By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor
Students in UB's summer archaeological field school at Old Fort Niagara
have unearthed parts of the enlisted men's and officers' guard houses
built by the British around 1768, as well as sections of the protective
palisade around the old French "castle."
The students19 undergraduates and four graduate studentsdetermined
that the stone walls that seemed to sit on top of the guard house remains
were part of a British barracks from the War of 1812 and that an ash-filled
barrel they uncovered belonged to a 19th-century bake house on the site.
The team also discovered buttons, musket balls, hatpins, gunflints,
pieces of metal, nails, Indian white clay tobacco pipes, pieces of glass,
ceramic and bone.
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Janet
Balicki works next to the foundation of a 19th-century bake house
unearthed by UB student working in the summer archaeological field
school at Old Fort Niagara. |
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The fort excavation is an ongoing project that was initiated by Doc
Knight, former director of archaeology at Old Fort Niagara, and has
been conducted by different archaeological teams over the years. This
year was the first time UB has operated a field school at Fort Niagara,
but it will not be the last, according to Elizabeth Pena, visiting assistant
professor of anthropology and director of the summer field school.
In fact, Pena said, it is the beginning of what both institutions
hope will be a long and fruitful relationship between this historic
site and the UB archaeology program.
A specialist in 17th and 18th century American historical archaeology,
Pena is particularly interested in archaeological evidence of culture
contact, trade and acculturation during this period.
"The history of Fort Niagara as a military and trading post spans
300 years, and involved nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, as well
as the French, British and Americans," she said during a recent interview
at the fort on the escarpment high above the Niagara River. "That makes
it one of the only places in this region where we can document cross-cultural
contact throughout several centuries."
Over the course of its history, the fort has embraced nearly 100 discrete
buildings. These were raised and razed by various armies that also altered
their functions and constructed and deconstructed walls, foundations,
stockades and earthen structures. Although most buildings have disappeared,
the detritus left behind reveals a good deal about those who owned and
used it.
It was customary for officers and enlisted men to occupy separate
quarters, Pena pointed out, so artifacts found "in" and around each
guard house might be expected to represent the distinct military status
of the occupants. Ultimately, the material may offer clues as to how
different classes of soldiers lived while the British occupied the fort
from 1759 to 1815.
"Old maps and records of prior digs indicate that this is where we
might expect to find the guard house remains," she said, pointing to
what had been uncovered so farremnants of several stone walls that
appear to intersect one another.
"Whether or not we're able to definitively identify the boundaries
of each guard house," she said, "the students are learning the physical
requirements of a professional excavation. They're also learning how
archaeologists use small pieces of material culture to draw conclusions
about the activities, belief systems and status systems of the group
that left them behind."
Metal buttons and other items associated with uniforms clearly identify
members of the officer and enlisted classes, she said, and clues can
be found as well in bits of glass and pottery, animal bones and in the
outlines of the structures themselves.
"We'd be likely to find pieces of glassware, wine bottles and stemware,
for instance, in and around an officers' guard house," she said.
"And shards of china. Officers carried around their own, often elaborate,
ceramic assemblages as welltea services, cups and saucers, serving
and dinnerwaresome of it quite fine.
"Enlisted men's quarters, on the other hand, probably would yield
the remains of canteens, metal plates and cups of metal or leather,"
Pena said, noting that such clues are more rare since leather deteriorates
and damaged metal cups usually were broken up and reused.
The structures themselves, she said, yield information about the size
and layout of rooms, the type of flooring used and number of fireplaces
in each room, for instance.
These speak to the quality of building materials and general comfort
level afforded within. Then, as now, the best accommodations were reserved
for those accorded higher status in a particular social system.
"The uniform buttons, gun parts, musket balls and similar items from
the 18th century and the War of 1812 era helped us to date some of the
structures," Pena said.
"And in the piles of centuries-old construction debris, we found what
look like fireplace bricks, stones from building foundations and some
material from the enlisted men's quarters that tell us its walls were
plastered and painted yellow."