Happy Friday Ye Followers of the Fort!

Alex reporting again today to review and give a shoutout to our very own Erika Hartley, Field Director extraordinaire and St. Joseph Curatorial Fellow on her lecture this past Wednesday at the Niles Public Library- the first of our four-part annual lecture series of the field season.

The evening was christened with a brief speech by Dr. Michael Nassaney, the Principal Investigator of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project for 21 years. Dr. Nassaney gave a warm welcome to the audience of the lecture and introduced the theme of the 2019 field season, "Curation: Preserving the Past for the Future", emphasizing the importance and cruciality of taking care of recovered artifacts and the recorded information of cultural heritage sites.

This provided a segue into Erika's lecture on The Fort St. Joseph Curatorial Fellowship, a look into the specific aspects of the artifact repository situated in the Henry A. Chapin House, affiliated with the Niles History Center.

Erika began her lecture defining curation as indefinite management of artifacts, documents, and other material. This cements a perpetual commitment to what we have excavated and preserved, for not only the current generation of researchers and community members, but for the many more to come.

Further discussion included the exhibition of many problem that the curatorial felloship is face with, such as a lack of dedicated full-time staff to maintain the collection, lack of resources to better serve the needs to the collection, and the presence of other more pressing priorities needed to be met by the Niles History Center. To be sure, the curation process is undergoing a major renovation.

This renovation was outlined in Erika's commentary on a three-phase initiative intended to fully encapsulate both the needs of the collection and the overall goals of the fellowship.

Beginning with Phase I, measures are taken to conduct research into similar collections and to identify the current stat of the Fort St. Joseph collection in order to discover the standard of curation specific to the type of collection present at Fort St. Joseph.

Subsequently, Phase II involves the development of a long-term plan for curation, calling oftentimes for complete re-inventory in the form of digitization entries (photographs and data entry onto computers) and creating a supply list in accordance with a necessary budget.

Phase III involves taking action and implementing objectives outlined in Phase II, in hopes that increased accessibility will occur for future purposes.

Erika closed her lecture with commentary on access to the public and how friends and interested parties of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project can help by donating gifts to the Fellowship, Support the Fort, Inc., the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, and by increasing awareness about the project itself within one's community.

Following the close of the lecture, Erika was met with outstanding applause from the audience. They then engaged her with many questions regarding the project and the process of curation.

In essence, the opening lecture of the 2019 summer lecture series should be a fine setting of tone to the attendance and awareness in Niles and surrounding communities of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project. Join us next week at 7pm on Wednesday, July 17th for a lecture given by Cincinnati Art Museum Conservator Kelly Rectenwald! We look forward to seeing you all there!