The Fort Halifax Field School, 2005 

           by Chace Theodori

     When you are a college student studying archaeology like myself, you come to find that while there is a lot to learn in the classroom, there is still much that can only be taught through experience. That is where field schools come in. A field school is an archaeological dig where students learn the techniques of field archaeology under the supervision of a professional archaeologist. 

     From May 27th to June 5th 2025, I took Juniata University’s field school class. The field school was led by Juniata’s Dr. Jonathan Burns, who had been teaching a field school at Fort Halifax for the last few years. The dig site was at Fort Halifax Park in Halifax, Pa, a small town just north of Harrisburg. When I arrived there on the morning of the first day, I was greeted with the view of  small farm on the eastern shore of the Susquehannock River. Like all the other students there, the first thing I did after arriving was to pitch my tent, where I would be sleeping for the next ten days. 

   

  After our tents were set up, and everyone introduced introduced themselves. Nest, Dr. Burns showed us the tools we would be using. Each student was provided with a spade trowel, a metal file, a plastic scoop, a metric system measuring tape, and a clip board. The trowel was our primary digging tool and the file was to keep a nice sharp edge to the blade for scrapping away at layers of dirt, and for the rest of the dig there was always a chance I would hear scraping sounds of a trowel being sharpened whenever there was a free moment. 

     

Picture of the dig site before excavations began, taken from he south East corner.

     After the tools came a brief history lesson on Fort Halifax. Dr. Burns explained how the fort was constructed in 1756 during the French and Indian War. In charge of the fort was William Clapham, born in Massachusetts and trained as a military engineer. He served the British army in Canada until he accidentally killed a prisoner, leading to him being sent to the Pennsylvania frontier instead. His mission in these borderlands was to build a small fort that was to be used a staging grounds to build a bigger fort. These would turn out to be Fort Halifax and Fort Augusta respectively. Fort Halifax was built right beside the river, near a local sawmill. Clapham, trained as he was, ensured the fort was built in the proper form of forts at the time, a four walled fortress with a bastion at each corner. The fortification would be torn down in 1757 when it was no longer of use. The land the fort once rested on became a farm, and the owners eventually donated the land to Halifax Township to be turned into a township park. 

     Most of the days followed a schedule of waking up, eating breakfast, then beginning the preparations for the days digging. Small canopies would be set up over the areas where we would be digging, and sifting screens would be set up nearby. Then we would dig until we broke for lunch, then dig further before retiring for dinner. In groups of two or three, we would measure a square meter, place pins and tie strings from each pins to outline the walls of the square. We would use shovels to remove the sod, then begin digging with trowels, using the sharpened edge to scrape away at the dirt, and use the plastic scoops to remove the debris, the whole time looking out for artifacts and changes in the soil composition. The dirt removed in excavation would be sifted through as well in order to catch any artifacts that might have been missed the first time around. 

     The skill of artifact recognition was something that had to be learned, and a common occurrence throughout the day was the act of walking over to Dr. Burns to see if what I had found was an artifact or just a rock. Although this was a French and Indian War fort, many of the artifacts found were prehistoric. With shards broken off during the prosses of projectile point creation being a common one. One of the biggest difficulties I had personally was learning to identify prehistoric pottery sherds, since their composition included large quartz grains that made them look similar to the river rock conglomerates found there.

     The frequency of pre-contact artifacts makes sense, the accumulation of thousands of years of history would obviously be more prevalent than the artifacts left behind by only a year of colonial occupation. But that is not to say that no colonial artifacts were found. I personally found a piece of gun flint and several pieces of slag. One other student even found a musket ball! 

             

    Musket Ball                                                            Lithic knapping debris

     We were also educated in the art of paperwork or record keeping. Artifacts had to have their bags labeled, and each layer we dug into had its own sheet of paperwork, which included soil descriptions and drawings of the layer and the rocks sticking out of it. For me it was a pleasant surprise how enjoyable I found the clerical side of digging to be.

     A personal favorite part of the field school was seeing and using some of the more advanced pieces of equipment. One of these was a tripod mounted laser that was pivotal to the organization of the dig site. The dig site itself was organized into a grid of these meter by meter digging squares, and whenever a new one would be opened up, a stick with a reflector on it would be used. The laser would be pointed at the reflector, and a screen on the devise would display the reflector’s height and coordinates relative to itself. This helped ensure that each square was properly aligned with the rest of the grid, making it easier to record where everything was. This same method was also used to record the exact coordinates of the fort specific artifacts. 

     Another really interesting piece of equipment was the magnetometer that was brought out one day by one of Dr. Burns’ colleagues. It was a long metal pole that ends in a T-shape, with a magnetic sensor on each prong and wires leading to a control panel. A harness secures the panel to the body and a strap spans the length of the pole so that the weight can be put on the user’s shoulder. Like a regular metal detector, the magnetometer detects magnetic fields, but the pole is held so that one sensor is higher than the other, the machine can record the change in magnetic fields between the top and bottom sensors, allowing for a more accurate and consistent reading than a metal detector could give.

     I was part of the group of students tasked with taking turns walking up and down the dig site with the sensors recording magnetic readings as we went. Taking turns was necessary, as all the gear was quite heavy. Once the whole of the dig site was surveyed, the panel was hooked up to a computer and we were shown the software used to analyze the data. Unfortunately, during my time digging, none of the areas that were shown to have significant magnetic fields yielded anything of note, but the experience was still a fascinating and enjoyable one none the less. 

     Outside of the digging itself, there were some other very memorable aspect to the field school. Take weather for example, which was hot and sunny on most days, but not all. One particularly chilly day feature a rain shower that halted our excavation, leading to us instead joining another rained out field school on tour of the Pennsylvania State Museum at Dr. Burns suggestion. On another night the was a storm so strong that by the morning not every tent was still standing, though fortunately no one was hurt. 

     Something else that kept the experience interesting which was the food, provided to the field school by the Friends of Fort Halifax, who run the park. Some days we had pizza, while other days forced me to expand my pallet, such as the string bean soup that I ended up quite enjoying.  

     The final part of the field school I would like to touch on is the people. My classmates were an enjoyable lot, and we all quickly developed a sense of comradery that made for a wonderful environment. Dr. Burns was a great teacher and I was able to learn a lot about archaeology from him. I am also glad I got to meet all the various colleagues and former students  of Dr. Burns who stopped by, who were all pleasures to chat with and dig along side. 

     All in all, it was a great experience, and it has only strengthened my love for archaeology. 

Picture of the Students and Staff