Speech to Support the Fort

Some former field school students were given the opportunity to share their current research and tasks with Support the Fort last week. Ian Kerr, Erica Stone, and Amanda Messer traveled to Niles where they spoke to an interested group of supporters.

Ian introduced the audience to tDAR. tDar, or "the Digital Archaeological Record," is a website that acts as a database for hundreds of archaeological sites all over the world. Through grant funding, Ian was able to input the data from our site; our site photographs, protected location, the history of the fort, and even our artifact inventory. For more on this and the Fort site, go to http://core.tdar.org/project/366183. Various links there will allow you to access Fort St. Joseph-related publications, photos, and more!

Erica gave some information about research that had been done on the exciting finds from the 2011 field season. There was an update about the bale seal from Lille (which we had previously put on the blog), some of the contents of the blacksmith's cache that was expanded, news on the hearth feature, and a little about our Native American pottery find.

Amanda, armed with a poster, presented her research into the field of lead shot. She was trying to determine if people at the fort were producing their own shot, or if the shot had been shipped from another location.

Stay tuned for our next post, in which Amanda will discuss her findings!