Integrating Artifacts into the Collection

Hello Buddies! Rae here, back again and pleased to announce that I will be returning to Fort St. Joseph as the lab coordinator for the 2019 field season! I am so excited to continue working with the Project for another summer!

This year I had the opportunity to help take part in the collections integration process of Fort St. Joseph’s 2018 artifacts. It was a new process for me and there was definitely a period of figuring things out before I got the hang of it. After many hours spent inventorying by Dr. Nassaney and the rest of the FSJ crew, all of the artifacts from the 2018 field season were ready to be integrated into the permanent collection at the Niles History Center. Meghan, Cameron, and I packed up all of the artifacts at WMU’s archaeology lab and headed down to Niles!

In addition to the 2018 artifacts, we also brought all of the float samples from a couple of years that had still been at the archaeology lab at WMU. The float sample was also going to be given a new home in the collection and be transferred into new boxes! Once we arrived at Niles, we got to work putting together the new boxes. The float sample collection is organized by accessions. Within the accession there are the high fraction and low fraction samples. The collection was re organized into its new boxes and then we were able to start integrating the 2018 artifacts!

A few boxes of the permanent collection laid out while
 we were integrating the 2018 artifacts.
Photo courtesy of Raegan Delmonico.

Now a little background on artifact organization! All of the artifacts are sorted and cleaned by the students at the field school. They are separated by material, but all of the materials in the same accession are kept together, basically it is one big bag full of a bunch of smaller bags.  However, the collection in Niles, is sorted by material. All of the smaller bags from within each accession are then sorted into larger boxes, with all of the other bags of that same material in the entire collection. For example, we take all of the little bags of calcine bone and put them in a box of all of the other bags of calcine bones from all of the accessions throughout the years of excavation. The entire process wasn’t difficult but organizing it all in your head can be a little intimidating. It was definitely a good experience to have and a chance to learn something new!