Survey Szn: Tools of the Trade

Hello all! My name is Alex Michnick, and I am joining the FSJ Project as an intern this summer to hone my field techniques and gain experience in Historical Archaeology. I am a guest student of the field school, as I currently attend Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan where I will graduate with degrees in Anthropology and History. I have some prior field experience with colleagues at GVSU studying Middle-Late Woodland period native sites. This is also my second time in the field at Fort St. Joseph, having participated in the middle school camp in 2011, so I am truly coming full circle in life! Following my undergraduate studies, my aspiration is to study Historical Archaeology in the College of William and Mary's sequential M.A./Ph.D program.

(Photo not taken at WMU affiliated site, but rather my first field school experience!)

One of my favorite parts of conducting archaeology is definitely survey. Survey is a preliminary practice designed in essence to procure exact metric points on a grid layout. We as archaeologists can use these in our favor to navigate site parameters, distinguish existing excavation units, and find desired points for new units.

One of the foremost techniques we use to conduct surveys is by using the combination of a total station and a prism, which involves one person on each piece of equipment. The total station essentially shoots a laser into the center of the prism and the exact coordinates of the prism are reflected back to the total station no matter the distance- one meter to one kilometer, the duo is quite handy.

So far, this summer, we have done some heavy survey at Dark Lake in Sturgis, Michigan while searching for evidence of Freedom Seekers travelling on the Underground Railroad, and another survey of the site of Fort St. Joseph in Niles. The Dark Lake survey was interesting, as shown in the crude map shown below.

We were being guided into the general vicinity of a homestead on a map dating to 1858. It was very fun, I walked almost half a kilometer with the prism while our field director, Erika Hartley, shot points off of the prism.

At Fort St. Joseph this week, I assisted in setting up five new 1x1 meter units on the site to start the excavation off! However, this is easier said than done. Much of survey involves close communication between prism and total station, so that the prism is getting close enough to the desired points on the grid. One example of this was during the Dark Lake survey, when erika and I were separated by about 200 meters of field and needed to communicate over the phone to achieve data down to the very centimeter.

As the season expands and continues, I hope to get more involved with the excavation processes that I have set up with the survey methods. It will certainly be an excellent change of pace, as surveying can be a bit of walking!