Archaeology center moving to Sandstone Village

by JOHN LASKO

News-Times reporter

Come August, the Firelands Archaeological Research Center (FARC) will have a new home at the Amherst Sandstone Village.

A 28X28 foot building will house the group's research center; it will be located between the old car garage and the art gallery. The building was designed by Amherst councilman-at-large and Amherst Historical Society member Terry Traster.

"The old Indian trail actually went right down North Ridge Road. It went from Pittsburgh to Detroit because they walked on the old lake banks and when you go (west) down the road, it drops off on both sides. There would have probably been a lake on one side and marshy on the other side and what better place to have an archaeological research center then right here off the Indian trial?" Ron Sauer said.

Sauer has spent the last 10 years as curator and assumed the role of president of the Amherst Historical Society in February.

The facade of the building will be made to look older and will be constructed of sandstone to fit in with the other old sandstone buildings.

"I offered them a chance to come here because I thought it would be a win-win situation for our historical society and for them," Sauer said. " I thought they could help us out whenever we have events here, plus the fact we would have activity here in the winter time when they are doing all of their archaeological work and research."

For years, the group has called an old garage at the Milan Historical Society Museum home.

Since they tore the garage down last year, the group has moved to the basement of president Brian Scanlan's North Ridge Road home.

"We're really excited about having a place to have the center, not in a private home, but in a place where everybody can come and have access to and it kind of centralizes everything," Brian Redmond, with both FARC and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History said.

In order to pay for the for the new research center, Sauer will be holding a public auction in August to raise the $10,000 needed to construct the building.

"We have a lot of old light fixtures, we have an outhouse heater, we have a lot of architectural antiques here, we're going to some have old furniture, old glassware, Indian artifacts from my personal collection for this. We're going to have a lot of other historical artifacts for sale and it's going to be a very diverse auction, but everything we will have will be of high quality," he said.

Other monetary funds will come from donations made by members of FARC and the Amherst Historical Society.

The historical society has hired Amherst-based Majzun Construction Company for constructing the shell of the building.

FARC will be responsible for completing the inside of the building once all the exterior work is completed.

"I feel proud and happy to have them here and I believe this is going to be exciting and I think other people are starting to get excited about archaeology," he said.

Currently, the team is in the process of doing an archaeological dig on the Burrell Farm located in Sheffield Village, as part of FARC's field school program.

Based on the types of flint spear points and evidence of cooking fires and roasting pits found there, Redmond and his team believe they have stumbled upon a Native-American camp site nearly 5,000 years old.

"The important sites are on the old historic trail systems that settlers used and a lot of those go back to pre-history and they were Native-American trails and so it's all linked together," Redmond said.

Once the building is completed, residents will be invited to see archeologists at work cleaning and cataloging artifacts in order to find out just how old the site really is, as well as learning about the rich history which lies in their own backyards.

"It's good for people to know archaeologists are studying Native-American history but also to know that this place is about history and it plays in to that as well," he said.

FARC is also affiliated with both the University of Toledo and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.