Checking in at S1.5 E12!

Hi Fort Followers,

Jenny here again to tell you more about my unit (S1.5E12) in Trench 1. If you remember from my last post, I mentioned that we have a bit of a larger unit (1x1.5 meters instead of 1x1) because our unit was partly excavated by another student in 2019. We also had some difficulty with gravelly soil, which made it hard for us to get further down in our unit. My pit partner Rae Daun and I have found a really special structural stone that partially extends into the southwest wall of our unit. This stone is an awesome find because it’s so big. We have grown very attached to this stone, and have lovingly named it “Rocky.” Structural stones were used in French communities as the foundation of buildings, or used in their fireplaces.

There was a lot of stone readily available by the river, which was a great resource for finding the materials needed to form their buildings. It also was common for the bigger stones to be used for fireplaces, where smaller stones were used as building foundations

While this is a cool find, we still have a couple other things to uncover before we can figure out what this stone might have been used for. One important thing to note is that we’re still in the plow zone, which means that we’re still in the soil that has been greatly disturbed by a plow, or other agricultural activity. Basically, we aren’t far down enough in our soil to know if this stone was not disturbed by anything before we found it.

We found some limestone at the start of our excavation, which is a material that is also used for structural stones. However, the limestone was found above more landfill, so we think it might have been disturbed upwards by a plow. Now that we’ve dug deeper into our soil, (we’re now 10 centimeters down) we removed the limestone so we can get further down. 

There is definitely no way for us to remove this new stone once we get further down. It’s a lot larger than the limestone, and it is very deep into our wall. Removing that will certainly compromise the southwest wall of our unit. 

We are also slowly beginning to uncover another piece of stone, and it appears to be of the same material. However, we just found this, and the piece we found is much smaller than the other stone. This could mean that it extends further into the wall than the other one does.

 One really interesting aspect of this structural stone is that it has very straight cut edges. This is unusual for French structural stones- they usually just leave them natural and use mortar to keep the stones together for a foundation or fireplace. The cut edges on this stone, from what we can see, make it seem like a different kind of structure. There are records found about Fort St Joseph that discuss an order to make a jail in 1750. The stones used for jails were cut, unlike the stones used in other structures, and they also used iron for the doors to the jail cells. While there is no way to know if this is the case, having mostly uncovered one unusual stone, it does give us a unique look into the lives of these people.

 If nothing else, I love getting this opportunity to learn more about the people living at Fort St Joseph.

Thanks for reading!

-Jenny

References

Loveland, E. K., & Nassaney, M. S. (2017). Sheltering New France. Western Michigan University, Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Booklet, (3).