IUP’s Department of Anthropology has been selected by the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine Inc. through the Department of Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to conduct a field study in Germany at the site of a 1944 crash of a World War II airplane.
Nine undergraduate students and two graduate students from IUP have joined three students from other universities and a linguist to take part in the field school, scheduled from July 3 to August 15.
IUP Anthropology faculty members Andrea Palmiotto (project director) and William Chadwick are directing the field school.
Before joining the IUP faculty, Palmiotto was a research fellow and then a forensic anthropologist for the DPAA, working at agency laboratories in Nebraska and Hawaii. She worked on cases related to WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War and led archaeological recovery efforts in Vietnam and Laos.
“When I came to IUP, I knew I wanted to maintain that relationship, and I was sure that IUP would be a great fit for a partnership, because of the expertise and experience our faculty have,” she said.
“This is the first time that IUP has worked with this agency,” she said. “We started discussions before the pandemic, and, thankfully, we are able to have the field school this summer.”
The mission of the DPAA is to provide the fullest possible accounting of missing personnel from the nation’s past conflicts to their families and to the nation. Under the direction of the secretary of defense, the agency was established on Jan. 30, 2015, to consolidate all aspects of the defense department’s accounting community (policy, research, investigations, operations, identifications, and family communications) into a single, accountable defense agency, with a vision of increasing the number of missing personnel accounted for from the nation’s past conflicts, while ensuring timely and accurate information is communicated to their families.
“Our partners, like Indiana University of Pennsylvania, enhance the success of the DPAA mission to provide the fullest possible accounting to the families whose service members remain unaccounted for,” Thomas Holland, DPAA Partnerships and Innovations director, said.
Chadwick also brings extensive experience in applied archaeology. He is a registered professional archaeologist and licensed geologist who has broad experience in both geoarchaeology and archaeology. Before joining the IUP faculty, he worked within cultural resource management as a consultant for more than 17 years.
Palmiotto and Chadwick noted that aircraft crash sites are “notoriously hard to dig,” because it’s very challenging to determine the scatter of materials created by the crash. The site has been under study since 2012.
“Previous teams have defined the location based on some metal detecting but hadn’t really defined the extent of the area based on excavation, so we’re not completely sure of the boundaries of the location,” Chadwick said.
The student members of the team had to apply to participate in the project. Most had previous field experience, and about half participated in a six-week archaeological field school directed by Chadwick and Ben Ford that ended in June. The students from that previous field school have all had experience with ground penetrating radar, which will be used at the site in Germany.
“The GPR will be a very important tool to determine the extent of the crater,” Chadwick said. “We need to make sure we get to the bottom of the feature.”
“The airplane exploded before crashing, so we know that what we find will be fragmented, and, on top of that, it’s been in the ground for more than 70 years, so everything there will be in rough condition,” Palmiotto said.
Both agreed that this project is an “incredible experience” for the IUP student participants.
IUP’s program, especially the MA in Applied Archaeology, continues to get recognition for providing students with practical experiences outside of the classroom, Chadwick said.
“This kind of project is one of the things that makes IUP’s program stand out, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels,” Chadwick said. “We constantly get feedback from employers about how well prepared and trained our graduates are when they enter the workforce. IUP has been recognized as being typically within the top 10 schools each year producing registered professional archaeologists in the nation,” he said.
It will take about a year to analyze any materials found by the IUP team at the site. This analysis will be done at a DPAA laboratory.
“This is an amazing opportunity, and speaking for the entire team, we are very honored and proud to be part of this humanitarian mission and this partnership,” Palmiotto said. “The confidence that they have placed in us and in our expertise is extremely humbling and gratifying.”
Republished courtesy of IUP. Photo credit: IUP.