Talking With A FEMA Archaeologist

Hi everybody, my name is Cameron Youngs and I am a field student here at the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, and a student at Western Michigan University. This is my fourth week excavating here in Niles, Michigan, and I am having the experience of a lifetime. I have met many wonderful people, I have ate a lot of good food, but most importantly I have learned a lot about Fort St. Joseph and working in the field. Each day has been a new adventure, and by the time Friday comes along I don’t want to go home. Last week we had a guest who came to visit us at the Stables and gave a lecture at the library. His name is Brock, and he was a former field student here at the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project.

Brock told us all about his career working as an archaeologist, and how he is currently employed as a FEMA archaeologist working in New York. FEMA archaeologists are responsible for making sure a particular location does not have any archaeological sites before FEMA builds an emergency structure. Since FEMA is a federally funded agency, they are required by law to comply to the National Historic Preservation Act before a structure is built. If there is historic or archaeological significance present, they either have to excavate or advise to change the location of their emergency structure. I thought this was very interesting, and I had no idea such a career even existed! Also, I did not know that FEMA was even required to build around archaeological sites under the National Historic Preservation Act. To me it sounded like a very fulfilling career to work as an archaeologist while contributing to disaster relief.

Brock Giordano at the
Niles District Library last Wednesday. 

At the lecture Brock talked about his work at the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project as a graduate student at Western Michigan University. He talked about the exchange of goods between the French and the Native Americans, but more specifically he focused on the concept of repurposing trade goods in a way that was completely unintended by the item’s original manufacturer. His focus was on tinkling cones that Native Americans would construct out of brass or copper, which they used to adorn their clothing. Tinkling cones are constructed out of scrap metal, usually from worn out brass kettles traded to them from the French. This metal was cut from the kettles, and then they were bent into a conical shape. Native Americans were the originators of crafters of tinkling cones, but we are not exactly sure if blacksmiths began to craft them too. Tinkling cones have been found in the archaeological record at Fort St. Joseph. I haven’t found any yet, but I would be very stoked if I did. (After Cam finished this blog he recovered a tinkling cone in his unit. (Edit: Meghan Williams)).

Tinkling cone found in Cam's unit.

After the lecture I asked Brock some questions about his career, and some advice for a budding archaeologist. He did not hesitate to tell me about his experiences, and what jobs I should expect to find with an undergrad in archaeology. He told me that I could find lots of work traveling around the United States through Cultural Resource Management. Cultural Resource Management or CRM, operates under a similar process as FEMA archaeologists. When a large federally funded structure or roadway is being built, CRM archaeologists must make sure that there are not any archaeological sites in the area before the structure is built. This is really exciting for me because it gives me an opportunity to travel, and work with artifacts. He told me that most undergrads do this kind of work in their twenties, and it is a good way to get familiar with working in the field. I look forward to my future of working and traveling across the United States as an archaeologist. Working at Fort St. Joseph has given me the opportunity to learn some of these field skills, and I am grateful for this opportunity. I also want to thank Brock for speaking with us, and everyone else during field school who has helped me navigate a future in archaeology.

It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! No, it’s the Fort St. Joseph archaeologists at the Air Zoo!

Hello Buddies! Its Raegan Delmonico back again with another archaeology and kids camp crossover blog! This past Thursday, Meghan, one of our public outreach coordinators, and I had the opportunity to go and present to a middle school camp that took place at the Air Zoo. Working with kids is always something I have enjoyed doing and having another chance to get kids involved in archaeology was great.

Teaching the Air Zoo campers 

archaeological techniques.

We arrived at the Air Zoo and went straight to the classroom. The kids were all between the ages of 11 and 13. They were a really energetic group and were excited to learn. We started off by doing some archaeology and paleontology flash cards with them and seeing how much they knew about archaeology. Most of them had a pretty good grip on the difference between archaeology and paleontology already! We followed up by doing an “other people’s garbage” activity and did some inferences based on what objects were in a bag. One bag contained a few coffee cups and some fast food wrappers, and the kids were able to hypothesize that the items probably belonged to a busy person who was running short on sleep. In the second bag there was a box of crayons, a receipt to a toy store, a jar of baby food, and an eraser head. They guessed that this was a person who lived a completely different lifestyle than the person who produced the items for the first bag. They also anticipated that this person probably had two kids that were different ages.

            Next, we showed off the artifact cases which highlighted some of our amazing finds from our units at Fort St. Joseph this past year. The campers were full of great questions about the artifacts and where we found them! They were very interested in the processes and methods used while excavating. Later in the morning we were able to go outside with them and do some mock excavating in a kiddy pool. The campers mapped out their units and carefully troweled away the soil. They took measurements from their mock datum lines and wet screened all of their sediment. They found “artifacts” that had been hidden by their camp counselor, Katie. It was a great hands-on activity for the kids to practice actual excavation techniques without visiting an excavation site.

The students and campers use
 trowels just like this everyday.

            Visiting the Air Zoo was a blast! Sharing my passion for archaeology with anyone, especially kids is so exciting. The campers were a ton of fun to work with and were pumped to hear more about the archaeology at Fort St. Joseph. It was a great opportunity to teach more people about the excitement and importance of archaeology. Thank you so much to the Air Zoo for the chance to present to some of your summer campers! We hope to come back soon!

A Word From Our Principal Investigator on the Open House

Greetings Fort followers,

Michael Nassaney, then, at the Orendorf Lab, Canton, IL (1978).

I’m writing to invite you to the 2018 Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Open House! As always, the staff and students of Western Michigan University’s 43rd annual archaeological field school have been hard at work investigating material traces of Fort St. Joseph. Since this year’s theme is “Technology Then and Now,” we are focusing on technology in the eighteenth century and the ways archaeologists use technology today to decipher the meaning of the past.

As you probably know, the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project is one of the nation’s premier long-term, multidisciplinary, community-based research program. Our aims are to investigate and interpret the history and archaeology of the fur trade and colonialism in the St. Joseph River valley. Public participation in the Project has been central since 1998 when community members asked WMU archaeologists to help them find their long lost fort. The public remains involved through our summer camp program, lecture series, community meals, and, of course, the Open House where visitors can witness life in the eighteenth century and learn how archaeologists work to reconstruct the past.

When we think of technology, we may think of telecommunication devices like our phones and computers. However, technology has always been important to humans who employ tools, knowledge, and techniques to manipulate the material world around them from stone tools to ceramics, organic materials, metals and glass. This year we are highlighting how goods were made and used at the Fort and how archaeologists decode the past using sophisticated equipment like magnetic surveys and compositional analyses to determine what objects were made of.  What would you do without technology? Think of how frustrated we become when we lose electricity for only a few hours.

This year’s open house is an opportunity to think about and experience the technologies that people used to survive on the frontier of New France.  Listen to public scholars, witness living history reenactors, and interact with archaeology students in real time as they piece together the past from the detritus of the Fort. Some of our 2018 finds will also be on display to the public for the very first time. We will have several surprise artifacts for your viewing pleasure as well as new discoveries in the field. You’ll have to visit to see what we’ve found!

Dr. Michael Nassaney, now, at Fort St. Joseph (2018).

Please introduce yourself to a student archaeologist, reenactor, public scholar, staff member, or visitor and join in the conversation about technology, Fort St. Joseph, and archaeology in the past, the present, and the future. At the end of the day, our Project is a vehicle to bring people together. Be one of the hundreds of people who I hope to see at this special event this weekend (Aug. 4-5). I know you will enjoy the history and archaeology of Fort St. Joseph and hope you seize the opportunity to learn about the ingenuity of the inhabitants of this special place.

 Cordially,

Michael S. Nassaney, Principal Investigator

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project