By By JESSICA SIEFF / Niles Daily Star
NILES – The 2008 Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project's open house was marked with a special announcement Thursday – a reason to celebrate the public open house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 26 and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, July 27.
"This is one of the rare opportunities in the Eastern United States for people to visit a working archaeological dig," said Dr. Michael Nassaney of Western Michigan University in a release. Nassaney is the principal investigator at the site and professor of anthropology at WMU. "This is a chance to watch history being uncovered," he said.
At the site of Fort St. Joseph, visitors and officials gathered to hear the City of Niles and the university announce a 10 year agreement regarding the ongoing excavations and work at what has been called "one of the most important 18th century outposts in the western Great Lakes region." Attendance included Niles Mayor Mike McCauslin, Nassaney and Jan Fedewa, executive director of the Michigan Humanities Council, among several other officials.
In addition, a grant of $6,000 was awarded to WMN by the Michigan Humanities Council to help fund the open house.
"This is an important opportunity for residents and visitors to better learn about the history and culture of Southwestern Michigan in the 18th Century," said Fedewa. "The council is pleased to support this project which will help provide a better understanding of how archaeology can be used to construct history."
Trees on either side hug the pathway leading to a clearing just ahead of the fort's site. One can only imagine the troops, natives and others who had made the same walk along the St. Joseph River. On display during the open house, visitors will see the artifacts Nassaney, his students and volunteers have found at the site.
There are stings of glass beads, knife blades, lead shots, musket balls and even a mouth harp. Members of Nassaney's team also found clay pipe stem fragments and copper alloy rings and buttons from French uniforms.
In what on appearance looks like a square hole in the ground, Heather Tannen, a senior at WMU is slowly and quietly pulling at the earth just below her feet, which rest on the edge of her pit. "Right now," she said. "I'm finding a lot of bone and teeth." She goes on to explain the finds are mostly from animals. Based on other evidence found at her pit, she explains that what she's basically sifting through is the trash of those who inhabited the fort hundreds of years ago. "Basically like their landfill," she said.
Even a landfill leads to clues, however. It lends to evidence of a fully functioning community. And for those like the students and volunteers who spend long, sometimes sweltering hot days at the site sifting through the earth, a centimeter or two at a time, such finds are important. "We're learning about their lifestyle," Tannen said.
Diane McDonald, another senior at WMU admits, "sometimes it gets kind of meticulous." She's working next to evidence of a hearth. In a small corner of an almost adjoining pit, large rocks sit in a curved position amidst reddened soil. "So we know there was a fire there," said McDonald. "Because fire stains the soil." In a whole day, McDonald said, sometimes she and her pit partner will only get through five centimeters of earth. That's around two inches.
As those working in the pits scrape and sift carefully through layers of dirt, others are manning four separate work stations where what is dug up, little by little, is placed into very fine mesh trays and sprayed down with water. Hunched over each one, volunteers and students run their hands over what could hold the next big find.
Like a brooch that was found up towards the terrace of the fort fully intact, or a door hinge. Support the Fort Inc., the City of Niles and the Fort St. Joseph Museum have worked with Nassaney in excavating the site since 1998. The evidence that has been collected has given many a better understanding of the city's story during the colonial period.
According to information provided through the project, the French established the fort in 1691. Soldiers, Native Americans, craftsmen, interpreters and religious figures inhabited it until 1761.
Addressing visitors to the site on Thursday, Nassaney said, "the work we're doing here goes beyond just finding artifacts…. It's extremely complex."
Nassaney said that even with all of the work that's been done through the program since 1998, excavations could be ongoing "for decades."
Workers at the site have to deal with the effects of the weather. Rain can set them back for days. Though Nassaney was able to acquire a water pump, "literally sucking the water out of the ground" at about 800 gallons a minute, it can still be a painstaking process.
Nassaney has been quoted as saying that the site deserves national recognition and could go on to become a "major tourist attraction." And he's hoping the project will see the funding it needs to increase excavation time at the site to the entire summer each year, rather than the seven weeks the students are spending there now, as well as acquire a paid staff. Right now, he said 20 undergraduate and graduate students along with approximately 20 volunteers work the site on a regular basis.
For the public, taking a little time to explore the site this weekend, as well as speaking to those who spend all day examining the clues to its history that have been left behind, may just give them a better understanding of the city they live in.
"I feel like I know almost all there is to know about how they lived back then," said McDonald. "It's been pretty eye opening."