Friday, September 22, 2017

Fall 2017: Activities Beyond Excavation

Hello everyone! 
This is Kaylee Hagemann, you may remember me from the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Field School of 2017. Right now, I am starting my third year at Western Michigan University. This semester, I am hoping to finish up the classes I need for my Anthropology Major and I am now taking classes for my Religion minor. I also took on the independent study for the field school to continue further research for Fort St. Joseph.
For our field school, we spent the summer digging at the Fort St. Joseph site (20BE23). Once summer is over, we pack everything up and fill our units, that we spent weeks in, with dirt (I miss my unit very much). But, our research does not end once the season turns to Fall. Field students have the opportunity to enroll in an Independent Study to continue researching Fort St. Joseph. Hailey Maurer, Meghan Williams, Genevieve Perry, and I are working with Dr. Michael Nassaney to
continue research and analysis for the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project (FSJAP).
The view of the Archaeology Lab from Moore Hall's entrance
During the Fall semester, we spend most of our independent study time in the lab that is located at Moore Hall on Western Michigan University’s (WMU) campus. Moore Hall is the building of Anthropology, it is where most Anthropology classes and Anthropology professor’s offices are held.
For our independent study, we have a whole list of tasks to complete by the end of the fall semester. We must do inventory on our 2017 field season artifacts, bag the artifacts, digitize our field notes (transferring the information to an online form), create a new brochure,th - 15th), Midwest Archaeology Conference (Oct 19th - 21st), Michigan Archaeology Day (Oct. 28th), and Portage Lake Center Elementary S.T.E.M Night (Nov 30th).
work on blogs, social media, and photographs, mail T-Shirts, and create the Annual Report. We also have a list of events that we intend to attend to represent the FSJAP: Midwest Historical Archaeology Conference (Oct. 13
Boxes of artifacts from Summer
2017 excavation to be inventoried
We are all assigned to complete some of these tasks. I was to do the first blog, create ideas for a new brochure, and work with Dr. Nassaney on the inventory of the artifacts. I did inventory on Tuesday morning of this week. During the summer, the artifacts were separated by object and put in small bags, then those small bags were put in bigger bags that represented artifacts found within that level of a particular unit. Then these bags were put into boxes in order to keep the levels of each unit all together. When doing inventory, we take out a box and pull out one unit level bag at a time, empty out it’s contents, record the information on the tags in an inventory, weigh the artifacts using grams, and make sure the tags are correct and the artifacts are indeed what the tags say they are. So far we have completed inventory on one box and still have several boxes to go. I am finding that I am enjoying doing inventory. I get to see exactly how many artifacts we found (one unit bag had over 500 unburned bones!) and recall all the excitement of discovering an artifact in the field and now being able to study them further and determine what the material is, how it was made, and what it’s function was.
For this independent study, I really look forward to learning more about identifying artifacts and being able to go to the archaeology events.

For all our followers, I wanted to say thank you for staying with us, we appreciate you so much! Have a great day!
- Kaylee