St. Joseph’s High School student Mike Vincent has spent the past four weeks sitting in a dirt hole.

As a student in the high school’s archeology program, Vincent has been on an archeological dig at Fort Willow with his fellow classmates, uncovering historical artifacts.

“It’s everything that was actually touched and the things that were really there,” Vincent said. “It makes history more alive.”

St. Joseph’s High School teacher Trevor Carter started the archeological course four years ago to give students a new perspective on history research.

“They have done the textbooks, documents, internet and photographs research,” he said. “Here is a chance to do a whole different branch of research. For them, it is a chance to appreciate the other half of historical research.”

Carter is licensed by the Ministry of Culture to conduct the digs and ensures the students follow the same procedures as the professionals.

“I have run field schools for McMaster and Wilfrid Laurier University. They are doing work that is the equivalent to that,” Carter said. “After this course is over they could easily be hired on by a consulting company.”

Carter said though Fort Willow is the perfect place for the program because although it was excavated in the late 1950s, there were no “substantial reports” made and experts don’t know exactly what was excavated or found.

“Part of the program is to see what was left behind and confirm the conclusions about the buildings that were here,” he said. “In the past few years we have been able to confirm some of the buildings, which has been very useful.”

Students spend three months in the classroom learning the history and theory of archeology.

They are also introduced to the method they will use in the field and learn a little bit about the history of the Fort Willow site.

The class then heads outdoors to the site for five weeks.

At the end of the dig, students will spend one week back in the classroom reviewing their experiences.

The St. Joseph’s team has uncovered more than 3,000 artifacts at Fort Willow since the program began, including pottery, trade items, musket balls, military buttons and even a pair of scissors.

Carter said the students excavate stratigraphically, layer by layer, with each layer representing a different place in time.

“Once they get through the modern layers they get to the war of 1812 layers when this was a British fort,” he said. “Then you get to the portage layers when this was a popular site for the natives … then they hit sub-soil. Sub-soil is the ice age layer when there was no one here.”

Vincent admits the dig is a long process, but said he has enjoyed it every step of the way.

“You start by taking off the first layer, which is just the grass. Then we take our trowel and just go millimetre by millimetre until we find a new layer,” he said. “You go though and look for very subtle changes in the dirt. Some of these changes are pretty hard to notice.”

Vincent, who has always had an interest in history, said he originally signed up for the course to see what archeology was all about. Vincent now hopes to study archeology after high school.

“It’s been really fun. It has given me a new element to history,” he said. “Before, I saw it as words on a page, but now I actually see the physical part to it.”