Greetings Fort followers!
Visiting the site recently I was
reminded that ten years ago, I was an excited high school junior that jumped up
and down in the kitchen after receiving a letter of acceptance to participate
in the FSJ summer camper program. I remember the months I spent researching
field schools that would accept a 16 year old. I was thrilled to discover that
just an hour’s drive away from my home in Three Rivers was a site and a program
that would allow me to finally get my hands dirty. A lot has changed since then
but I am happy to have remained involved with the project, attending a second
year of summer camp, taking my first field school and working as site
photographer, writing a thesis on lead seals from the site, connecting with
students in the 2018 field school, and most recently, having my research on the
fort’s lead seal assemblage published as a chapter in an edited volume, – Fort
St. Joseph Revealed.
These
memories of past fieldwork at Fort St. Joseph were made even more poignant this
summer as I directed eleven students through their first five weeks of field
experience as part of the College of William and Mary Archaeological Field
School. As teaching assistant for this diverse cohort of students (composed of
not only archaeology students but also computer scientists, international studies
majors, and student athletes), I was privileged to assist director and Colonial
Williamsburg Archaeologist Mark Kostro in excavating a series of progressively
more intriguing nineteenth and eighteenth-century deposits within a refuse
filled ravine that once separated the Governor’s Palace complex from the
property of Robert “King” Carter (the richest man in Virginia in his time) and
his notable successors, Robert Nicholas Carter and Robert Carter III. The
excavations on the grounds of the Robert King Carter house have attempted to
understand the evolution of the landscape and architecture on the property, but
also have sought to gain a fuller understanding of the lives of enslaved
individuals that lived and worked on there in the 18th century.
Though this
excavation uncovered new and unfamiliar artifacts such as buckets of British
ceramics, one 1773 Virginia halfpenny, and oyster shells, we also uncovered one
lead whizzer like many of those found at FSJ and at other nearby French sites. This
whizzer was a little reminder that even sites that seem drastically different
still existed in the same interconnected eighteenth-century world. As I have
continued in academia, through an MA in History at Université Laval (Québec,
QC) and into this impending second year of my PhD in Anthropology at William
and Mary, thinking about connections has taken me to many far away places in
search of stories first uncovered in the wet screens and dustpans at Fort St.
Joseph. Earlier this summer I visited France for the first time in order to
learn more about the lives of French Canada merchants- “négociants du Canada”-
and the social bonds that enabled the production and importation of textiles to
New France. I visited the area of France most represented in lead seal collections
across New France, traveling to Toulouse, Carcassonne, Montauban, Bordeaux,
Rochefort, and La Rochelle. Though my two weeks abroad went by very, very
quickly, some of the highlights included visiting the townhouse of the Mariette
family in Villebourbon (Montauban) and research at the Archives
départementales de Tarn-et-Garonne, locating old cloth merchant homes in
the bastide of Carcassonne, exploring the courtyards of l’Hôpital
Saint-Joseph de la Grave in Toulouse, and visiting the Musée national
des douanes in the heart of the old port of Bordeaux for an in depth look
at how eighteenth-century French customs houses functioned (seals included!).
I’m now planning my next research trip to France and beginning analysis of
death, marriage, and baptism records within and between merchant families in
Montauban, the central focus of my dissertation study.
I’m glad
the project is about to round out yet another very successful field season, and
of course I look forward to yet more discoveries in the lab! I hope to keep you
posted as my research on Fort St. Joseph and the story of textiles in the
eighteenth-century French world continues to evolve!
Best wishes,
-Cathrine Davis
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