Unearthing an 18th-century smallpox hospital
Skidmore's Zankel Experience Network (ZEN) ensures that experiential learning isn’t just an added benefit at Skidmore; it’s a cornerstone of our liberal arts education.
Every year, many Skidmore students choose to continue their education into the summer months by participating in collaborative research opportunities. These experiences range from studying the environmental impact of the spongy moth to exploring serial letter processing effects in children and adults, allowing students to practice creative thought as they work closely with faculty, learn important skills, and contribute meaningfully to fields of research that they are passionate about.
When offered a chance to dedicate five weeks of their summer vacation to gaining invaluable archeological experience and making a difference for their local community, Lily Whelden ’25, Cerys Forster ’26, and their collaborating faculty member, Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology Siobhan Hart, dug in.
The group conducted research out at Lake George Battlefield Park, a 35-acre section of protected land that is home to several French and Indian War and Revolutionary War battle sites. The subject of Whelden, Forster, and Hart’s studies was a small, fielded area, now a section of day-use sites, believed to have once housed a Revolutionary War-era smallpox hospital.
“There's something special about getting to work one-on-one — two-on-one in this case — with a professor,” said Whelden, who is pursuing a double major in anthropology and classics, as well as a minor in international affairs. “I've known Professor Hart since I was a first-year student, so, it feels natural to be working with her and getting to do something like this.”
Before Hart’s involvement, the Battlefield location had been run as a field school for many years, but Hart decided to take the enterprise in a slightly different direction, turning the project into an opportunity for intimate collaborative research.
“Going in, I knew that I wasn’t going to run a big 15-20-person field school. I've done that before; it doesn't fit with what I am doing now. But I do collaborative research every summer. I thought this was a great opportunity to bring students who have had some excavation experience somewhere where they can really dig their teeth into the ground penetrating radar (GPR) tool, but also for students to do the heritage work of archeology in a context where you have so many different stakeholders,” Hart reflected.
Lily Whelden ’25 uses the GPR to map underground anomalies at the study site.
Both Whelden and Forster participated in Hart’s Archaeological Field Methods course in the fall, where they conducted research on the Denton homesite, an 18th-century farmstead in Skidmore's North Woods. Their impressive academic performance led Hart to invite them to help with similar research at the Battlefield site.
With data from the GPR, the team were able to work together to map underground structures, pinpoint anomalies, and noninvasively establish where they planned to excavate.
“It's been interesting to learn not only how the GPR works and how to use it, but also how to process the data so we can see the layers in the ground on a 3D screen. The GPR equipment, it's not rare, but it's expensive, so it's unique for a student to have this type of opportunity,” Forster, an anthropology and Spanish double major and media and film studies minor, said.
The project’s public setting and the team’s collaboration with multiple stakeholders also meant that Forster and Whelden were required to guide volunteers, interact with various media outlets, and maintain a research space that needed to be dismantled at the end of each day.
According to Hart, Whelden and Forster embraced leadership roles throughout their research at Lake George.
Lily and Cerys are as much in the driver's seat in this as I am. We have a rotation where maybe two of us will be doing something field related, and the third is processing images or working on mapping. When people come through and have questions, it's any one of the three of us that they're engaging with.Siobhan HartAssociate Professor and Chair of Anthropology
At the end of the five-week Faculty Student Summer Research effort, all artifacts uncovered (which included pieces from glass bottles, a bullet, and a lithic flake) were catalogued extensively in a Skidmore lab before being sent to the New York State Museum in Albany. The group also identified slabs of bedrock that they believe may have served as the bastion’s flooring and a trash pit full of animal bone — most likely pig.
Lily Whelden ’25 and Cerys Forster ’26 work together to catalogue their findings before they are sent to the New York State Museum.
For Whelden and Forster, the experience they gained from working at the Battlefield site runs even deeper than their findings. Whelden spoke about how her studies built on previous classroom experiences.
“M Scribner Seminar was about archeology in the media — about how archeology is portrayed in movies and in non-academic writing and how to take that, pick out the truths and then relay those to people. For example, ,” Whelden said, reflecting on the publicity of their work at Battlefield. “At the Battlefield site, I got to develop these skills even further. It can be hard to talk about archeology with people who don't know what is going on. They think of it as just digging when it can also be ground surveying, GPR; it can be sitting and drawing what you're seeing.”
Forster echoed Whelden’s sentiments, emphasizing her educational growth and real-world impact of their work.
We've learned a lot about what it's like to just be in a professional archeological environment — what we’re doing here is going to have an impact. It is important to a lot of people, and I feel like adding that context and social understanding has taught me a lot about the professionalism and public perception of archeology.Cerys Forster ’26
The Faculty Student Summer Research Program is part of the Zankel Experience Network (ZEN). ZEN was established in 2020 by Jimmy Zankel ’92 and Pia Scala-Zankel ’92 to build on and encourage the support of like-minded donors who hope to expand Skidmore’s commitment to experiential learning, which also includes the Summer Experience Fund, SEE-Beyond Awards, and the ZEN Alumni Mentoring Program.
