UB Students Unearth Parts of Guard Houses, Trinkets During Archaeological Field School at Old Fort Niagara

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Students in the University at Buffalo'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 students -- 19 undergraduates and four graduate students -- determined 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.

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 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 particularly is 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. "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 far-remnants 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 well-tea services, cups and saucers, serving and dinnerware-some 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."