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Members of a visiting team from the Archaeological Conservancy walk over the site of the colonial military encampment, Fort Lyttelton.

The creaky, well-worn Juniata van—filled with equipment, students, brimming water bottles, and a bunch of tools—rolls into its parking space. Parking this day is in a brush-filled meadow opposite an old farmhouse. The field is situated on the kind of rural road where the biggest activity is seeing big-rig truckers flash by as they avoid tolls on the nearby Pennsylvania Turnpike. A handful of students scramble out of the van and begin to set up equipment. Overseeing the improvised, yet somehow organized process is a professor clad in vintage cargo pants, boots, T-shirt, and a battered straw cowboy hat that looks as though it should have been retired about two trail drives back. Like all Juniata faculty, he soon joins the students in getting down and dirty for the day’s work.

Unearthing America Juniata Digs into

Archaeology

with Summer Course

By John Wall, director of media relations

Photography: J.D. Cavrich (unless noted)

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Welcome to Juniata’s newest classroom, which is part of the College’s ever-expanding summer course offerings—“Archaeological Survey Methods.” The Stetson-wearing professor is archaeologist Jonathan Burns, a lecturer in geography and owner of an archaeological firm called AXIS Research. He’s standing about 100 yards away from the site of a colonial fort built during the French and Indian War called Fort Lyttelton (spelled Littleton these days), located at the southern tip of Huntingdon County. He’s in the final week of the course—a summer elective that runs for two weeks in July and August as a residential course at the Raystown Field Station—based on the model used by the environmental science department for its wildlife summer semester. “This course is designed to give students physical experience, but we’re also trying to move the ball forward to add to the historical record,” Burns says. “We are like a Crime Scene Investigation unit, but we arrive at the scene 250 years later. We look at the historical record and our archaeology shows you that the facts as we know them can be rejected or corroborated through our work.” The course has been offered three times since 2011. The Juniata course emerged from a similar course Burns teaches, Penn State’s Archeological Field School. Although Juniata offers just two or three courses in archaeology throughout the year, taught by Burns and James Sheehy, lecturer in anthropology, Burns would like to use the summer course to build interest from prospective and current students. Based on the enthusiasm of the Juniata students taking the course now, it seems like interest in digging deep holes is rising. “I’ve always liked learning about different cultures and different places and I decided to jump in with both feet to get started early on field work,” say Cory Yerger ’17, of Northumberland, Pa. “Dr. Burns makes this completely hands-on. We aren’t sitting in a classroom or watching other people—we’re digging for ourselves.”

The meadow where Burns and his students stand is the possible site of a blacksmith shop and associated outbuildings that would have provided services to the soldiers and settlers in Fort Lyttelton. Fort Lyttelton was one of a handful of colonial forts (the others were Fort Juniata Crossing, Fort Bedford, Fort Ligonier) strung along the north boundary of Pennsylvania from the British base in Carlisle, Pa. The forts supplied and supported the 1758 British Army expedition led by General John Forbes as he marched toward the French-held Fort Duquesne on the site of Point Park in modern-day Pittsburgh. “This was the frontier,” Burns explains, as he gestures toward what is now grassy fields. “This was Ground Zero for these two empires clashing and we are trying to see what things might have looked like back then.” Burns and the students try to “see” how the colonial outbuildings might have looked by combining science and backache-inducing physical labor. The first step is to create a virtual grid over the groundscape. They use a transit and level (the tools used by roadside surveyors) that can produce computer maps in three dimensions. The maps divide the area into roughly two-foot squares and then the students dig “shovel pits” at varying intervals through different parts of the grid. “It’s not quite random, but it isn’t systematic either,” Burns says. The fort site is one of several colonial sites Burns has explored with the Juniata course and his Penn State course. He started at Fort Shirley, a colonial fort and

Jared Smith ’08, a field technician with AXIS Research, (in hat at right) helps Juniata student Jacob Rowe ’15, identify a possible artifact revealed by shaking the soil from a test pit through a screen.

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Jacob Rowe ’15, from Mapleton Depot, Pa., uses a shaker screen to look for anything that suggests colonial soldiers or settlers used this ground. Above he encloses an artifact in an envelope that denotes where it was found and at what depth in the soil.

A fragment of a cannon ball was recovered from another part of the Fort Lyttelton site.

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Unearthing America

trading post built in the mid-1750s by George Croghan, a trader and entrepreneur, near Shirleysburg in Huntingdon County. Over the past six years, Burns and his students have determined the location of the fort and documented three palisade walls where the fort once stood. Burns isn’t doing all the research himself, though. Juniata alumnus Scott Stephenson ’87 (see Alumni Profile, page 72), director of collections and interpretation at the Museum of the American Revolution, is an expert on Pennsylvania’s French and Indian War legacy. He contacted Burns to offer some notes from engineering maps from Fort Shirley that he discovered in a British archive. The Fort Shirley dig was covered extensively in local media (and in Juniata magazine), bringing Burns’ company and the Penn State field school to the attention of the Archaeological Conservancy, a national nonprofit organization charged with preserving significant archaeological sites by identifying potential sites and then buying the property if investigation reveals it to be historically important. The Conservancy, however, does not have a traveling team of archaeologists on call to investigate each and every site. Instead, according to Andy Stout, regional director for the organization, the conservancy works with private contractors and colleges and universities to organize digs and investigations. Once teams like the Juniata students establish that a plot of land is a significant site, Stout, or another regional director, steps in to negotiate with landowners to purchase the land and preserve it.

It was through Stout that Burns and his students were able to explore the Fort Lyttelton site. The conservancy already owns the site for the fort, but written records indicated there were a blacksmith shop and other structures located below the fort. Once the study is done, “We look at all the available information the archaeologists have gathered and go with our gut whether to acquire the property,” says Stout, who is based in Frederick, Md. As Stout visits the Fort Lyttelton dig, the students, working in teams of two, dig out a 24-inch by 24-inch hole and sift the soil through portable wooden frames called shaker screens. As they sift the soil, any artifacts that appear as dirt particles fall through the screens. The students will note the size, location, and depth where the artifact was found, and the discovery is placed in a plastic bag and labeled. On this day, the students uncovered five or six musket balls (the colonial equivalent of a bullet) in shovel pits. Once the shovel pits are documented, Burns and the students decide where they will dig larger excavation pits, which measure about 1 meter square. These larger pits are excavated to a depth of at least 12 to 16 inches.

Archaeologist Jonathan Burns, left, research librarian Andrew Dudash, center and Emily White ’15, of York, Pa., catalog artifacts from the Fort Lyttelton dig for display in Beeghly Library. One of the most exciting artifacts was a partially complete swivel gun (in foreground), which was found near the farmhouse on the site of the colonial Fort Lyttelton.

Dudash, White, and microscopy technician Christine Walls examine the artifacts recovered from this summer’s digs on the fort site using a Scanning Electron Microscope, or SEM.

Colonial artifacts such as these spikes can be recovered and preserved from dig sites across Pennsylvania.

As of now, revisiting a dig site is not as important to Burns as digging up new, enthusiastic college students. Juniata students who want to focus on archaeology create their own POE based on taking a core and elective courses in anthropology and other sciences, while accumulating archaeology experiences through the courses Burns and Sheehy teach. Jared Smith ’08, a full-time archaeological field technician who works for AXIS Research, Heberling Associates in Alexandria, Pa., and Rue Environmental, in State College, Pa., says prospective Juniatians interested in archaeology can build a POE if they plan early or choose to study abroad. Smith, whose POE was archaeology and Spanish, found his career while studying at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa, Mexico. “I was able to get field experience and classroom experience and I also worked for the director of the museum there, which was invaluable,” he says. Archaeology as a discipline is a sub-discipline of anthropology, along with cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, and linguistics. At Juniata, anthropology is part of the Department of Anthropology,

Sociology, and Social Work. In addition to complementing the Anthropology POE, Burns also points out that archaeology can offer relevant experience to students in history, geology, environmental studies, and other fields. In spring semester 2015, Juniata will offer “Applied Archaeology,” a course aimed at students interested in professional archaeology. These days, most career opportunities exist in what is called “cultural resource management.” In any construction project or infrastructure improvement funded by federal, state, or local agencies, construction firms must hire archaeological consultants to make sure no cultural or historical resources are destroyed or altered in the course of the project. In the new course Burns will take students through the process of performing cultural impact studies, compliance laws for cultural impacts, and

how to conserve and curate artifacts. “It’s everything from learning which type of plastic bags to use to building a comprehensive database so these resources can be studied in perpetuity,” Burns explains. In the meantime, Burns is studying new ways to get Juniata students out in the field. His collaboration with the Archaeological Conservancy has resulted in another assignment during this year’s session. The week before the Fort Lyttelton dig, Burns and company were near Chambersburg, Pa., searching for the site of a more obscure “settlers fort.” Fort McCord was a small outlying fortification used to provide colonial settlers physical protection from attack. On April 1, 1756, members of the Delaware tribe descended on the fort, killing more than 20 people and taking numerous captives. Local militias from the area pursued the raiders for several days and eventually confronted them at the Battle of Sideling Hill, not far from Fort Lyttelton.

Jonathan Burns, a lecturer in geography at the College, has organized the summer course “Archaeological Survey Methods” to give students a chance for a hands-on experience in a few weeks while living at the Raystown Field Station. Here, he peers through a digital transit that maps out the entire dig site.“Dr. Burns makes this completely hands-on.

We aren’t sitting in a classroom or watching

other people—we’re digging for ourselves.”

—Cory Yerger ’17, Northumberland, Pa.

“Our students get

experience, I get to

pursue my research

interests, and the

Archaeological

Conservancy

gets to preserve

archaeology sites.

It’s a win-win-win.”

—Jonathan Burns, lecturer in geography

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The actual site of the fort has been lost to time, but the Juniata contingent spent a week mapping possible sites and digging shovel pits. Next year, Burns plans on returning with the Juniata field school crew for more tests. “Our students get experience, I get to pursue my research interests, and the Archaeological Conservancy gets to preserve archaeology sites,” Burns says. “It’s a win-win-win.” For Jacob Rowe ’15, of Mapleton Depot, Pa., the chance to learn how to recognize historical artifacts that have been buried for centuries is too good to pass up. Although he is studying environmental science, Rowe believes those who work with the land should respect its history. “It’s really cool that we’re able to find and look at artifacts from the French and Indian War,” he says. “It would have been cooler if we had been able to find McCord’s Fort.” There’s always next year. >j<

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Juniata student Cory Yerger ’17, of Northumberland, Pa., finds the hands-on aspect of the College’s summer archaeology course inspiring.

Jared Smith and Tom Stout, regional director for the Archaeological Conservancy in Frederick, Md., compare notes on the layout of the dig site, a fallow field that once might have

held a blacksmith shop that served the colonial fort.