The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Uncovering history at Fort Stanwix
Dr. Amy Roache-Fedchenko: Archaeologist uncovers history at Fort Stanwix
ROME » Dr. Amy Roache-Fedchenko used to enjoy digging holes when she was a youngster, on what she called “a mission to find treasure.” Today, she’s still digging … only now she makes a living doing it, and the treasures she finds are much more important to not only the people of today but the people of the future.
Now an archaeologist working to unearth the past lives at and around the Fort Stanwix national monument in Rome, Roache-Fedchenko had the chance to meet with local history enthusiasts Oct. 7 during the fourth annual International Archeology Day event held there and at sites across the world.
“It is exciting to be a part of a worldwide archeology celebration,” Roache-Fedchenko said while showing some of the many relics of the past nowon display at the fort.
Known as “The Fort that Never Surrendered,” Fort Stanwix was commanded by Col. Peter Gansevoort, who with his soldiers successfully repelled a long siege of the British and their allies in August 1777. Fort Stanwix troops protected the northeast frontier until the fort was abandoned in 1781.
Roache-Fedchenko explained to her guests that some onethird of the Fort Stanwix site was excavated during the 1970s, although she wasn’t involved at the time, and they to this day have never found the poten- tially-artifact rich outbuildings of the original fort.
She has worked at the fort for eight years in the cultural resources division, helping to create the displays of artifacts now available for public inspection. Many of items on exhibit are actually from generations that were there after the days of the Revolutionary War, including an early license plate of the 1920s and some kids’ toys likely belonging to former resident Dr. Kingsley’s children.
“You never know what you are going to find … people lose things or throw them away, and then we find them,” Roache-Fedchenko said, explaining that trash of the past was often left right there in buried pits on the premises. Now, that trash has become valued historical treasure to the artifact seekers.
One of the biggest recent discoveries was an old piece of exploded mortar found in 2013. It was found in a derelict trash pit that dated back to a siege on the fort back in the war. It had to be British, as the Americans did not use those mortars, RoacheFedchenko explained.
That was a fun and exciting discovery, she said.
Roache-Fedchenko is a native of Flint, Michigan, where her home was the site of those backyard holes she dug when she was younger. By seventh grade, she had already decided that archeology would be her chosen profession. She attended Michigan State University, and recalled an incredible discovery on her very first real archeological dig. She was in the middle of a field when she dug out a perfectly-shaped arrowhead that had been there for centuries.
“I was the first person to touch that in all of those years,” she said. “After that I was hooked.”
A scuba diving visit to a shipwreck also made a lasting impression on Roache-Fedchenko. There were 40 seamen who lost their lives in that incident, and she could feel the ghosts of those men and the catastrophic effects that disaster had on the lives of their friends and family, she said.
“That really taught me the reverence of what I was doing,” she explained.
Roache-Fedchenko came to Central New York when she attended Syracuse University for their doctorate program. She and husband Nick Fedchenko now live in Oneida, with their three children, Nico, Drago, and Amelia.
Working at Fort Stanwix gives her the chance to take care of the artifacts discovered there, attempting to identify everything as well as possible with available historical reference material. Sometimes they even have ledgers describing items they are trying to ID, RoacheFedchenko said, but even those can need a bit of work to decipher the writing.
“Some of the handwriting was pretty atrocious back then,” she said.
The thrill of a new discovery is still a big motivator to her, as is the pursuit of the lives of the past and then striving to let the people of today know about those predecessors. RoacheFedchenko’s said her work isn’t only about delving into the days gone by, but doing a study of the past that hopefully can help educate the people of the future.
“I want to learn about the past, to help make a better future,” she said. “Archeologists study human culture based on the things left behind … all of these things tell a story about us.”
For more information on any Fort Stanwix activity, visit: www.nps.gov/fost