Hello from the Heartland. My name is Jenna and this is Smarter News, news when it matters and why it matters.

Our Smarter series features unique people who help us think and live smarter.

Well, hello, everyone. It's great to see you today. One of the most amazing things about being able to work in journalism is you never know what you may wake up to, what headline you may wake up to. And sometimes those headlines can be really scary. Sometimes they can be really joyful. Sometimes they can just be really interesting. And that's, that's one of the headlines that we saw recently that we

were able to cover for you around July 4th, fittingly so, because it has to do with the American

Revolution, although we heard about this a few weeks before. So let me just read you this headline.

This is from the Associated Press. It sounds innocent enough you just see Williamsburg, Virginia,

and you see the first sentence.

Archaeologists in Virginia have uncovered what is believed to be the remains of a military barracks from the Revolutionary War, including chimney bricks and musket balls indented with soldiers' teeth.

So obviously when you read a line like that, Revolutionary War, Chimony bricks, musket balls,

and then musket balls indented with soldiers' teeth, you just have some more questions that you'd

like to find some answers to.

And we're lucky enough today to speak with Jack Gary.

He's the executive director of archaeology at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which was key to this discovery and key to quite

many other stories, many, many other stories that have to do with American history that we're

going to be talking about. But Jack, great to have you with this today. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks, Jenna. Great to be here. Appreciate it. Let me just ask you kind of a silly question

to get started because I just

have to ask, true or false, did Indiana Jones inspire you to become an archaeologist? Just, I had,

I had to know, was it the hat? Like, any, or was it something completely separate? Yeah. What's the

true story here? I grew up on Indiana Jones, like so many of my generation.

But I don't think I actually realized he was an archaeologist.

I just thought he was a guy who went on adventures and did cool things and punched, you know, bad guys.

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