First Day in Lab: Cleaning Artifacts and Identifying Bones

Hi everybody! 

I’m Rae Daun and I’m a senior at Western Michigan University! My major is in Biology, and I have a minor in Psychology. After I graduate, I am hoping that my background in the aforementioned subjects and my field school experience will allow me to pursue a job in cultural resource management, and eventually return to obtain my master’s degree in anthropology! This is my first field experience in archaeology, and I’m excited to see where this opportunity will take me!

This week, we had our first day in the lab – how exciting! My classmates and I split into two groups. In my group, we began our day by learning how to clean artifacts. This is a huge part of learning to be an archaeologist. We do more than just dig and play in the dirt! Sure, that is what people traditionally think is our job, but there’s so much more to it. A dentist would be jealous of the tools we have, from picks to toothbrushes; we’re use these to clean the artifact to the best of our ability without destroying its integrity. It’s a finely tuned art that all of us had the privilege of learning and continue learning throughout the lab sessions we’ll have this semester!

After lunch, we switched with the other group and met with Dr. Terry Martin, a zooarchaeologist who is an expert in identifying animal bones from just fragments! He has worked on many different archaeological sites throughout the states, and we are lucky to have him on our team at Fort St. Joseph! After a brief lecture on how bones are identified, we got right to work! This wasn’t just any workshop with some bones that had already been identified, we were able to sort through bones collected at Fort St. Joseph and figure out what animal had left them behind.

Some of the fragments have grooves and margins that make them easier to identify, while others are just shards that can’t be identified without further analysis. Many of the bones we find at Fort St. Joseph are White-tailed deer, or Odocoileus virginianus, but there are some other cool species that we’ve identified like black bear or otter!

For this bone lab, my partner Reid and I were able to identify over 30 different bone fragments! It was an awesome experience and I know for sure that I will never forget what the distal end of a deer tibia looks like (we had a ton of these).

Llelo wasn’t much help in this lab, but he certainly was interested in the tasty looking bones.

Picture was taken by his handler!
He also did not consume any bones

Bonus points for anybody who can guess what this bone is!

Thanks for reading!