KOUTS | The summer ritual of uncovering bits of southern Porter County's history has been put on hold.
For almost a decade, the students and faculty from Notre Dame's Archaeology Field School have worked side by side with volunteers from the Kankakee Valley Historical Society to dig in the dirt.
Excavating a site rich with history at Collier Lodge, the group spent weeks each summer sifting through carefully extracted dirt and pebbles to find shards of pottery, bones and arrow heads, bringing samples back to the lab and classroom where they could be studied.
But now Notre Dame is moving on, said Mark Schurr, associate dean for the social sciences and research.
"We worked there for nine years and we got a really big sample of the kind of archeology that's available at the site, and as an archeologist we look to learn things. At this site, we are nearing the point of diminishing returns," Shurr said.
That doesn’t mean that there is no work left to be done at the site, but Schurr said it will not be conducted by their team.
"As a rule, you never excavate the entire site, because people will come along in the future with better technology. We got the site on the national register, got a lot of sample to study, so we accomplished what we wanted to find out there," he said.
John Hodson, president of the Kankakee Valley Historical Society, said his group plans to continue work at the site, but not this year.
“We’re planning on doing future digs, but we’re not sure who is going to head up our next one. We still have our memorandum of understanding with Notre Dame, and we are still working with them, but we’re just not doing the dig this year,” Hodson said.
“I’ve talked with the state archeology department and they agreed the digs should continue, it’s just a matter of finding the right person. It could be that another archeologist at Notre Dame continues with us, or an archeologist at Indiana University South Bend. ... We have a lot of feelers out,” Hodson said.
Schurr and his team will instead move to its next site, Bailly Homestead, in conjunction with teams from Indiana University South Bend and the National Park Service. He said some excavation was done at the site in the 1970s but not using modern standards.
"We’re going to get a sense of what the archeology is like at the site, especially from the Joseph Bailly era,” Schurr said.
For almost a decade, the students and faculty from Notre Dame's Archaeology Field School have worked side by side with volunteers from the Kankakee Valley Historical Society to dig in the dirt.
Excavating a site rich with history at Collier Lodge, the group spent weeks each summer sifting through carefully extracted dirt and pebbles to find shards of pottery, bones and arrow heads, bringing samples back to the lab and classroom where they could be studied.
But now Notre Dame is moving on, said Mark Schurr, associate dean for the social sciences and research.
"We worked there for nine years and we got a really big sample of the kind of archeology that's available at the site, and as an archeologist we look to learn things. At this site, we are nearing the point of diminishing returns," Shurr said.
That doesn’t mean that there is no work left to be done at the site, but Schurr said it will not be conducted by their team.
"As a rule, you never excavate the entire site, because people will come along in the future with better technology. We got the site on the national register, got a lot of sample to study, so we accomplished what we wanted to find out there," he said.
John Hodson, president of the Kankakee Valley Historical Society, said his group plans to continue work at the site, but not this year.
“We’re planning on doing future digs, but we’re not sure who is going to head up our next one. We still have our memorandum of understanding with Notre Dame, and we are still working with them, but we’re just not doing the dig this year,” Hodson said.
“I’ve talked with the state archeology department and they agreed the digs should continue, it’s just a matter of finding the right person. It could be that another archeologist at Notre Dame continues with us, or an archeologist at Indiana University South Bend. ... We have a lot of feelers out,” Hodson said.
Schurr and his team will instead move to its next site, Bailly Homestead, in conjunction with teams from Indiana University South Bend and the National Park Service. He said some excavation was done at the site in the 1970s but not using modern standards.
"We’re going to get a sense of what the archeology is like at the site, especially from the Joseph Bailly era,” Schurr said.
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