Story by Katie Schanze
A large clump of dirt flies past my face and lands in a sifting tray five feet away, carefully arranged over a wheel barrow that’s already half full. The man with the dirt-flinging shovel knows his mark landed and barely looks up before collecting the next scoop from the mound near his feet.
I’m in a sunny field on a perfect October day in Burke County, a ten minute drive from Morganton on backroads, mountains standing guard in the distance. And dirt is flying all around me.
Amid the chorus of voices, the earthy scraping of dirt in the sifting trays and the quiet squeak of wheel barrows, someone calls out, “Hey, Abra, come take a look at this!”
Abra Johgart is an archaeologist and the lab assistant for the archeology crew at Warren Wilson College. This week she’s filling in for leader, Dr. David Moore, the director of the field school at the Berry Site and a professor of archaeology at Warren Wilson. Today, Abra leads a group of seven volunteers from the Exploring Joara Foundation in excavation.
“This is older than most points we find out here,” Abra says, taking a look at the cause for excitement. She holds what looks like a stone arrowhead. “This is over 1,000 years old.”
The group collectively admires the find for just a moment before turning back to its tasks. 1,000 year old artifacts? For volunteers at the Berry Site, it’s all in a day’s work.
Named for the family that owns the land, the Berry Site is home to the remnants of Fort San Juan. In the 1560s the fort was home to Spanish explorers. Built in the same area as the Indian village Joara and founded before the arrival of the English– nearly 40 years before Jamestown, Fort San Juan is believed to be the earliest European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States.
Although the Spanish had built forts on the coast, according to Abra, Fort San Juan was their attempt to colonize America. “Establishing forts inland was them saying ‘we’re here to stay,’” she says.
Abra notes that the Spanish and local Native Americans were getting along at one point, but eventually, the Native Americans, perhaps tired of the encroachment, “fought back” and forced the Spanish explorers out. Thanks to Spanish documents, we know that the fort was abandoned after only 18 months. The historical implications aren’t lost on Abra.
“It would have changed American history,” she says. “If the Spanish had been allowed to stay longer, they probably would have found gold in this area, but since the Native Americans fought back, the Spanish didn’t have a chance. They didn’t know it was here, they didn’t see any reason to stay. But if they had found gold, they would have stayed.”
For many North Carolinians, this historically profound site, which is essentially in their backyard, doesn’t exist. Those who work at the Berry Site want to change that.
“It’s important to have this in the history books, because in school, students are taught so much about the English colonies, and how important the English were, but there were other people who were here at the same time who were doing important things, they just didn’t happen to win,” Abra says. “It’s important to teach people about that, because they were here, too.”
Educating others about the history of Fort San Juan is important to Abra and the volunteers who dedicate their time to the excavation of the fort. It’s also a way to give back to a community that’s essential to the site’s ongoing excavations.
A wide variety of volunteers come to work and dig at the site, and no one is excluded. Volunteers range from local community members with no archaeological experience to retired archaeologists.
Volunteer Annie Vogt has an archaeology background, but hadn’t worked in the field for years. “When I found out that you could volunteer on occasion I thought, ‘well, it would be good to get my hands back in the dirt,’” she says. “Every once in a while it’s just fun to get dirty.”
Archaeologist Melody Hollinger is currently volunteering at the site through the Exploring Joara Foundation. “This is exactly what I love to do,” she says. “Science, communication, and archaeological communication with the public– going into libraries and school groups and talking to people about the ethics of cultural stewardship. It’s exactly what the Exploring Joara Foundation does. They have such an incredible impact in the area and this site is incredible.”
In addition, college students from Warren Wilson College and Tulane University, high school students and school children in summer camps come to volunteer during the excavation season from spring to fall. The site provides unique opportunities for learning that classroom lessons can’t.
“It’s a great way to get people interested and a great way to make people care about what we’re doing,” Abra says. “I love having high school students and seeing them grow with a love for history.”
“I had no idea about the site before the field school,” says Max Martin, a high school sophomore from Rutherfordton. “I expected to find nothing, but in the first five minutes we found a Spaniard nail, which was incredible.”
Giving students an opportunity to learn in a unique way is important and gets them more involved, helping to bypass the simplification of history in schools, according to Calvin Wheat, a seventh grade social studies teacher at Sousa Middle School in Washington, D.C. and a recent graduate of nearby Appalachian State University.
“I think that the age old question every Social Studies teacher faces with content is do we teach a mile wide and an inch deep or vice versa? Standards are as limited or open as you can make them; it’s really up to every individual teacher,” he says.
For Max and other students who will visit the site with their classes, the experience goes beyond the excitement of a field trip. “This has made me realize how much of an interest I have in history,” he says.
Abra turns the spearhead over in her hands and walks off to catalog the find. Just one of thousands of artifacts at the Berry Site, what other secrets are still beneath the dirt? As the excavating season comes to a close this fall, those secrets might stay hidden a bit longer, but the discoveries to come are sure to captivate students, volunteers and archaeologists alike.
“Who wouldn’t want to work on this site?” Melody says. “It’s just amazing.”
