A Lead Seal from S1.5 E12!

 Hello Fort Followers! 

It’s Rae Daun again, here with a little update from the field. There have been so many awesome artifacts recovered since I last checked in. In my unit specifically, S1.5 E12, at around 10 cmbd, we wet screened and found a very interesting piece of history. Jenny, my pit partner, recovered the artifact. When she came back to our unit, she delivered the news that we found a larger piece of lead, about 12 mm x 19.5 mm. Lead is not a unique metal on the site, but the size of this artifact was something to get excited about. Normally, we find pieces of lead shot (a rounded piece of lead that is small in diameter and about 1/8 of the size of a musket ball), but this artifact wasn’t cylindrical. At first, we classified the artifact as a piece of scrap lead, but upon closer inspection noticed there was an inscription on the surface. This meant that Jenny and I had found the first lead bale seal of the 2021 season!

Pictured: Lead seal fragment recovered from unit S1.5 E12

These bale seals are made of lead and were used to identify commercial goods. Each lead seal showed the manufacturer, cosigner, merchant, and usually when and where the good originated from (Hulse, 1977). These seals are essentially the 18^th century version of a shipping label.

The seals were two sided and were stamped onto packaged goods. In the final steps of the shipping process, the bale seal would be, as the name would suggest, sealed permanently. The design would be embossed one or both sides of the seal. One side was usually left blank so the merchant could indicate how valuable the object was with tallies or numerical values. (Stone, 1974). With the information on these seals, merchants would be able to move goods throughout the United States, as well as overseas!

Picture taken from  https://journals.openedition.org/rives/docannexe/image/1393/img-5.jpg 

(Buti, 2008)

The lead bale seal that we found in our unit was not very well preserved, unfortunately. It was only a fragment, and we can only make out that it was embossed but cannot tell what the label states or the design that is on it. Because of this, we have no idea who the manufacturer was, what the transported goods were, or when and where the artifact is from. It was an exciting find because it was the first of the season, but it was unfortunately in rough shape. This is likely due to the seal being found in what we call the plow zone, or the soil level where agricultural plows mixed 18^th century artifacts with their own soil. It’s possible that this disturbance lead to the seal being damaged, but this is just a theory and there are many other possibilities!

 Luckily for us, though, a couple of other lead seals have been discovered this field season. The embossment on one of these leas seals is particularly well preserved, but we have yet to identify the manufacturer from this inscription. If anybody has any ideas as to what this seal could indicate, leave us a comment below. 

Pictured: Well preserved lead seal fragment recovered from unit N5 E2

You can check this specimen out at our open house in our artifact case! The open house in this Saturday and Sunday, the 7^th and 8^th of August, from 10am-4pm. Come join us!

 References:

Buti, G. (2008). Des goûts et des couleurs. Draps du Languedoc pour clientèle levantine au XVIIIe siècle. Rives méditerranéennes, 29, 125–140. https://doi.org/10.4000/rives.1393

Davis, Cathrine, "Lead Seals from Colonial Fort St. Joseph (20BE23)" (2014). Honors Theses. 2408. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/honors_theses/2408

Hulse, C. (1977). Fort St. Joseph Artifacts [Master of Arts]. Western Michigan University.

Stone, L. M. (1974). Fort Michilimackinac 1715-1781; An Archaeological Perspective on the Revolutionary Frontier (Vol. 2). The Museum - Michigan State University.