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.

Working on the 2021 Artifact Cases!

Hey Fort Followers!

Mady and Courtney here. We’ve been hard at work in the field this season on Unit S7E20 (Check out our other recent blog post to learn more about our progress so far!), but we’ve also been hard at work in the lab, too. As most of you know, our Open House is coming up soon. It takes place this weekend, August 7th and 8th, from 10 am to 4 pm both days. While we cannot believe the 2021 field season is already almost over, we are excited to see you all at the Open House and show you some of the interesting finds that we’ve made this year.

At the Open House, you’ll be greeted with many different things to see and do. And while we hope you take the time to check out everything, we also hope that you stop by our artifact case to see some of our top picks for artifacts found here at Fort St Joseph. The theme this year is “People of the Post” and we’ll be focusing on a few key groups of people who would have been present at the fort. Read on to learn more about how we’re setting up the artifact case, as well as some sneak peek pictures of what you may see this year.

When we initially thought about the “People of the Post” theme, we knew that we wanted to be inclusive. However, we do understand that our artifact case cannot possibly cover all of the people who visited the fort, as we don’t even know about everyone that visited. Historical documents and excavations can only give us so much information, but we did our best to include who we felt were some of the main groups. As of now, the groups are the local Indigenous populations, women, families and children, Jesuit missionaries, the garrison, fur traders, and the blacksmith.

The next issue to tackle was the organization of the case. We decided on placing artifacts around their assigned groups but also blending the groups together in an almost ‘venn diagram’ fashion. We did this because we understand that each artifact would not be strictly used by only one person. For example, the ceramics that we included would not only be used by women, but by all groups in the case and at the fort. And so, ceramics were placed near the center.

Last week, we dropped in at the Niles History Center to look at possible artifacts we’d like to include in the artifact case. While I won’t detail each one that we chose (I can’t ruin the surprise!), you can check out the photos in this article to get a sneak peek. And in case you’d like an extra hint, one of them was useful for entertainment purposes and would have been used primarily by children (as well as some adults).

Some of the many artifacts that might be featured in this years artifact cases!

This week we will also be working on a second artifact case that will showcase some of the interesting artifacts that we’ve found during the 2021 field season. I won’t spoil any surprises there, but I will say that there will be artifacts included from our unit, S7 E20!

If you want to read up on some of our other interesting finds from this season in preparation for the Open House, feel free to check out our other blogs. See you all real soon!

Mady & Courtney

Checking in at S1.5 E12!

Hi Fort Followers,

Jenny here again to tell you more about my unit (S1.5E12) in Trench 1. If you remember from my last post, I mentioned that we have a bit of a larger unit (1x1.5 meters instead of 1x1) because our unit was partly excavated by another student in 2019. We also had some difficulty with gravelly soil, which made it hard for us to get further down in our unit. My pit partner Rae Daun and I have found a really special structural stone that partially extends into the southwest wall of our unit. This stone is an awesome find because it’s so big. We have grown very attached to this stone, and have lovingly named it “Rocky.” Structural stones were used in French communities as the foundation of buildings, or used in their fireplaces.

There was a lot of stone readily available by the river, which was a great resource for finding the materials needed to form their buildings. It also was common for the bigger stones to be used for fireplaces, where smaller stones were used as building foundations

While this is a cool find, we still have a couple other things to uncover before we can figure out what this stone might have been used for. One important thing to note is that we’re still in the plow zone, which means that we’re still in the soil that has been greatly disturbed by a plow, or other agricultural activity. Basically, we aren’t far down enough in our soil to know if this stone was not disturbed by anything before we found it.

We found some limestone at the start of our excavation, which is a material that is also used for structural stones. However, the limestone was found above more landfill, so we think it might have been disturbed upwards by a plow. Now that we’ve dug deeper into our soil, (we’re now 10 centimeters down) we removed the limestone so we can get further down. 

There is definitely no way for us to remove this new stone once we get further down. It’s a lot larger than the limestone, and it is very deep into our wall. Removing that will certainly compromise the southwest wall of our unit. 

We are also slowly beginning to uncover another piece of stone, and it appears to be of the same material. However, we just found this, and the piece we found is much smaller than the other stone. This could mean that it extends further into the wall than the other one does.

 One really interesting aspect of this structural stone is that it has very straight cut edges. This is unusual for French structural stones- they usually just leave them natural and use mortar to keep the stones together for a foundation or fireplace. The cut edges on this stone, from what we can see, make it seem like a different kind of structure. There are records found about Fort St Joseph that discuss an order to make a jail in 1750. The stones used for jails were cut, unlike the stones used in other structures, and they also used iron for the doors to the jail cells. While there is no way to know if this is the case, having mostly uncovered one unusual stone, it does give us a unique look into the lives of these people.

 If nothing else, I love getting this opportunity to learn more about the people living at Fort St Joseph.

Thanks for reading!

-Jenny

References

Loveland, E. K., & Nassaney, M. S. (2017). Sheltering New France. Western Michigan University, Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Booklet, (3).

Returning to Fort St. Joseph

 Hello everyone!

I have yet to introduce myself, my name is Ella Doppke and I am a rising high school senior working with the students at the field school this season. 2021 marks my fourth year with Fort St Joseph. I was a FSJ Archaeology Summer Camper for three years before being lucky enough to be invited to continue my experience with the field students. 

Working in 2019, on a unit on the floodplain, that was reopened for students in order to find the other half of an object first uncovered during my first dig.

History and archaeology have always been passions of mine, starting with my interest in Native Americans in second grade. I knew I wanted to continue learning and working in the area in some form or the other. I took every history and language class I could in an effort to learn more. I hadn’t heard about the Fort St Joseph Archaeological Project until we found their camp and work when I was in eighth grade. I finished my first week and knew that I had to come back. You can read and watch documentaries about it all you want, but nothing really compares to getting into the dirt with your trowel and finding artifacts that haven’t been uncovered for hundreds of years.

I still remember finding my first seed bead in the wetscreen on my first day at the dig three years ago. Being able to pick it up and know it was made and traded in the 1700s was kind of unbelievable. That is where it all began. I love coming back each year and talking with the staff and volunteers about recent discoveries and updates about the site and being able to see our understanding of the time period develop with every season. 

I was excited to be able to join the students for the whole month this year. Meeting everyone and learning what brought them to the site and what their individual specialties are has been so much fun. It is sort of crazy to see units that you helped excavate in the top alluvium layers two years ago reach the occupation zone and produce dozens of artifacts. 

My current unit, North 4, East 35 in Trench 2.

I am so grateful for my time at the site so far and hope to continue to learn and return to work with the project. Going into my senior year of high school, I have just started college applications and *fingers crossed* plan to pursue an anthropology degree with a focus on linguistics and museum studies. 

See you soon! Ella.

Wetscreening with Alec

Hi everyone! 

In this video blog, I am going to demonstrate how we wetscreen our dirt from the excavations at Fort St. Joseph. 

Thanks for watching and I hope to see you at the Archaeology Open House!

- Alec Kaminski