Christine Davis Consultants, Inc.

12/24/2025

Thank you for making the 2025 Albright Thanksgiving Dinner a success! -

This year’s dinner was a huge success. We served over 250 meals onsite and extra portions were sent to East End Community Ministries.

06/04/2025

Hello! My name is Hailey Murray and I am an intern here at CDC. I have been working to create a brief history of Fort Gaddis in Uniontown, Fayette County. I made this short video that discusses what I found about the Fort and I would appreciate it if you gave it a watch. The video includes the history of the Fort as well as the people who owned it. It also discusses an archeological dig as well as attempts to memorialize the site. Fort Gaddis is represented by a log cabin that was built in the late 1700s when Pennsylvania was still a frontier. The log cabin is considered to be the oldest building in Fayette County and the second oldest in Western Pennsylvania. While the log cabin remains standing, it is in need of major repairs.

04/29/2025

In 2023, Washington County Cultural Trust (WCCT) contracted CDC to complete a Historic Structures Report to assist in their rehabilitation of the historic John Roberts House located in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. The stone portions of the house were built in 1808 and the brick portion was added in ca. 1840. WCCT purchased the property in 2010 after it had fallen into a state of disrepair. After several years of successful fundraising efforts, rehabilitation work has begun in earnest! We are happy to have been a part of supporting the WCCT in their rehabilitation and looking forward to seeing what comes in the future. For more information about the John Roberts House and the WCCT’s mission be sure to check out their website: https://washcountyculturaltrust.org/ !

 As a tax exempt 501(c)3, the Washington County Cultural Trust (WCCT) is a non-profit entity comprised of interested citizens and business leaders throughout the region that actively engage in the preservation of historical buildings, properties and artifacts throughout Washington County, Pa.  

06/27/2024

Last week Kira Heinrich was out in Greenville, Mercer County to talk about our Schoolhouse Commons project and the five sites we uncovered. Her talk was well attended and it was a great opportunity for CDC to share the details about what we found. And we made the local newspaper! Check out the article about the presentation and photos from the event!

05/07/2024

Hello Everyone! My name is Christina Hall, I am an intern at CDC, and I wanted to share what we have accomplished so far as we take a pause on curating the legacy collection here at the remote lab at the Haddonville School near Uniontown. We have had to take a pause in our work to identify more funding to continue the curation work we are doing for the Fort Gaddis Collection (36FA0122). Initially we started with 78 boxes, with our work to date and repackaging of artifacts we have condensed the collection to 54 boxes. Of those 54 boxes we have completed curation of roughly 20%! We hope to re-open our lab soon after finding more funding and continue our curation work.

Below I have attached an image of what the new completed boxes, that at are up to modern curation standards, look like. Every box contains fully inventoried materials that are organized with the artifacts in catalog and specimen number order. Also attached is an image of what the artifacts look like in their original condition. Very different! We are proud of our progress so far and can’t wait to get back to the project in the future!

04/18/2024

Kamryn and Christina's information on the Fort Gaddis collection looks great and got a lot of attention at PennWest's Strike a Spark conference! Strike a Spark celebrates PennWest's student research, scholarship, and creative activity.

04/16/2024

Our CDC staff and interns were everywhere at the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology meeting this past weekend talking about our Fort Gaddis project! Kamryn and Christina prepared a poster for the Student Poster Contest while Calista, Elizabeth, and Kamryn presented to the members on Sunday morning. Our Crew Chief Emily was also able to attend and support all the ladies in their efforts. They did a great job getting the word out about our work - and had a great time doing it!

03/28/2024

Hello again from the Fort Gaddis Lab! We have been digitizing the photographs and slides from the original archaeological field school excavations and wanted to share some of them with you. It’s fun to see how fashion has changed since the 1970’s! It’s also interesting to see how much the process of archaeological fieldwork remains the same.

These photos also give us the opportunity to reach out and see if you recognize your younger self or someone else in these photos. We are looking to identify students from the excavation. If you do, please let us know!

02/08/2024

Be sure to check out our new video about the Fort Gaddis Project on our YouTube channel!

Christine Davis Consultants, Inc. is a Pitssburgh-based cultural resource consulting firm operating in the mid-Atlantic United States. Our work often allows...

01/16/2024

Hi everyone! My name is Kamryn Miller and I am an intern at CDC with a special interest in faunal and human bone. I wanted to touch on the topic of bone alterations within the Gaddis collection. There are many noticeable alterations to the bone which show how people lived and what they ate at the site. The biggest 3 conditions to find bone in were burn alterations, trauma, and rodent activity. Some of the animals noted in the collection so far have been deer, sheep, cow, pig, bird, opossum, and even bear bone! The burnt bone and sharp force trauma show us that many of these animals were hunted, butchered, and cooked for consumption at the site. The color of the burn can tell us at what heat the bone was cooked at. The bone is likely at a heat of 400-600 degrees where the organic components begin to deteriorate and it starts to turn black. The bone starts turning grey at the inversion stage around 600-700 degrees. During the fusion stage above 700 degrees the bone is calcined and white. The other notable thing is the rodent activity which is present. It is easy to mistake the striations for more sharp force trauma but they appear as linear flat grooves. This tells us either rodents were consuming the bone for calcium or to wear down their long teeth. This could mean that the people at the site lived around rats, mice, or other rodents.