\u201cOsborn is important for a lot of reasons, mainly for regional history in connection with this natural disaster that happened in 1913,\u201d said Lance Greene, assistant professor of anthropology<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s also important in the development of flood control in the United States as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n Osborn and the Miami Conservancy District were an early test case for what would become the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s and ’40s. The development of dams under the TVA displaced more than 15,000 families.<\/p>\n Osborn was named after E.F. Osborn, superintendent of the railroad line that was built through the town. Following the Great Dayton Flood of 1913, Huffman Dam was built, putting Osborn in a floodplain. So in 1921 the entire town was relocated two miles away, next to Fairfield. In 1950 the two communities merged as Fairborn.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a lot of information on Osborn, including photographs,\u201d said Greene. \u201cIf you look at a few photographs of the downtown area, it used to be a thriving little business area.\u201d<\/p>\n Students in the Field School in Archaeology excavated a field to learn more about life in Old Osborn, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. (Video by Kris Sproles \/ photos by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n Many houses and businesses in Osborn weren\u2019t moved in the 1921 relocation and were demolished. Today the site \u2014 a field that sits in the shadow of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base \u2014 is referred to by historians as Old Osborn.<\/p>\n The site is owned by the Air Force but is leased to farmers, who most recently have used it to grow soybeans.<\/p>\n Greene and his students created a grid of 10-meter squares in the soybean field as part of a controlled surface collection. Metal wires crowned with orange tags poked up through the soil, marking off the plots. A tape measure rode the tops of the soybean plants to help mark the grid.<\/p>\n Students in sunhats trolled the field, collecting artifacts that popped to the surface from the farmers\u2019 plows.<\/p>\n \u201cI really get down close to the ground and kind of look for anything shiny,\u201d said Lyndsi Doll, of Kettering, who is majoring in both anthropology<\/a> and earth and environmental sciences<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re more looking for colors and something that doesn\u2019t look so rocklike.\u201d<\/p>\n The artifacts were placed small brown paper bags that bore location identification numbers.<\/p>\n Artifacts collected from Old Osborn.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m really liking the Osborn site,\u201d said Jordan Buffington, of Dayton, an archaeology and anthropology\u00a0major\u00a0who serves as a supervisor at the field school. \u201cWe didn\u2019t think we were going to find as many artifacts as we did. We are finding a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n Buffington kept a detailed journal of what was found. After she graduates, she is thinking of going into cultural resource management, which can involve investigating land to ensure that historic or prehistoric sites aren\u2019t destroyed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s amazing what we can find even when something\u2019s been in the ground for 100 or even 500 years,\u201d said Greene. \u201c\u2026We have been finding a lot of artifacts, a lot of domestic stuff like dishes, ceramics, glassware, architectural debris. We\u2019re finding children\u2019s toys from the late 19th and 20th century.\u201d<\/p>\n Greene said the artifacts create a window into what Osborn residents had in their homes. And using old maps, the students can pinpoint the artifacts to the individual homes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we collect artifacts from a square, we know what house was there and what family was there so we can compare the things we find to the people who lived here,\u201d said Greene.<\/p>\n Doll, who wants to work for the National Park Service one day, discovered a tiny piece of ceramic with a handle that could have come from a children\u2019s tea set. When the students found a colored shard of glass and took it back to the lab, they discovered it came from a bottle of Chamberlain\u2019s Cough Remedy, which was sold between 1908 and 1918 and advertised as a safe cough medicine for children.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really cool to find all of these artifacts just laying out here forgotten in the field,\u201d said Buffington. \u201cYou can find a lot more about people that used to live here and what their life was like.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to collecting artifacts, the students were able to observe workers from the National Park Service who were using ground-penetrating radar to identify underground foundations and objects and to quickly identify the location of the town for possible future excavation.<\/p>\n Greene called it a \u201cwonderful coincidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Lance Greene, assistant professor of anthropology, started the Field School in Archaeology to teach students how to excavate, identify artifacts and record information.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cWe want our students to be exposed to not only traditional methods of excavation and surface collection, but all the technologies that archaeologists use now,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have those technologies at Wright State right now. So if they get a chance to work with professionals who use magnetometers, ground-penetrating radar \u2026 it just really furthers their education and prepares them much more for the job market.\u201d<\/p>\n After collecting the artifacts, the students took them back to the lab at Wright State, where the artifacts were washed, processed, analyzed and used to create a database. The artifacts will be temporarily housed at Wright State and then likely turned over to the Air Force.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look across this field, you would never think there had been a community, a rail station, a rail hub\u2026,\u201d said Greene. \u201cSo only by doing archaeology and historical research in some cases does even the local community find out what had been there even a century ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Students in the Field School in Archaeology excavate a field to learn more about life in Old Osborn, near Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. 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