years later and had play diverted on the golf course to explore again, digging a little too far south of where the fort was eventually found. 
 
 Before DePratter and Thompson began mapping again, no digging had been done on the site since 2008 and no large-scale projects since 2000. DePratter reached out to Thompson because of his colleague’s experience with the technology. 
 
 Thompson, in a black floppy hat and short-sleeve plaid shirt, unfurled a map Tuesday with a grid of blocks the team has mapped. Each is about 400 square feet. 
 
 The work is done in part by pushing a black, three-wheeled cart toting the radar along the ground. A magnetometer and resistivity meter are also used. 
 
 In determining the fort’s location, there was no breakthrough moment as when DePratter dinged the pottery kiln. Instead, the work was a compilation of layers of data and ruling out Native American artifacts and sites housing Marine structures during the early 20th century. 
 
 The scientists have the cooperation of the Marine Corps and come and go as they please. The remote spot behind the golf course means a protected site with few visitors — most recently Marines on their lunch break visited Santa Elena to play the popular phone app “Pokemon Go.” 
 
 Despite the breakthrough on the fort’s location, another six to nine months is required to process the data and learn what has been found. The new discovery will be published this week in the Journal of Archeological Science: Reports, according to a news release. 
 
 The resulting information will be included in future exhibits at the Santa Elena History Center, which opened this year in downtown Beaufort to tell the story of the early settlement. 
 
 “Days like today are the reason we established the foundation with a vision to uncover this significant history,” Santa Elena Foundation chairman and CEO Andy Beall said in a release. ||||| In this undated image provided by Amanda Thompson with the University of Georgia shows archeologists Chester DePratter, left, with the University of South Carolina and Victor Thompson, right, of the University... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this undated image provided by Amanda Thompson with the University of Georgia shows archeologists Chester DePratter, left, with the University of South Carolina and Victor Thompson, right, of the University of Georgia, running ground penetrating radar across a land grid. Archaeologists have found... (Associated Press) 
 
 PARRIS ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Archaeologists have found the location of a long-sought Spanish fort on the South Carolina coast at the site of what was once the first capital of Spanish Florida. 
 
 A release from the University of South Carolina says the site of San Marcos, one of five forts built during the 21-year history of the early settlement of Santa Elena, has finally been located on Parris Island near Hilton Head Island. 
 
 University of South Carolina archaeologist Chester DePratter and Victor Thompson of the Center for Archaeological Sciences at the University of Georgia, have conducted research for the past two years to find the site of the 1577 fort. 
 
 Using ground-penetrating radar and other high-tech equipment last month, they found the site and are publishing the details of their work this week in The Journal of Archaeology Science Reports. 
 
 Santa Elena, founded in 1566 to protect Spanish shipping interests, was the first capital of Spanish colonial Florida. The site of the settlement itself was located back in 1979 beneath a golf course at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island. 
 
 But the site of San Marcos remained a mystery. 
 
 Using the high-tech equipment, scientists were able to measure differences in local magnetic fields to locate the fort. They were also able to map where buildings stood on the 15-acre Santa Elena settlement. Those buildings included a church, courts, shops, taverns and farms. 
 
 There are no historical documents with a map of Santa Elena, DePratter said. 
 
 "Remote sensing is allowing us to create a town plan that will be important to interpreting what happened here 450 years ago and for planning future research," he said. 
 
 "Santa Elena is providing once again an unprecedented view of the 16th-century landscape," Thompson added. 
 
 Parris island is located between Hilton Head and Beaufort on the lower South Carolina coast. 
 
 Back in April, events were held in the Beaufort area to mark the 450th anniversary of the founding of Santa Elena. They included the opening of the Santa Elena History Center and a visit to the area by a replica of a Spanish galleon.
– After two decades of searching, archaeologists have finally discovered the location of a Spanish fort missing for 450 years: a golf course in South Carolina, the Beaufort Gazette reports. According to the AP, Fort San Marcos—built in 1577 and occupied for five years—was discovered last month under a golf course on Parris Island by two researchers. They used improving technology, included radar and magnetic waves, to succeed where years of old-fashioned hole digging had failed, the Post and Courier reports. While the remains of Fort San Marcos are still buried, the location in itself is a hard-won and important find. “This work will allow us to tell the story of the land that would eventually become the United States,” one of the researchers says. Fort San Marcos was built more than 100 years before English settlers arrived in what is now South Carolina. Spanish documents give a description and drawing of the fort, but not its location—that was finally given away by the fort's old post holes. Fort San Marcos was built in the settlement of Santa Elena, which was discovered in 1979—nearly 100 years after it was abandoned in the midst of attacks by the English. It consisted of barracks, storerooms, and 11 cannons. Researchers employed the same method used to discover the location of Fort San Marcos to learn a little more about Santa Elena, mapping its shops, taverns, a church, and more.