Step aside John Harvard. Anthropology students and professors are digging for a new historical artifact in Harvard Yard.

Anthropology professors, students, and representatives from the Harvard University Native American Program (HUNAP) gathered yesterday in the grassy courtyard between Matthews and Straus Halls for the “Archaeology of Harvard Yard Excavation Opening Ceremony.”

Hosted by HUNAP and The Peabody Museum, the ground-breaking event kicked off the semester-long archaeological excavations of twenty-five students in Anthropology 1130: The Archaeology of Harvard Yard.

With the guidance of Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology William L. Fash, Associate Curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Patricia A. Capone, and Associate Curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Diana Loren, the students will dig three feet into the soil in Harvard Yard and 350 years into history to unearth the memories and mysteries of The Harvard Indian College.

The College, which was the first brick-building built in Harvard Yard, first opened its doors in 1655 to six Native American students from the local Wampanoag and Nipmuc tribes.

Carmen Lopez, the Executive Director of HUNAP, delivered the opening remarks of the ceremony, speaking on the dual role of Harvard Yard as a “sacred sight” for both Harvard students and the Wampanaog and Nipmuc tribes.

Fash, Capone, and Loren also spoke at the ceremony on the importance of tackling history first-hand.

“There’s an immediacy about this that you just can’t get reading a book,” Fash said yesterday.

Chief F. Ryan Malonson of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head Aquinnah also delivered a “Message to the Ancestors,” during which he asked the crowd gathered in the Yard to join together and hold hands in order to form a large circle that he said was suggestive of the power of community and the cyclical nature of time.

Malonson then told a history of his ancestors, who were among the first students to attend the Harvard Indian College, an institution formed for the purpose of “the education of the English and Indian Youth of the Country in knowledge: and godliness.” Those Harvard Indian College students lived and worked in Harvard Yard until the dissolution of the Indian School in 1670, according to records in the Harvard archives.

Professor Fash said he is hopeful that impending excavations in Harvard Yard will fill in some archival holes. He said he expects to unearth pot shards, pipe stems, broken nails, and glass from the 17th century, but also hopes to find remains of the original structure of the Harvard Indian College, including parts of its walkways, foundation, and refuse system. “Archaeologists love to find garbage,” Fash said yesterday. And whatever he and his team of student archaeologists find—be it garbage or veritable treasure—it will appear online in a “virtual exhibition” on the Peabody Museum’s website at the conclusion of the semester.

The Harvard Yard excavations are likely to not only provide valuable historical information, but also to lend today’s Harvard students a powerful, tangible link to their predecessors and an understanding of their own place within Harvard’s storied history.

“I like to think of myself in this present time in terms of the past and the future,” Leah R. Lussier ’07, the president of Native Americans at Harvard College, said yesterday. “The ceremony was a powerful reminder of the forces of history and of our collective commitment in the future.”

This commitment to bringing new life to Native American studies is something that the Harvard community has taken to heart. While Monday’s events commemorated the Indian College, the University is also actively seeking to widen its focus on Native Americans and their history through cultural and academic initiatives, including formal presentations last spring at Commencement.

Since the 1970s, more than 800 Native Americans, natives of Hawaii, and natives of Alaska, have attended Harvard College, according to Lopez. In 1970, Harvard formed the American Indian Program at the Graduate School of Education, and more recently, the Project on American Indian Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG). Both of these programs are part of the Harvard University Native American Program, one of the University’s nine interfaculty initiatives.