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Manheim man ’digs’ history

By on November 13, 2019

Ever since he was a child, Dan Dennis of Manheim has had a fascination with “old things.”

Raised in Japan where his father served as a missionary, Dennis would visit a dusty antique shop in the little village where he and his family lived. Using whatever spending money he had, he would purchase old coins and books from the shopkeeper as often as he could.

This fascination with things from the past would soon became a full-blown hobby.

“At one point, probably through my father, I met a Japanese archaeologist who used to take me around to Neolithic sites in the area,” he recalled. “Sometimes, with my dad and family, we used to go to farmer fields where there used to be settlements and look for tiny obsidian arrowhead points and broken pottery.”

One day, he and his brother were digging with sticks in a field and unearthed a nearly intact 4,000 year-old decorated clay pot.

“It was quite exciting,” Dennis recalled. “I was probably 10 years old at the time. Years later I found out that it was most likely buried under the hearthstones of a house and most likely contained the remains of a stillborn or infant.”

By the time his family moved back to the United States, his father had purchased a metal detector for him.

“It became a pastime for us, a father/son thing, and we spent many weekends looking though old churchyards and the yards of old houses,” he said.

Manheim resident Dan Dennis on location in New Mexico during a recent archaeological dig.

Years would pass and life would get in the way; but eventually his passion for history would claim much of his time once again.

“I got back into this probably 30-some years later, and after my dad had died,” he said.

He would find many more artifacts, including colonial as well as Civil War period relics.

Majoring in English literature and philosophy, he managed to also take some archaeology classes while in college. In cooperation with the head of the anthropology department at Millersville University, Dennis also created a for-credit class that examined Mayan spatial development.

More adventures soon awaited.

“I went to Central America for a couple of months, visited many Mayan ruined cities and wrote a paper for review,” he said. He also accompanied a friend to Guatemala and Honduras, who went on to become a full-time archaeologist in New Mexico. Through this colleague, Dennis was able to get his feet wet in the practical field — their first assignment was a survey in Midland, Texas.

Their job involved following a predetermined line through an area that was to be developed, digging test pits along the way screening the ground for cultural remains. Shortly afterwards, he was hired to spend several months in the pipeline scars of West Virginia.

“Everyone has their opinions of course about these pipelines, but it has given archaeologists a lot of work in the last decade or so,” he said. “Because of compliance guidelines set by individual state’s historical preservation offices, a survey is almost always required before earth and forest is removed in these constructions. Most of these were STP’s, or shovel test pit surveys done by teams.”

A stone bowl that was unearthed by Dennis during a recent dig.

For the past 20 years, Dennis has also operated his own business, creating furniture out of salvaged barn lumber. While this career has provided him with a comfortable living, he’s slowly looking to get back into archaeology full-time.

Last winter, he had the chance to work on a two-month project in southern New Mexico.

“We did a pedestrian survey for the most part,” he explained. “This entailed just walking about 10 miles a day in the desert. Because there is little soil build-up in this part of the country, artifacts that are thousands of years old can still be found just laying on the surface. We found hundreds of artifacts, photographed and GPS marked them and left them on the ground for posterity. Most of the land we were working was Bureau of Land Management property and was for a dust mitigation project along a major highway that would get inundated with sand storms.”

Recently, a special project in Pennsylvania would come his way.

While he cannot reveal many details since the project is still ongoing, he does say that the dig is taking place due to a road expansion close to a 300 year old Quaker Meeting House. During the Revolutionary War, part of the structure was used as a hospital and according to history, at least 30 soldiers were buried in a mass grave somewhere on the property.

So far he and his crew haven’t found any remains — a promising sign that those who were laid to rest nearly 250 years ago will continue to be undisturbed.

It’s all part of a hobby that’s equal parts dirty, dusty, and dangerous; but all in a day’s work for Dan Dennis.

Cory Van Brookhoven is a staff writer for the Lititz Record. He welcomes your comments at cvanbrookhoven@lnpnews.com or 717-721-4423. 

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