In addition to re-enactors in period costume, the event included displays of excavated bones and pot shards, animal pelts, arrowheads and ancient glass bottles.

Field Day is an annual event meant to raise awareness about the state's rich cultural heritage, said Nena Rice, one of the event's organizers and the director of outreach for the South Carolina Institute of Archeology and Anthropology at University of South Carolina.

The Archaeological Society holds the event at different locations each year, she said, but the Colonial Dorchester site is "perfect because it's one of our earliest colonial towns."

Park manager Ashley Chapman said he was happy to host this year's Field Day. Colonial Dorchester "is one of the most important sites in South Carolina for pre-Revolutionary War history," he said. "This is where Dorchester County began."

College of Charleston junior Maryanne Thompson was working with a geologist demonstrating how to do "ground-penetrating radar."

Thompson and Kevin Hon, a geologist with Mala Geoscience, were running a radar machine, which looked like a big lawn mower, along the ground near the site's colonial church ruin and cemetery.

Hon said the machine detected what could be unmarked graves, and parts of the former church wall.

Chief Anthony Davidson of the Edisto Natchez Kesso tribe was demonstrating hunting weapons. Children gathered to look at hand-made tomahawks and to watch Davidson hit a target with a blow dart.

Davidson said that before the Revolutionary War, American Indians lived along the banks of the Ashley River, on which the Colonial Dorchester site sits. The Ashley River ties into the Edisto River, he said, so American Indians from near the Colonial Dorchester site likely interacted with his ancestors from the Edisto River tribes.