Dewatering the Past

            There are a lot of obstacles that archaeologists can encounter when trying to excavate or begin excavating. One common obstacle we can face is water creating an unworkable environment. Whether a site is underwater or extremely muddy, archaeologist find it hard if not impossible to excavate under these conditions. To remedy this problem, archaeologist have had to use dewatering systems. The main purpose of a dewatering system is to pull the water from the ground so it dries faster than it would naturally.  There are different types of dewatering systems, but the main type used in excavations is a well point dewatering system. In this type of dewatering system there are a number of tubes inserted into the ground that have slits cut into each side of the tube. These slits are only big enough to allow water through and nothing else. The water is pulled through the slits by a water pump and allows the ground to become dry. This is the type of dewatering system we use a Fort Saint Joseph.

Fort Saint Joseph is an amazing archaeological project that I get to work and excavate in, but we do face the problem of water creating an unworkable environment because we work on the edge of the Fort Saint Joseph river. I get to work in trench 2 where we have been finding bone, lead shot, seeds beads and more, but I would not be able to do this work if it weren’t for our dewatering system that was installed on site. Our dewatering system was created and installed by Neil who is a local volunteer that is highly involved and helpful to the Fort Saint Joseph archaeological project. We would not be able to do our excavations without the time and effort put in by Neil and other volunteers to get the dewatering system up and running. Not only did Neil install this dewatering system, he also engineered it. He put about 126 hours into this project and installed it in less than 2 weeks. He did face some problems when engineering the dewatering system because he was not able to buy some of the specific parts that he needed to make it work for our site. To fix this problem he had to engineer custom fittings to the tubes that would allow all the soil and sediment to be shot through the tubes and allow the water to enter the tubes. After making these custom fittings and some trial and error, he was able to create the whole dewatering system for Fort Saint Joseph archaeological project. If you visit our site, you will be able to see our dewatering system and the work that it does for us to be able to do the work that we do. We are very grateful for all the work that was put in by Neil and the other volunteers who helped dewater our site so we can continue to work there.