Students honored for mapping grave sites

LEWISTON – A national archaeology group is honoring three high school students who have spent the last six years mapping old grave sites at a cemetery in this northcentral Idaho town.

Ian Coleman, Nathaniel Ebel and Christopher Wagner, all seniors at Lewiston High School, have been given the Society for American Archaeology’s Award for Excellence in Public Education.

It’s awarded every three years and often goes to university research projects.

Using ground-penetrating radar and Global Positioning System technology, the students discovered dozens of tombstones that didn’t have remains buried beneath them – as well as unmarked human remains, including part of a foot bone that was shallowly buried in a nearby city park that was once the original city cemetery.

They started the project as seventh-graders at Jenifer Junior High, and continued it to help ferret out what happened to graves noted on the old Pioneer Park Cemetery – but were nowhere to be found at the Normal Hill Cemetery.

“That was a needle in a haystack,” Ebel said.

“It was the ultimate project for any class.”

Together with teacher Steven Branting, they even helped solve a mystery of historic headstones they pointed out were missing from the Normal Hill Cemetery.

They were located when the great-great-grandson of pioneers called the city to say he’d taken the markers after spotting them sitting in some grass near the grave plots.