13 minute read
EXAMINING THE FORT ANCIENT
SunWatch Indian Village/Archaeological Park is the recreation of a 12th-century Fort Ancient village in Dayton, Ohio. The houses were rebuilt in their original locations using native materials.
By excavating and recreating, archaeologists are learning about Ohio’s last prehistoric culture.
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By Rob Daumeyer
The thermometer reached 95 degrees on a fiery August afternoon in Dayton,Ohio.The city seemed deserted, except for a small excavation site in a tree-ringed public park just outside of downtown near the narrow Stillwater River.A group of archaeologists and volunteers from the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery was excavating at one of the northernmost sites of a prehistoric people known as the Fort Ancient.
About six miles away from this excavation,more backbreaking work was taking place at a 27-acre plot of land just out of sight of the city’s compact skyline. Here,in a field by the banks of the Great Miami River,five women and two men at SunWatch Indian Village/Archaeological Park were building a Fort Ancient house,framed with wood, plastered with clay, and thatched with prairie grass. This house is in the same location the Fort Ancient people
Volunteer Christina Lewis and Boonshoft crewmember Shannon Yee work in the native garden. Corn, beans, and squash are planted here each year using the same method used by the Fort Ancient. Corn is planted in the middle of the hill, beans are planted around the corn, and squash is planted at the edge of the hill. As the corn stalks grow, the bean vines latch onto them, and the squash plants spread down the hill.
These wooden poles placed at the center of the village were essential to the survival of the Fort Ancient. When the sun rose behind the central pole early in the year, the villagers knew they could plant corn, beans, and squash without fear of a late frost killing their crops. used 800 years ago,and it was being built with the same materials the Fort Ancient utilized.
Dayton may seem to be an unlikely locale for archaeological activity of this type,but under the auspices of their parent organization,the private,non-profit Dayton Society of Natural History, the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery and SunWatch Indian Village/Archaeological Park make Fort Ancient archaeology their primary field of research.
The Fort Ancient people lived in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia from around A.D. 1000 to 1650, and were the region’s first farmers.Two houses have been identified at the small excavation site,and the archaeologists believe they could find more.They hypothesize that the site may have been an outlying habitation of a larger village nearby. Historic records document the existence of such a site about two and one-half miles away. Dozens of Fort Ancient villages have been excavated since the 1890s,but few have been systematically investigated or as thoroughly excavated as this habitation site.
Researchers can’t tell exactly how many people lived at this habitation,but they estimate there were at least a few dozen.Based on excavation of contemporaneous Fort Ancient sites, the Boonshoft archaeologists surmise the length of occupation was no more than 20 years.
Systematic excavation of the site by the Boonshoft crew began in 1993.“Radiocarbon dates and the type of ceramics recovered here establish the time period during which the site was occupied,” said Bill Kennedy, assistant curator of anthropology at Boonshoft. Kennedy pointed to a dark organic stain on the wall of an excavation unit.The stain is a vestige of a
(Above) Intern Wes Cooper prepares bundles of prairie grass used to thatch the roof of the Winter Solstice house. (Above right) Shawn McCarty lashes the bundles to the roof. (Right) Reconstruction Supervisor Sara DeAloia consults plans for rebuilding the village.
storage pit that was dug by the Fort Ancient people. Food was stored in these pits,which eventually accumulated moisture and became unusable.They were then filled with garbage, such as broken tools,pots,and animal bones. “These pits are gold mines of data,”Kennedy said,indicating another partially excavated pit studded with preserved deer bones.
Lynn Simonelli, Kennedy’s colleague and the curator of anthropology at the museum, said that the degree of preservation of the site is remarkable.“It was an extensively farmed area in modern times,” she said.“But past flooding episodes from the Stillwater capped the site, helping to protect it from subsequent plowing.” The soil is neither alkaline nor acidic,and a bed of gravel beneath it makes for good drainage.“We’ve found crayfish claws, fish scales, and tiny rodent bones,” said Simonelli.“These are things that aren’t always encountered at archaeological sites, even those sites that are relatively recent.”
The archaeologists also investigated features that might be privies.“They’re rich in organic midden,they contain very little artifactual debris,and they aren’t shaped the same as the other trash pits,”Kennedy said. Since no fecal matter has been found,the archaeologists will be analyzing soil samples for phosphate,copper, and other indications of human excretion.Privies have not been identified in Ohio’s Fort Ancient excavations, and Kennedy believes that if this hypothesis can be proved,it will bolster the significance of the site.
WHO WERE THE FORT ANCIENT?
Archaeologists are trying to understand how the site was laid out. Some Fort Ancient sites are rigidly planned, circular villages with central plazas and stockades surrounding the village.“This habitation is not typical,”Kennedy said. “There does not seem to be a plaza,and there’s no circular design to the place.”
But the Fort Ancient culture has confused archaeologists long before this site was discovered.Most people know the name of the culture through the Fort Ancient State Memorial in Warren County, Ohio,where earthen embankments and miles of walking trails sit on the northern ridge of the Little Miami River. But,ironically, the Fort
Engaging the Public
The Boonshoft team strives to involve the public in its work.Passersby are welcomed to the site,and they sometimes end up volunteering to work in the excavation.Volunteers dig,sort artifacts, record their findings,and write notes about the excavation.When archaeology is used to reveal local history, “people become proud and even protective of archaeological sites,”Simonelli said.
But public access also presents problems.“One of the most challenging and rewarding things about this site is that it’s always a balance: You want the public involved,but also the site must be protected,”Kennedy said.“We’re always dealing with issues of vandalism and looting.So far,we’ve been lucky,but isolated and minor episodes of vandalism have occurred here in the past.”
This decorated pottery rim (left), which resembles styles produced in northwestern Ohio, is unique among the sherds recovered at the excavation site. Several pipes, such as the one above, have been recovered at Fort Ancient sites.
In situ finds like these potsherds can be invaluable to researchers. The identification of ceramic styles and decorative techniques help to date the site. Ancient people didn’t build those embankments.The area is actually a Hopewell site,which predates the Fort Ancient culture.
Researchers in the 19th century named this hilltop embankment Fort Ancient and speculated on its defensive capabilities.The embankment was believed to be contemporaneous with villages that had been discovered on the floodplains below the bluffs overlooking the Little Miami, and it was assumed that the same people constructed the hilltop enclosure.Thus the villages were incorrectly named after the Fort Ancient site. Researchers in the early 20th century suspected that the embankment was older than the villages, and subsequent radiocarbon dating confirmed that it is indeed several centuries older.
The Fort Ancient people were also once assumed to be part of the Mississippian culture that,beginning in the ninth century A.D., dominated what is now America’s heartland.Many archaeologists argue now that the Fort Ancient co-opted some Mississippian practices,like ceramic decorations and shell gorgets.But politically and economically, the Fort Ancient people were distinct. Unlike the Mississippians,the Fort Ancient did not fashion a hierarchical society. “When we look at the burial record of Fort Ancient sites, we can define some individuals who may have achieved a certain level of status,but it seems likely that this was a largely egalitarian society,” Simonelli said.
Their villages were self-sufficient and temporary, which is in clear contrast to the Mississippian culture, which built large, permanent cities in the Midwest.“The Fort Ancient practiced slash-and-burn farming,which can’t be maintained in one place for more than a few decades,” said Kennedy.“The Fort Ancient had to be a highly mobile
society, based upon that economic foundation.”
Although the Fort Ancient lived along rivers, analysis of the garbage recovered from their trash pits indicates they didn’t eat much fish.Instead,they consumed the corn,beans,and squash they produced in their fields, and the white-tailed deer, elk, and wild turkey they hunted. Researchers have measured the amount of stable carbon and nitrogen preserved in the remains of the Fort Ancient to identify the amounts of corn and meat they ate.According to these data,48 to 70 percent of their diet consisted of corn.By studying similar agricultural societies,scientists have learned that over-reliance upon corn results in a lack of protein and vitamins in the diet,which can result in a lowered resistance to infectious diseases as well as more specific vitamin-deficiency diseases,such as spina bifida. Another consequence of this diet that was found in Fort Ancient populations is severe tooth decay, due to the sugar content in corn.
RECONSTRUCTING THE VILLAGE
Just south of Dayton,at SunWatch Indian Village/ Archaeological Park, the knowledge obtained from excavations is used to reconstruct a Fort Ancient village. SunWatch is “Dayton’s Oldest Neighborhood,”a National Historic Landmark and an archaeological treasure that has over the last three decades yielded abundant information about the Fort Ancient people.Sturdy houses,built to reflect what was recovered at this site, ring the center of the village, which contains an arrangement of upright cedar poles,limestone slabs marking burials,and trash and storage pits.A stockade—possibly used during prehistoric times for defense—has been reconstructed around the village by weaving thin willow branches between wooden posts.A carefully tended garden that produces corn, beans, and squash lies outside the village.The gardening is done with many of the implements and techniques employed by the Fort Ancient people.
This unique site was nearly lost.In the 1970s,the city was preparing to turn the property into a sludge field and the original goal of the archaeologists was to recover as much data as possible before the site was destroyed.Once researchers realized the site’s importance,saving it from destruction became critical.Due to the efforts of local archaeologists,community groups, and philanthropists,the city of Dayton was made aware of the value of this site, and it was preserved as SunWatch Indian Village/Archaeological Park.
James Heilman III,of the Dayton Museum of Natural History (it was renamed the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in 1999) led the excavations conducted at SunWatch over a period of 17 years.In 1988, replete with a visitor center/museum and the partially reconstructed village, SunWatch was opened to the public.
Experimental reconstruction of the village is a vital part of the work at SunWatch.Roofs of big bluestem
A volunteer works on the wall of a house, applying clay daub over prairie grass attached to wall posts.
prairie grass are now being made in a way that differs from past reconstructions.The reconstruction crews had placed bundles of grass on the roof framework with the cut ends of the grass overlapped by the next row of bundles.The crews subsequently changed their methods, using smaller bundles of grass, with the cut ends turned in the opposite direction,and tying the bundles to the framework in a different way.
James Heilman III and his dog, Cricket. Heilman played a crucial role in the preservation of SunWatch. He directed the excavation of the site that ran from 1971 to 1989. As curator of anthropology for the Dayton Museum of Natural History (now the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery), he ensured the preservation of the artifacts recovered from SunWatch, as well as those from cultures across the globe. Largely due to his efforts, SunWatch was declared a National Historic Landmark. Heilman retired in 2000.
These Boy Scouts are participating in an educational program composed of a guided tour of the museum and the village. Scouts can also earn nine different badges at SunWatch.
SunWatch Site Anthropologist/Manager Sandy Lee Yee walks along a path leading from the museum to the village, flanked by native prairie grasses and flowers. Yee works to increase public awareness of this unique archaeological site.
“It seems to be working better than the old way,”said Sara DeAloia,who started working at SunWatch three years ago as an intern and now supervises the reconstruction.“It takes less prairie grass to finish a roof this way, and it seems that using the previous method,the roofs leaked more, and needed to be replaced more often.” She added,“This may have been the way they did it 800 years ago.”
Archaeologists and volunteers, using the same materials as the Fort Ancient,have reconstructed six buildings on the site exactly where the original structures stood around A.D. 1200.Several of the structures are houses,but there are also two ceremonial buildings.They have raised one of the most important features of SunWatch: its center pole complex.
“The Fort Ancient people were sky watchers,” said Sandra Lee Yee,SunWatch’s manager and site anthropologist.“The villagers used the sun to schedule activities. In fact,the entire village was a sun calendar.”
Yee pointed to the center of the village, where a reconstructed 40-foot cedar pole stands in the middle of a group of smaller poles.When the center pole area was discovered in the 1970s,archaeologists found a piece of the original pole in the posthole.Biologists identified the type of wood used for the post as red cedar, which is known for its durability and historical ceremonial significance.The dimensions of the reconstructed pole were deduced from the depth (four feet) and width (two feet) of the posthole. On certain days of the year,when the sun rises behind the center pole,shadows thrown by the pole act as a solar alignment marker. The Fort Ancient people used these alignments to establish planting and harvesting dates.
SunWatch appears to have been occupied only once prehistorically. Calculating the number of people per structure,scientists hypothesize that perhaps as many as 250 people lived in this village for about 15 to 20 years.Preservation of artifacts is superb.Crayfish claws and turkey eggshells more than 800 years old have been found,along with the remains of ceremonially buried dogs.“There was farming here in the 19th and 20th centuries,”said Yee.“But plowing impacted the site in only a few places.”
Despite being contiguous to a wastewater treatment facility and a landfill,SunWatch is a tranquil oasis in its urban milieu.To complement the village site and restore the landscape,another type of archaeological experiment is taking place.In a field to the north of the village,a project has begun with the support of the Ohio Environmental Education Fund:Botanists are attempting to eradicate all European plants.Sumac,panic grass,tick trefoil,bee straw, and ground cherry are known to have grown in prehistoric times here,and experimental archaeologists are reintroducing these and other native plants to see if they will once again thrive.
The Fort Ancient were the last prehistoric people in Ohio.Between 1650 and the early 1700s,it is thought that the region was largely unoccupied,and no archaeological sites have been found corresponding to this period.The ultimate fate of the Fort Ancient people is unknown.Although their way of life has vanished,the work of scientists at the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery and SunWatch Indian Village/Archaeological Park ensures that their heritage will not be forgotten.
“You really can feel what it must have been like to live here,”Yee said.“We’ve worked so hard to make sure of that.”
