Public Archeology Facility: Bearing the Bones of Public Humanities

Welcome to “ Confluence: Humanities in the Public Sphere”, an IASH sponsored podcast on public humanities. In this episode we are joined by Dr. Laurie Miroff, the Director of the Public Archaeology Facility. The PAF is an archaeology firm at Binghamton University (Binghamton, NY) organized in 1972 to provide cultural resource management (CRM) services to clients throughout the Northeastern United States, but with a focus on New York State and Pennsylvania. Dr. Miroff talks to us about the work that the PAF does with the community, schools and so on. She shares with us some interesting stories about the findings of the University Downtown Center sites. She also talks to us about the value of objects people find in the backyard, and gives us helpful tips on what not to do while digging.

For more information: https://www.binghamton.edu/programs/public-archaeology-facility/index.html

Transcript

Shruti: 00:00

Welcome to Confluence humanities in the public sphere, and AI ash sponsored podcast, where we discuss various public humanities projects on campus as well as elsewhere. Today, we are joined by Dr. Laurie Miroff, the director of the Public archaeology facility.

Dr. Miroff talks to us about the work that the PAF does with the community, schools and so on. She also shares with us some interesting stories about the findings of the University Downtown Center sites. She also talks to us about the value of objects people find in the backyard, and gives us helpful tips on what not to do while digging.

Could you please explain to our audience what the public archaeology facility is?

Dr. Miroff: 00:51

Sure. So the public archaeology facility is an organized research center here on Binghamton University's campus. Our primary mission is to help clients comply with state and federal legislation that protects Heritage Resources. That that's mostly what we do. We're a cultural resource management firm. So anytime state or federal money or permitting is involved, we go out and we make sure that cultural resources are not going to be disturbed by the activities, mostly ground disturbing activities that might impact buried cultural resources. But we also look at standing structures as well, historic standing structures. So that's our primary mission. But we also have some other very important missions. We conduct research based on these cultural resource management or CRM projects, but also other types of projects that we do. We work with the American battlefield Protection Program, doing independent research, that's not part of a contract. It's part of a grant. We also have National Park Service grant that we conduct research on and, and a National Science Foundation grant.

So research is another part of our mission. A third part of our mission is research is, its training students. We train undergraduate and graduate students to become professional archaeologists. And our fourth mission. Fourth part of our mission is to do community outreach, so to do what, what is sometimes termed public archaeology, and engage with the community.

Right? So that would mean that community outreach becomes like an inherent part of PF. Absolutely. Since PAF was first founded outreach to the community, whether it be descendant communities or the communities at large, it has been part of our mission.

Shruti: 2:53

That's amazing. When, When was this initiative started and why?

Dr. Miroff: 2:59

PAF really has its foundation in federal legislation. So in 1966, the National Historic Preservation Act was passed. And what that did was, it's told it told federal organizations, whether it be a federal project, or federal money was involved. It says that cultural resources had to be considered in that project. And if there were significant cultural resources and significance is defined by the law. If there were significant cultural heritage resources, then they either had to avoid them, or they had to mitigate them. So they had to do something to minimize their impacts. And a lot of times that might be archaeological investigation or an architectural survey. So PF was founded right around that time when the legislation was passed to help federal agencies comply. And really the big first agency that Piaf worked with was the Department of Transportation for New York State. And we continue to work with them, because at that time, they were building all the interstate highways. And so Piaf was one of many firms in the state, helping D O T to comply with the new federal legislation. Since that time, there have been numerous state laws around the country, there have been local laws. So we also help clients comply with those more local laws as well.

Shruti: 4:33

So I'm sorry if this sounds really stupid, but I don't know anything about this. So

what do you mean when you say that you help clients comply with these laws? 

Dr. Miroff: 4:34

So since the laws say that anytime state or federal money or permitting is involved, they have to consider how what they're doing is going to impact the heritage resources that are within that that property. So we, to help them comply with that legislation by first going out and seeing if there are any cultural heritage resources. And the way we do that for resources that are below ground is we conduct an archeological survey, we dig small round holes called shovel test pits every 50 feet. And we dig them straight down, looking at the different soils, the different soil colors, the stratigraphy as we go down, and the soil is passed through a screen to look for any artifacts, any material culture. So that's phase one, it's just to see whether or not there's an archaeological site there. If there is, we would go back to the client and say, just like I said, with the National Historic Preservation Act, we'd say, it'd be better if you did your project somewhere else and avoided this site. A lot of times they say, No, we can't. So the law allows a second step. And that's when we would go out. And we would do what we call units there, typically one meter by one meter, or about three feet on the side. And that gives us a bigger and better window into those buried cultural resources.

Once we investigate the site at that phase, we can determine whether or not the site is significant, whether it has research potential, whether it's, it's eligible for the national or state Register of Historic Places, if it is eligible for the National Register. Again, we would say you could avoid the site or mitigate. So mitigate is the final step in this process in terms of archaeology, and we do a phase three is called a data recovery. And we would go out and we would do more work. And that might involve more of those units. It might involve following the units taking mechanical equipment and removing the top layers of soil to look for features like hards or storage pits, where if you're on a historic site, maybe a building foundation or a well or a privy. And that's the mitigation that's trying to recover enough information from the site before it's going to be impacted by construction, so that you can answer research questions about that site, thereby mitigating the construction impacts.

Shruti: 7:17

So when the university downtown center was being built, did you have to go through a similar process? Can you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. When the Downtown Center was built, we so the first step, really, if you step back even further is we go through all of the historic records that we can find. So we'll go through all the historic maps to see what had been on that parcel. Going back, as far as the maps go back into the night, early 19th century, sometimes there are much more general maps that are that are, you know, right at the turn of the century. So we'll see what was there. We can also go back through deed and census records to see who lived on that piece of property. And you know, that was a big piece of property. So there were lots of smaller parcels in the in the 19th century.

Then the excavation, because it was all paved involves removing the asphalt. And there are a lot of times people have this idea when you go downtown and you think well, everything's been covered, is covered with asphalt or a building. But actually, underneath that asphalt preserved underneath there are the remains of these 19th century commercial businesses or personal homes. And even below that we find pre contact indigenous archaeological sites.

So that's what we did downtown, we removed the asphalt, we found foundations, we found privies. Below that, we found an archaeological site dating back to the 1200s. And evidence that people had lived there going all the way back to about 4000 BC. It's right at that confluence of two major rivers, the Shenango, and the Susquehanna. So it's a perfect place for indigenous people, and then historic people, Europeans to occupy. And if you go downtown in the academic center, you'll see that we have an exhibit. Some of the artifacts that were found on the parcel and in the floor are mapped out the historic foundations and wells and previz.

Shruti: 9:25

Wow, that's incredible. 

Dr. Miroff: 9:26

Yeah, I encourage everyone to go it's a really nice exhibit that was put together.

Shruti: 9:32

That's amazing. I was also thinking if you could talk a little bit about the work you do with the public schools in the Binghamton area?

Dr. Miroff: 9:40

Sure, sure. So part of our outreach is in and I could talk about this forever because I really do love the public outreach part of it. Part of our outreach has been going into schools and talking to students career days talking about archaeology. We also ended

A school groups to come into our lab. So if teachers say to us, Hey, we're studying local precontact history, we'll say come on in and we'll give you a tour of our lab, we'll talk to you about archaeology, we'll talk to you about some of the things that we've found.

We go to the Binghamton University mall days, we go to First Fridays,

we invite people out for tours of our sites, if it's safe. We've gone to Earth days. So we kind of go anywhere that people ask us to go libraries, historical societies, so we give talks very, a lot. But this initiative going out into the schools, we kind of ramped it up with a National Science Foundation grant. In 2020, we're we're awarded an advancing informal STEM learning grant.

And so what we have done, and we just finished our last session last week, we went into three rural middle schools, and worked with students in grades six through eight. We did 10 week sessions. And all told between the three schools, we did six of those sessions. And the idea was to teach STEM science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but teach STEM through archaeology. So we would take an archaeological concept, and we would focus on the stem concept. So we might throw a use a spear thrower called an activity, and throw spears with the students. And they love that and they have lots of fun. But what we would do is talk about the physics behind that, about why an atlatl was used, what it does with a dart does it make it go further as I make it go faster, we talk about levers. So that's kind of that was kind of the idea of it. Each week, we would take a different archaeological topic and focus on the stem concept. By about week six, we have the students get into small groups. And they came up with a research question and then a hypothesis. And then develop their own method of testing that hypothesis. When they had their they worked with the data, they came up with their conclusions. And then they did a poster just like anyone would do for a conference for a poster session. And then they presented the posters at a capstone event where we invited the families, and the administrators and the teachers and the students stood by their posters and talked about what they did. And the students did things like they love the atlatl. So a lot of them would work with that. So they would test whether or not a five foot tart Dart went farther than a six foot Dart, or does a person's height impact how far a dart would be thrown. The method of throwing does that impact the distance, some of them made little stone tools, and they figure out whether or not a big one or a small one could cut leather better, or does a stone tool or bone tool or wooden tool cutter root vegetable better. So that was that was kind of the culmination of the 10 weeks were these experiments and their their final research posters.

Shruti: 13:26

That sounds really fun, really. 

Dr. Miroff: 13:27

It was a lot of fun. That was fun.

So that was just one of the things the other the other thing that we do a lot of is, in the summer, we run a community archaeology program. And we've started that in 1996. And we've run it every year, we did miss two COVID years, unfortunately, but this was our 25th time running it this past summer. We started out in 96. With I would say maybe 10 individuals, it was just a program for adults. And we defined adults as anyone 16 and above. So we had a few 16 year olds, and then we had some retirees. And we went out we excavated at a site for a week. The reason why we developed it was that we'd go out, we'd give all of these talks and community members would say, Well, how can I do this? How can I how can I participate? How can I do archaeology? And we'd say, well, you really need to take an archaeological field school to come and work with us in a professional capacity. So what we did was we developed the community archaeology program or cap so that the public could come out and experience archaeology alongside professional archaeologists. So since that initial program in 1996, we've grown to three programs. We have a program still for adults, but we have one for teens and for kids as well. And we have anywhere between 50 and 60 individuals every summer coming out and working with us on archaeological site.

Shruti: 14:57

Wow. So do people sign up for this summer…?

Dr. Miroff: 15:02

Yes, yes, if you go to the public archaeology facility or the community archaeology program websites, either one of those, they can register for the summer program, we hold it every July, usually the second or third week in July. Good. This is really fun. I'm gonna go to listen about your project and and I've been doing for so many years, for so many years. So we've been at it for quite a while we do a lot of other I'm sure I've missed a whole bunch of smaller things that we do. But we really do go out into the community. Anytime anyone asks us, we've we, it's very rare that we say no. And when we say no, it's usually because we have a conflict.

Shruti: 15:44

That's great. I just want to ask one last question. Do people call you with stuff they found while digging in their backyard or something like that. 

Dr. Miroff: 15:49

They often call me with objects that they find. And they want to know what they are. And if they're anything, a lot of times they're they're not cultural, they're natural objects. And it's it's very difficult to disappoint people. They've often they often have in their mind what they think it is. And it's very disheartening when we have to say no, I'm sorry, it's not cultural, it's natural. But we do that very often people will bring objects to the university for us to look through hell is a very good question that happens a lot.

Shruti: 16:31

Is there any like particular object that has stayed in your memory? 

Dr. Miroff: 16:32

That someone has brought us? 

Yeah, um, you know, to be honest, the last few times they've, everything has been natural. But you know, we do get people, a lot of times people will pick up projectile points, what you see is a generic name for an arrowhead. There either arrowheads or darts or spear points. So we do find people that will show us those, we always, we always try to discourage people from digging or collecting. Because archaeology is a field where knowing where an object was found, and what it was found with, allows us to tell the story of the past. So when someone brings me a whole bunch of artifacts, they're really neat, and it's nice to look at them. But I can only tell you that it's an arrowhead or a spear point, and maybe how old it is. But it can't tell you about the people who lived in the past. And that's what archaeology is. It's not the objects. It's telling the story of how people lived in the past. So we try to discourage people from definitely from digging, because there there is a way to excavate that will preserve that information. And then we try to get people discourage them from walking cloud fields and collecting as well. But we know that it happens and when people do we just ask them to try to record where they're finding the objects, because that gives us a one other line of evidence to help us put together all those pieces and tell the story of the past.

Shruti: 18:08

That was absolutely riveting. Thank you so much for joining us. Amazing. 

Dr. Miroff: 18:09

Thank you very much for asking.