Day One in the Sun

Working on my pit. 

Yo, my names Taylor Woods, I am an anthropology major and going to be a senior student at WMU and I am working on the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project this year.

Our first full day was on Monday July 9, 2018 and it was a learning experience to say the least. Once we all re-assembled from the weekend at our residence in Niles half of us were off to the Fort St. Joseph site, while the other half returned to a local Niles couple’s back yard to finish their shovel test pits (STPs for short). Once we got to the Fort St. Joseph site and unloaded all the gear we needed from the trailer we split up into two teams. One team was tasked with finding and digging up the old trench for wet screening, and the other team was tasked with finding and clearing spots of interest. I was a part of the team tasked with finding spots of interest and we used techniques of varying degrees of complexity. For example, the total station, an electronic surveying instrument, or rakes used for raking. After Erika, our extremely helpful vice leader, showed us the general areas to work we used rakes to clear the previously cut long grass from the area. If the rakes alone weren’t enough to expose the bright yellow stakes we were searching for then it was out with the shovels. We used the shovels to dig, very shallowly, in search of the hidden yellow stakes until all the stakes were found. My team finished our task before the other teams we joined a group in making the trench. Digging that trench was the closest I have ever got to living the movie Holes, but it was essential for the wet screening process.

Fort St. Joseph getting set up. 

Once all necessary set up was complete and the other half of the group joined us at the Fort St. Joseph site we were assigned our pits and pit partners. My pit partners name is Sami and we were assigned the future pit located at the site coordinates North 9 and East 2. Once we established where our pit was we used Pythagorean theorem to precisely create the perimeter of what would become our pit. After we checked and double checked that the length and width of our rectangular pit it was back to the shovels. This time we used a technique called “shovel skimming” which is for removing the very top layer of the soil off our pit with a more horizontal stroke of the shovel to ensure we would not damage any artifacts that could be lying beneath. That was all the work we could complete in our time frame so we packed up what was necessary from the site, and it was time for dinner.

            Monday night’s dinner I think will be one of the most memorable dinners we will have over the course of these six weeks, maybe even the most memorable. The reason for this was because the lovely family that is allowing us to stay with them decided to invite us to dinner along with some of their family and friends. Let me tell you it was fun for many reasons. We started off the dinner with an ice breaker designed by the head of the household to get everybody’s social juices flowing. Once that was over it was time to eat and there was a plethora of quality food. There was pasta salad, sloppy joes, cheesy potatoes, fried chicken, and various other dishes ready for eating. The dinner was good fun but it’s true importance is that it is the perfect example of how the community in Niles has been and still is so supportive of the work we are doing. If it wasn't for the support of Niles community I don't know if this field school would be possible.

            I learned a lot on Monday. I learned various field techniques that I will potentially be able to use in my future career as an anthropologist. I also learned about people, the people I am working with directly, my peers, and the people that I’m working with more indirectly; in other words the Niles community. One of the coolest things about this experience is that its bringing people together who otherwise maybe would never have meet. All these people gathering together for their own personal reasons, and the one reason we all have in common is our love for the past. History can connect people be it two college kids at field school, a community member and a worker at dinner, or even a modern person to a Native American or French voyageur through excavation. History and archaeology as an extension of that is about making connections and I have already made more than I expected after my first full day of field school.