Reconstructing the Past
Pottery demands patience, resilience and a willingness to risk failure. This truth comes into sharp focus for students Ainslee Binkley ’26 and Emmalia Ciccarello ’27, who crouch beside a blazing fire on one of summer’s most sweltering days. As heat radiates from red-glowing coals, they keep a watchful eye on the pieces they crafted using Native American techniques — and wait for the results.
The pots, some plain and utilitarian, others etched with faint stripes and dots, are shaped from clay that Binkley and Ciccarello dug from nearby creek banks and riverbeds. The firing marks the culmination of a months-long research project, during which both students discovered a powerful metaphor for life and the resilience of the people who once shaped the Susquehanna Valley.
“Recreating the pottery methods forced us to take time and pay attention — to the clay, the water, the fire and the landscape around us,” says Binkley. “The process was slow and challenging, but I think that was the point. It demonstrated how knowledge, culture and relationships to the land were shaped and preserved over generations.”
Jennifer Elick
“This project really encompasses what is so powerful about the liberal arts. They’re thinking like a scientist, an artist and a historian all at once and combining these elements to try to answer some questions that require a lot of critical thinking.”
Their journey began by looking to the past. To trace original clay sources, Binkley and Ciccarello turned to a large collection of Native pottery shards once owned by Isle of Que native Danny Michaels and donated to Jennifer Elick, professor of earth & environmental sciences and leader of the Susquehanna research project.
Growing up on the Isle of Que, a narrow peninsula in the Susquehanna River, Michaels often spotted small pieces of fired clay scattered across the soft, upturned soil after spring planting. Intrigued, he began collecting them on his walks — eventually amassing more than 600 shards, some no larger than the size of a pumpkin seed. Many still bear corded impressions or traces of pigment, possible links to the people who once lived in the central Susquehanna Valley.
Binkley and Ciccarello analyzed some of these pieces by grinding small samples into powder, slicing others to examine with a microscope, and using an X-ray fluorescence instrument to determine the clay’s chemical makeup and that of the temper used to stabilize it.
“We’re trying to make pots that are identical in terms of the natural resources that Native Americans would have had access to,” Elick explains. “One of the challenges is finding exactly what resources they would have used.”
The results revealed variations in mineral content — iron-rich clays from one creek, barium-laden temper from local bedrock — helping to map where the original materials likely came from.
“There is a big gap in the history of the Isle of Que,” Ciccarello says of the area near downtown Selinsgrove. “Because the donated pieces were found in this area, we wanted to understand what kind of routes Native Americans might have taken to source the clay.”
Their analysis suggested that the region’s Indigenous people weren’t limited to local clay sources but participated in broader networks of exchange. Some of the artifacts donated with the pottery shards were not native to central Pennsylvania, such as soapstone, metarhyolite and argillite, which may have come from as far south as Lancaster and South Mountain. They also found that barium-rich temper grains were derived from local deposits of chert, which is fine sedimentary rock. Of the little known about the Susquehannock Tribe that once inhabited the central Susquehanna Valley, historians believe they might have occupied the Isle of Que on a seasonal basis.
From lab to field, and back again, the student researchers and their mentor moved between science and craft, theory and practice — each step bringing them closer to understanding how Native Americans created these pots.
Elick, Binkley and Ciccarello harvested their own clay from nearby Penns Creek, Middle Creek and the Susquehanna River. They formed the clay into small bricks and Elick fired them on her grill to test their durability. The clay from the creeks baked into sturdy pieces, while the Susquehanna River clay failed, too sandy to hold its shape.
Once back on campus, they worked the Penns and Middle creeks clays, kneading it and shaping it into bowls using round molds or even small boulders. To mimic Native techniques, they twisted milkweed fibers into ropes and pressed them into wet clay using a paddle and anvil method, leaving intricate corded imprints.
“When we were making our pieces, we really reflected on how much of an art form it was, not just utilitarian,” Binkley says.
That trial-and-error process — part science, part art — revealed the project’s deeper value. Each stage asked the students to cross disciplines: geology and chemistry to evaluate the mineral makeup of the clay; anthropology to connect their work with Native traditions; and art to replicate cord markings and decorative patterns — all grounded in cultural respect and research integrity.
“This project really encompasses what is so powerful about the liberal arts,” Elick says. “They’re thinking like a scientist, an artist and a historian all at once and combining these elements to try to answer some questions that require a lot of critical thinking. That’s the essence of the liberal arts.”
Then came the real test: the fire. Similar to how Natives would have done it, they arranged rocks on which they built the fire. Once it was ablaze and their pieces had been gently warmed outside the flame’s reach, Binkley and Ciccarello carefully nestled their pots into the coals and covered them with a tent of wood kindling.
“It’s so nerve-wracking,” Binkley admits. “The whole time you’re holding your breath, wondering if the pots will survive.”
Slowly, the clay shifted color — from dull gray to red-hot to soft earth tones. All the pots made it through the fire, some bearing a few cracks. A more perfect metaphor for life would be hard to find.
The project reminded them that curiosity fuels discovery, leading them to pursue answers to difficult questions. It also underscored the importance of understanding that our past and the people who walked this land before us laid the foundation of the world we live in today — literally and figuratively.
“When you’re making the pottery, you gain an admiration for the people who were once here,” Ciccarello adds. “This experience gave me a real appreciation for respecting the land and the history of a place. That’s something I’ll carry with me always.”
The Valley’s Earliest Inhabitants
From Susquehanna Universityís Central Susquehanna Valley History Project
Founded in 1858, Susquehanna University draws its name from the Susquehanna River, which forms in New York and descends through Pennsylvania and Maryland before emptying into the Chesapeake Bay.
For thousands of years, Native American tribes made their lives along the river’s quiet shores, including the Susquehannock Tribe, the people for whom the river is named.
By the 17th century, the Susquehannock Tribe had become a prominent community in the Susquehanna Valley. They spoke an Iroquoian language that was poorly preserved and much about them remains unknown, including what they called themselves. In Virginia and Maryland, Algonquian-speaking peoples called them Sasquesahanough, or “people of the muddy river.”
The Susquehannock population had been devastated by disease and warfare by the 1670s. Survivors eventually became known as the Conestoga Tribe. A century later, in 1763, the last remaining Conestogas were massacred by vigilante settlers in Maryland, marking the end of a people who shaped the Valley’s earliest history.
