Dig returns to artifact-rich Colonial American site in NY

An archaeological project has returned to an artifact-rich state park in New York state on what was the focal point of the warring British and French empires more than 250 years ago.
A team of students and volunteers is trying to determine if a low stone wall along the edge of Lake George Battlefield Park in the Adirondacks mountains and another structure being unearthed nearby were built during the French and Indian War from 1754 to 1763, when thousands of British and Colonial American troops were posted here while fighting raged along the northern frontier separating Britain's New York province and French-held Canada.

Located in woods at the edge of the 35-acre park overlooking Lake George's southern end, the overgrown line of piled stones is easy to miss. Visitors strolling along the park's access road and bicyclists zipping past on the neighboring bike path don't know it's there.
"Most people would walk over that and not notice," said Doug Schmidt, a retired state forester serving as a crew chief for the six-week archaeological field school sponsored by the nearby State University of New York at Adirondack.
Schmidt is among nearly four dozen people spending a second consecutive summer excavating sections of the park in search of evidence from this popular tourist town's bloody past.

The park is on land where Colonial American troops fought the French and Indians in 1755, as well as the site of a large British encampment that was besieged two years later along with nearby Fort William Henry.

Last summer, a dig conducted in the park for the first time in 13 years yielded thousands of artifacts dating back to that period, including uniform buttons, musket balls and piles of animal bones from the livestock slaughtered to feed the troops.
Led by David Starbuck, a college anthropology professor who has dug at the region's 18th century military sites for more than 20 years, the battlefield project seeks to identify the footprint of a sprawling encampment known to have occupied high ground just east of Fort William Henry, built in 1755.

It was from this "entrenched camp" that British and Colonial troops started their retreat after the fort surrendered to end a weeklong siege in August 1757.