Hello Fort St. Joseph followers,
This is Alex Michnick from the 2019 field season, reporting back to you from Grand Valley State University. When I walked back on campus in Allendale, to begin my third year of undergraduate studies, the field season I had spent in Niles was still fresh in my mind. The day to day routine of working in my unit was an awesome memory, and another formidable experience in my archaeological career. While I reflected on this memory with satisfaction, I looked forward with ambition to the next step of my journey.
Near the close of the last week spent at WMU digitizing field notes and unit summaries, I applied for a laboratory position with my home institution, Grand Valley State University’s Department of Anthropology. With two field seasons under my belt going into my junior year, I felt confident that my experience would make me a competitive applicant. I was also excited about the prospect of getting my first paid position in archaeology. Two weeks later, I received a job offer from our Collections Manager, Wesley Jackson.
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| Alex enjoying his work at the GVSU Archaeology lab. Photo by Wesley Jackson. |
I am glad to have two seasons of field experience at this point in my academic career, and I appreciate the support of my supervisors and professors. On that note, while I find two seasons in a primarily-excavation and survey setting extremely useful and foundational, having a job exclusive to a lab setting is a change of pace that I feel has benefitted me. At the start of my involvement in the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project, my goal was to hone my field techniques and learn more about historical archaeology. I believe I walked away with an achievement of that goal, and a great deal more. I learned how to recover, classify, and interpret 18th-century artifacts associated with one of the more prominent archaeological sites in the Western Great Lakes region. The staff that I worked with were an exceptional group of people, and assisted my professional growth as much as my personal growth. I firmly believe that it was this integrative, community project that provided me with a unique experience that I could not have gained elsewhere. It also provided me with more tools in my toolkit for engaging with the public, developing a deeper understanding of the importance of curation, and working in historic archaeological contexts.
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| Ceramic pipes from the DeMarsac collection at Grand Valley State University. Photo by Wesley Jackson. |
At my current job with Grand Valley State, I wear a variety of hats that revolve around curational duties. My job description requires me to assist faculty in the department with class projects, such as preparing forensic anthropology kits and comparative faunal and ceramic collections for hands-on experience. The job also calls for assisting students in preparing archaeological collections for analysis. However, these tasks have been about 20% of what I have undertaken this year.
My first day on the job, my supervisor Wesley Jackson informed me that I would be re-inventorying Grand Valley’s collection of the Daniel DeMarsac trading post, one of the last fur trading posts on the Grand River, and even in Michigan. DeMarsac’s post operated in the 1830s on the banks of the Grand River near present-day Lowell, maintaining ties and ultimately burning a bridge with local Odawa natives. It has not been excavated in about 45 years due to land development in the area. Curating the collection has entailed a great deal of ceramic research and analysis on my part to organize the materials. I was hand-picked out of the three lab assistants working this year due to both my interest in and recent experience with historic artifacts and the fur trade. My task then has been to see what can be further identified in terms of ware type, production, chronology, and function. Many Staffordshire-produced ceramics are present in the DeMarsac collection, including the William Adams and Sons “Caledonia” print, and “Spanish Convent,” of Jackson’s Warranted both of which were produced in the 1830s. In addition, the common “seaweed” print can be found on much of the DeMarsac site’s Mochaware.
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| Reconstructed tableware fragments from the DeMarsac collection. Photo by Wesley Jackson. |
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| A Staffordshire fragment, with a partial "Caledonia" maker's mark. Photo by Wesley Jackson. |
In addition to working with the DeMarsac ceramics, I have also helped in further identifying many of the gunflints in the collection. Many are similar to the French honey-colored flints found at Fort St. Joseph and numerous other French sites in the New World. The exposure to this artifact type while at Fort St. Joseph has helped me to recognize these gunflints, and enabled me to assist Grand Valley in better understanding the DeMarsac site. I have also worked to classify glass by functional types based on their color, shape, and other attributes.
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| A French honey-colored gun flint. Photo by Wesley Jackson. |
The primary goal of Grand Valley’s Anthropology Department is to bring our curation standards up to speed digitally and physically. As Erika Hartley, the Fort St. Joseph Curatorial Fellow reminded me throughout the summer, curation is an ongoing process, and is never complete. I now know what she means!
At Grand Valley, we have a reference card containing catalogue information for each provenience in an accession, and we also have a corresponding digital database powered by FileMaker Pro software that allows us to compile, update, and create new entries for the entirety of the Grand Valley’s anthropological collections. On that note, another aspect of curation that I gained experience in at Fort St. Joseph was data entry into an existing system, which certainly came in handy in the first week of my time at Grand Valley when I began re-inventorying the DeMarsac site. In addition, three primary categories of artifacts – prehistoric, historic, and faunal, are now the delineation of general artifact types for the DeMarsac collection, whereas before, many of the artifact types were simply sorted into smaller bags and placed into a larger bag for an individual provenience.
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| A photograph of Alex, taken during the 2019 field season at Fort St. Joseph. Photo by Hannah Rucinski. |
In closing, I would like to thank Dr. Nassaney and the rest of the 2018 crew for providing me with the experience at Fort St. Joseph that allowed me to further my goals and aspirations. I am pleased to be able to put my experience into practice at Grand Valley. I also enjoyed being a part of the collaborative archaeology community in Niles. It taught me that even non-archaeologists care about archaeology! It is a privilege to work in a job that I thoroughly enjoy, and which allows to continue pursuing my passion of archaeology. Who knows where my next adventure will find me?
It has been a pleasure reporting in to all of the Fort St. Joseph followers,
Until next time, adieu!
Alex Michnick
Laboratory Assistant
Department of Anthropology
Grand Valley State University
