The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project has been a public archaeology/community service learning program from its inception when Western Michigan University’s (WMU) anthropology department was invited to help Niles, Michigan find its “lost” eighteenth century fort. As it only enjoys one full-time, permanent faculty member, principal investigator Michael Nassaney, the success of this public component is highly dependent on the involvement of undergraduate and graduate students and community volunteers. Though grassroots in nature, it has managed to consistently offer popular public events and to expand its outreach through traditional and digital methods. Student involvement in the Project takes the form of inclusion and emersion, not just in the practice of historical archaeology, but also in the sharing of it.

Principal Investigator, Michael Nassaney conducts a lecture during the Annual Open House at the Site.

Fort St. Joseph is located within present-day Niles, MI. Occupied from 1691 to 1781 by the French then British, it served as a mission, garrison, and trading post on the frontier of the Great Lakes fur trade. The Project began in 1998 when a local history group invited WMU archaeologists to conduct a survey in search of the colonial outpost. Shovel test pits soon revealed trade goods, faunal remains, and intact architectural deposits, presenting the city and community the opportunity to reconnect with the colonial legacy in their backyard in a tangible way. For the last fifteen years, the partnership between WMU and the City has involved excavations and public education and outreach conducted by an active, engaged and ever-changing group of students and volunteers.

My involvement with the Project began in the spring of 2006 in the laboratory. Though my undergraduate degree was in Economics, I had a deep love of all that was old and a sense that archaeology had the power to tell the stories of everyday life past that were elusive in the written record. I planned to take the field school at Fort St. Joseph in the summer and was invited by Dr. Nassaney to get familiar with 18^th-century material culture by helping to catalog artifacts from past seasons’ excavations. A couple hours in and I was hooked on the lab. I went on to do my master’s thesis on the topic of curation and collections management, but while I was busy studying the other three fields and finding my niche within archaeology I was also almost constantly “doing” public archaeology.

A thematic artifact display case assembled by the author.

My first field season I, along with the other field school students, learned the history and context of the Fort along with proper archaeological excavation and recording techniques ourselves and then turned around and almost immediately helped educate week-long each summer camps of middle school/high school students and adults from the community in the same. We spent the second half of the season gearing up for what has since become the annual Open House at the fort site. We educated while advertising and soliciting support for the event throughout the community. We designed t-shirts. We created content for and executed the layout of informational panels. We selected finds for and put together artifact display cases. We painted signs to direct traffic to the site.  All this under the guidance of one principal investigator, the director of Niles’ Fort St. Joseph Museum, and one site veteran (and therefore public archaeology veteran) graduate student teaching assistant, who herself pulled together a group of historical reenactors to interpret the French and British periods at the fort. All field schools involve experiential learning. My first field school also happened to be a crash course in public relations, event planning and museum studies.

A field school student interacts with Open House visitors.

I served as the Fort St. Joseph Museum Intern during my first year of grad school, working on multiple initiatives to increase the public profile of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project. I wrote text, chose images and oversaw the design of an informational brochure. I organized a “Meet the Archaeologist Day” at the Museum as well as a luncheon for the most involved members of the community, the goal of which was to solicit their input on future exploration and interpretation of the Fort. The next year I was a field school teaching assistant and along with fellow grad students worked to execute both the summer camps and Open House again, building upon all learned the previous year.

Over the next couple of years my peers and I represented the Project at community events throughout southwest Michigan in addition to attending professional conferences where we shared our research, and also our public archaeology experiences and learned how others were involving their local communities. My last year of grad school, I interned with the Project again, this time taking on public archaeology of an “e” nature. In the interim between my first internship and this one, web presence had surged in importance as an outreach tool, and Facebook was doing the same. The Project at this point had little to no real estate of its own on the internet. Working with WMU’s College of Arts and Sciences webmaster, I built a site for the Project on the University server and also set the Project up on Facebook. Moving beyond the brochure, I also edited the inaugural edition of the Project newsletter, the Fort St. Joseph Post.

Both undergraduate and graduate students alike have continued to maintain and expand the public archaeology offerings of the Project. In 2011 a Project blog was launched to allow field school and other students the chance to share their experiences with the Project first hand, both during the field season and the academic year. Students have also helped to produce two volumes in a booklet series, which aims to examine various aspects of Fort St. Joseph and it’s role in the larger political, economic, social, and cultural contexts of New France.

Middle and High School student summer campers are brought up to speed on ongoing excavations.

The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project offers undergraduate and graduate students a unique opportunity to dive headfirst not just into archaeology, but public archaeology, learning how to while doing and serving the community at the same time. As with any sort of grassroots initiative, there is need for and therefore the ability to accommodate different interests and talents. And as I can personally attest, this chance to be a jill-of-all-trades can lead one to learn skills that have a great deal of value in the real under-funded/tight-budget world. But being on the student side of this equation, I didn’t experience the one obvious downside of a university-based initiative, namely the revolving door. Students come, put in their time, and go, which makes it somewhat difficult for those in charge to maintain at a consistent level the features that the community comes to expect . WMU offers a terminal master’s degree in anthropology, which makes the problem even more acute.  Perhaps this is where the community itself must step up their involvement. What challenges have others encountered and how have they been overcome?

I was fortunate to have the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project be my first foray into archaeology. I learned a ton, I was given a lot of responsibility; in turn I felt valued and which pushed me to take initiatives and to do my best to excel at all of the opportunities I was offered. I know not everyone has such chances in their pre-careers. Current and former students involved in public archaeology initiatives, in what ways were you “allowed” to contribute as a student? How has your experience as a student of public archaeology informed your archaeology practice?

For more on the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project visit our Website, read our Blog, and check us out on Facebook!

In my mind, public archaeology involves reaching out and interacting with different audiences, ranging from those with little knowledge of what archaeology actually is (no, I don’t dig up dinosaurs—yes, I think dinosaurs are cool) to individuals whose passion and skills for archaeology rival or exceed my own. Until recently, my interaction with the public has largely been face to face, via public lectures, working with volunteers in the field and laboratory, and conducting hands-on workshops.

Public lectures are a great way to reach an interested audience—and students who want extra-credit—but I find that the level of interactivity is usually not very high.  Sure, people can ask questions, or come up and speak directly with me afterwards, but they may still be formulating their thoughts on what I just presented to them—or thinking about the long ride home in heavy traffic.  Field and laboratory volunteers—especially those who return regularly and for extended periods of time—can get that thrill of discovery and also know that they are contributing meaningfully to interpreting an historic site. Hands-on workshops are much more regulated affairs—but can provide members of the public with an insight into how we approach analysis of the past, and, perhaps, give them something tangible to take home and further reflect on what archaeology can tell them about the past.

Not everyone has the time or means to journey to our public events or venues, and the question must be asked: how do we reach these individuals? Many of us maintain our own project blogs or websites, Facebook pages, or Twitter accounts—and these certainly are a useful way of reaching out to a wider public.  Some web sites are sophisticated virtual extensions of established museums, exist as museums with no physical brick-and-mortar component, or represent places that no longer exist in the real world. Even with these virtual media, the level of meaningful interactivity between the user and the site can vary.

VCU students scanning an historic artifact at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. Courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

For over a year now, I’ve been working with undergraduate students at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in our Virtual Curation Laboratory (details can be found at: http://vcuarchaeology3d.wordpress.com/).  We’ve been using a NextEngine Desktop 3D scanner to create digital models of historic artifacts from a wide variety of heritage locations in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and, in some cases, using the digital models to generate plastic replicas using a MakerBot Replicator. The Virtual Curation Laboratory was initially funded by the Department of Defense’s Legacy Program (Legacy Project #11-334) to test how well the NextEngine Desktop 3D scanner could be used to virtually curate fragile artifacts, “preserve” them digitally, and make them more widely available to researchers to ease determinations of National Register of Historic Places (NHRP) for sites on military lands.  A secondary goal was to help raise awareness of military personnel and their civilian neighbors about significant cultural resources under the care and protection of the Department of Defense.

Digital model of a tin toy soldier from Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest.

Because the NextEngine scanner is portable, and because we wanted to scan a wide variety of historic artifacts, my students and I travelled to a wide variety of heritage locations and collections repositories to create scans of both common and unique objects—mostly “small finds” that help tell the story of the nation’s historic past.  VCU students have created 3D digital artifact models of historic objects from archaeological collections at George Washington’s Ferry Farm, Mount Vernon, Jamestown Rediscovery, Colonial Williamsburg, Montpelier, Poplar Forest, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, among other locations.

Digital model of a tea pot lid finial in the shape of a satyr’s head from James Madison’s Montpelier. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of James Madison’s Montpelier.

Many of these items are rare and the general public would have little opportunity to touch the actual object, or even see it in some cases due to limited exhibit space. The process of creating a digital model, particularly the NextEngine’s lasers playing across an object in a darkened room as it scans an object, certainly grabs the attention of even casual visitors to an historic site.

Illustration of visitors to George Washington’s Ferry Farm watching scanning of historic artifacts in progress. Illustration by Jamie Pham and courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

Virtual curation—the creation of intangible digital models from tangible artifacts—has clear benefits to opening up America’s historic past in ways never before possible. We can combine virtual curation with social media as part of a dedicated strategy to promote and build a truly participatory culture that changes how we experience and think about heritage. Public and scholarly interaction with digital artifact models can certainly foster a more reflexive archaeology. Diverse observers can move virtual objects or travel through virtual worlds, creating a dialectical relationship between past and present–and expand interpretation and reflection beyond a narrow group of scholars. Resulting images from 3D scans can be processed and sent out to scholars, researchers, or the lay public as they are generated, opening up windows for countless interpretations and reinterpretations of artifacts by people who might otherwise never have access to these unique small finds. Virtual models, especially of fragile artifacts, create a closer connection between ourselves and events, or even individuals, from the past.

Colonoware vessel from George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estates and Gardens. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estates and Gardens.

3D technology creates an “active” role for the consumer of archaeological depictions in a way that is not possible if we rely on more traditional, static graphical techniques, such as pen-and-ink illustrations or black-and-white or color photographs.  Viewing an object in motion gives us a greater sense of the purpose for which it was created.  Archaeological materials are best understood when they can be revisited time and time again, and subjected to new theoretical insights and radically different perspectives by all of us interested and invested in the historic past.

Susquehannock zoomorphic effigy pipe in the collections of The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Created by the Virtual Curation Laboratory and used with permission of the Pennsylvania

A recent presentation by a student really brought home to me the power of these 3D digital artifact models for creating meaningful interaction between the student and a member of the audience. VCU student Rachael Hulvey was showing a model of a Susquehannock effigy pipe that was identified by the discoverer as representing a bear.  We in the Virtual Curation Laboratory all agreed that the animal was clearly not a bear, given its long tail.  In the static photograph published this pipe, the elongated tail is not visible.  However, the animated digital model showed the tail and all other salient features, and a member of the audience was able to identify the animal as representing a fisher (Martes pennant)—a member of the weasel family with a penchant for eating porcupines.

Plastic replica (left) of an 18th century bone brush (right) recovered at George Washington’s Ferry Farm that is incorporated into their “touch box” for visitors requiring a more tactile than visual experience. Courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

Physical plastic replicas can also be produced from the digital models as needed for educational and study purposes. Educational institutions or researchers could readily access these digital models from secure internet sites, and print copies on their own 3D printers. In our outreach efforts here at the Virtual Curation Laboratory, we find that the general public and non-archaeology students prefer the plastic models to digital models that they can manipulated on a computer screen.  These plastic models can be reintroduced into field contexts. At George Washington’s Ferry Farm, plastic replicas produced from scanned objects can be safely incorporated into public lessons for people of all ages, while the actual objects are safely and securely stored within a laboratory context.  The plastic replicas have also been incorporated into a “touch box” at George Washington’s Ferry Farm for visitors who have impaired vision.

VCU student Ashley McCuistion holds plastic replicas of scanned artifacts used at public programs in the field at George Washington’s Ferry Farm. Courtesy of the Virtual Curation Laboratory.

With the increased use of and accessibility to 3D images and data, one question can be posed: how might historical archaeology be transformed when archaeologists and members of the general have equal access to studying intangible virtual models instead of tangible artifacts?