My Day in the Field and My Night at the Community Dinner

Hey, it’s Kaylee again! I am going to be blogging about my day in the field and the main event of today, the community dinner that we hosted. 

On a typical Monday, everyone comes back from the weekend and we arrive in the field around 10am. In our unit, N24 W6, we are currently working to get the floor down to 40cmbd. My pit partner and I shovel skimmed and troweled our way down, uncovering bones, structural stones, seed beads, and a pipe stem fragment (one of four found in our unit). While my pit partner wet screened our soil, he found rusty nails, lead shot, lead scrap, and a gun flint.

This week, the Life-Long Learners are joining us in the field. For some, it was their first time at Fort St. Joseph, or even an archaeological site, and some have already done the camp a couple times. They enjoy being part of the project so much that they come back, and I can relate to this feeling as I was a Life-Long Learner in 2015 to see if Archaeology was right for me and here I am now, a field school student. I couldn’t get enough of it, so now I am pursuing a career in it!

While I worked on getting the east half of my unit down to 40cmbd and my pit partner was at the wet screens, I was paired with a camper named Bob. He had done the camp a few times, so he already knew what to expect. He was very fascinated with everything we found and was very careful with how far down he troweled. I really enjoyed working with him.

The Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Project does not only involve the University students and staff, we have the support of the Niles community. The project would not have made it this far (since 1998) with only the help of our crew members. We have support from the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) and the Kiwanis Club. We have also had long term support from Support the Fort, which is a group of people who give donations, food, and assistance to the Project. Some members join the week long camps, or have been known to assist in excavation.

We have been hosted multiple times this season for dinner or lunches by these groups and other individuals, and we are treated so well by them. To say thank you, we invited them to the stables for dinner. We set up tents and tables, cooked up so much food, and even had a cake that in pretty, frosting read: Thank You Friends! 

After dinner, we had a little trivia contest on the history of Fort St. Joseph and the Archaeology Project. Everyone was really into that and it helped to reinforce information I already knew, as well as shed light on what information I should research more. I enjoyed myself so much and ensured that everyone around me was having a good time. I was able to talk to community members and tell stories and laugh with them. It felt great to give back to them after everything they have done for us and the Fort. They are wonderful people and I’m glad I get to work with them!

This picture was taken of me chatting with some of our fantastic friends .