PFW using new tool to help students, visitors dig archaeology

The study of the past is meeting the technology of the future at Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Jamie Cochran-Smith and Andrew Smith, professors of practice in anthropology, love giving their archaeology students a chance to show off what they're learning during Fort Wayne's annual Johnny Appleseed Festival. That will again be the case Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. when the team from PFW will be stationed at a dig site on the east side of the Venderly Bridge alongside the St. Joseph River.

The goal is to show festivalgoers who park on the PFW campus, and particularly their children, what a dig site looks like and how archaeologists seek clues of times past.

This year, the work will be a little easier as the Smiths introduce their students and passersby to a Bartington Grad 601 Data Logger, more commonly known as a magnetometer. Typically, students dig approximately 8 inches to see the change in soil color, then dig in 10-centimeter increments while sifting the dirt. The new machine examines the magnetic field about two feet below the surface, allowing for more accurate work. The results resemble an x-ray of the ground.

"It's really good on prehistoric sites to find things like pit features, post molds from where the posts in the ground for houses or other structures," Andrew Smith said. "As they deteriorate, the magnetic field of that area is different from the soil around it."

The Smiths have used this specific site for six years, believing it to be a 4,000-year-old settlement because of the location next to the river and similar patterns found elsewhere around Fort Wayne. Students have found flakes, tools, and arrowheads, but no walls, firepits, or signs of a permanent structure. Only about 2% of the area has been excavated.

Weighing approximately 37 pounds and attached to a backpack for better stability, the X-ray machine should speed up the exploration, allowing coverage of a 20-by-20-meter grid in about 30 minutes.

"For anything on 90% of archaeological sites in Indiana, you're going to pick up stuff within that couple of feet," Andrew Smith said. "You end up with a 2D map, so it's like you are looking down on it, and it shows the variations in the soil. The great thing about this versus digging is you don't have to disturb anything."

The results recorded can be studied on a laptop to decide proposed sites. After demonstrating the technology this weekend, the Smiths plan on incorporating it into their students' coursework during October and November.

"The funny thing about this is you have to be wearing zero metal," Andrew Smith said. "No belt buckles, rivets on your pants, no change in your pockets, no shanks in your shoes-nothing. Sometimes people are just wearing sweats, and you look like a bit of a slob, but it's for science."

Jamie Cochran-Smith said the machine can be used anywhere archaeologists can walk, with the exception of heavily wooded areas, proving there's so much to learn without having to pick up a shovel.

September is also Indiana Archaeology Month.