It’s an overcast morning late in July and Dr. Melissa Baltus, an associate professor of anthropology, and the nearly dozen anthropology students in her six-week Field Methods in Archaeology course are methodically excavating and documenting a site close to Fort Miamis Metropark in Maumee.
Built atop the banks of the Maumee River in the late 18th century by the British, Fort Miamis served as a military outpost during the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and later during the War of 1812.
Dr. Melissa Baltus, an associate professor of anthropology, discusses an excavation area with Geena Clarke, left, a senior from Toledo, and Nicholas McKarus, right, a junior from Sylvania, two of the anthropology students in her six-week Field Methods in Archaeology course at UToledo excavating and documenting a site close to Fort Miamis Metropark in Maumee.
The archaeological site where The University of Toledo team is working is private property adjacent to the Fort Miamis Park owned by a family who live in a home a stone’s throw away and reached out to Baltus about the project.
The project’s goal is to determine if there is any fort architecture — or discarded artifacts from its residents — present at the excavation site, buried beneath several strata of dirt, like layers in a lasagna that’s several feet thick.
Nicholas McKarus, a junior from Sylvania, and Geena Clarke, a senior from Toledo, had worked in the smaller of the two excavation areas for weeks.
Hidden from main view in a small, shaded grove, the site had two large freshly dug excavation units and waist-high mounds of dirt from those holes that will be used to fill the excavation spots when the course is finished. There’s also a large screen where the pair painstakingly comb through the dirt for artifacts to document.
“This is archaeology right here,” McKarus said as he pointed to the site where they had been working that morning. “You come out here four days a week, 8 1/2 hours a day, you’re outside the entire time, so you’re dealing with the exposure, you’re dealing with the weather, you’re dealing with all of this around you and you’re getting the hands-on experience with the equipment, so you’re being completely immersed into it.
“It’s like taking swimming lessons by somebody flicking water at you versus somebody putting you in the water,” he added. “You learn a whole lot more by being out here and actually doing this and experiencing it and living it versus looking at pictures of it on a screen.”
Baltus said this experiential learning course, one of four offered in UToledo’s anthropology program, is required for any student seeking an entry-level position in the archaeology field after graduation.
Geena Clarke, left, a senior from Toledo, and Nicholas McKarus, right, a junior from Sylvania, use a large screen to painstakingly comb through the excavated dirt for artifacts to document.
“A degree is great, but you still have to have that field school,” she said. “You have to have that in-the-field training to be able to get a job doing archaeology.”
Clarke, who was on schedule to graduate with her undergraduate degree once she completed the course, said the field school was the best way to finish her time as a Rocket.
“I feel like this has been a great experience just to kind of help prepare me for it if I want to go back into archaeology for future career opportunities or not,” she said. “We just visited Mannik & Smith Group and they had some cool opportunities for entry-level jobs so I’m possibly thinking about pursuing that.”
On the top side of the property, about 30 feet away from where McKarus and Clarke are working, is the main excavation site, with a large tent-pole structure for shade and a half-dozen other students digging, sorting and searching for remnants in and around it.
Among them is senior Go Holsinger.
It’s Holsinger’s first excavation and so far they have found pieces of animal bones, projectile points, a pottery rim sherd and bricks that may be from a fireplace in the fort or another structure or could have just been deposited as fill decades ago.
Senior Go Holsinger, who was on their first excavation, holds a projectile point they found at the main excavation site, as Avery Nowak, a graduate student from Deerfield, Mich., works behind them.
“I was honestly expecting to find absolutely nothing,” Holsinger said. “I talked with Dr. Baltus about it before, and she said that a lot of the time in archaeology you’re not finding much but when you do find things it’s super exciting and interesting, so the fact that we’re finding so many things is just blowing my mind. It is backbreaking, which I expected, but it’s so, so much fun.”
Nearby them is Avery Nowak, a graduate student from Deerfield, Mich., who is taking the field course to gain valuable experiential learning for the first time. His real-world experiences and education from these few short weeks is “night and day,” he said, compared to what he learned from years spent in only classrooms while earning his undergraduate degree at another university.
“With a lot of the classroom experience, unfortunately, they don’t go into much of the details of the excavation. It’s a lot more theory, like talking about the data that’s been collected,” Nowak said. “So actually being out here, and being able to collect it and learn about the process has been really enlightening for me.”
As it happens for the anthropology students in Baltus’ Field Methods in Archaeology course, the constant bending down and working on their knees, sifting through buckets and buckets of dirt and most often not finding anything remarkable — it isn’t just a class, it’s the beginning of a career.
“In addition to the necessary required skills for an entry level job in archaeology,” she said, “there are a number of transferrable skills that students gain as well. This ranges from some of the more technical applications like learning how to map features and stratigraphy by hand and using GPS and total station technology, to strengthening observation, interpretation and communication skills. They also gain a new perspective about themselves and their abilities, engaging their resiliency when the days are long and hot, challenging themselves to accomplish tasks and manage frustrations, and finding a sense of comradery in working together as a team.”
As McKarus said, “The frustration is part of the experience. Nobody wants to be out here in the rain or to be out here fighting the bugs or sunburns, but at the end of the day, if people like us don’t do things like this, then there’s nothing to curate in museums, there’s nothing to be uncovered, questions won’t be answered.
“I’m covering history. This is helping us answer questions that can’t be answered in the classroom.”
