Fireworks, Pizza Transit, and Community!

Hey everybody! It's Miro Dunham, back again this year as the Public Outreach Coordinator! (I was a student in the field school last year.)

So far, being back in Niles has been wonderful. As always, the people are great, the community is welcoming, and the digging is, well, dirty. We were contacted this year by the Niles Chamber of Commerce with a community outreach volunteering opportunity, which was to help with parking vehicles for the fireworks show on the 3rd of July. Myself, Cameron, and Maddie, all of whom you will meet through blogs later, participated in the event, and we raised a lot of money in donations for the fireworks show for next year! We were also graciously offered a Pizza Transit picnic by the Chamber for compensation, which was obviously amazing! (Pizza Transit is the BEST!) It was really awesome to help out the wonderful city of Niles, as well as promoting the Project and the Fort by having our presence and talking to people about our work. We would love to be contacted with more volunteering opportunities, so please feel free to reach out to us at fsjarchaeology@gmail.com!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend, and we hope to see you all at our first lecture series, which will be held this Wednesday, July 10th, at 7PM in the Niles library! We will be having a total of 4 lectures every week at the same time, so if you can't make this weeks, try again next week!

That's all from me!

Miro

First Day of Field Work... Clearing, Cleaning, Cleansing!

Hello fort followers!

This week began with a visit to the Fort St. Joseph site. Before we arrived, the students and staff helped to load up a few vans, several personal vehicles, and a trailer with materials needed for site excavation, lab work, and our living quarters in Niles. Despite the heat and humidity, everyone was very helpful and efficient with moving the site equipment in, out, and around the buildings that we will occupy for the duration of the field school.

Upon arriving at the site, students and staff had the chance to meet with Matthew Bussler, the Michigan Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. He was delighted to share with us the details and meanings of a smudging ceremony, which he explained was to bless and cleanse the site as we break ground on another year of excavation.

Matthew is pictured above on the left.

Students and staff were able to observe and participate in the smudging ceremony, which involved touching smoke that emanated from a burning bundle of sage against one’s body, and allowing Matthew to send smoke along the parts of the body that one cannot reach. Afterwards, he offered us some cedar oil to rub onto the top of our heads, and on our arms and legs as an effort to keep disease from touching us if it were to release during excavation.

We hope to continue to strengthen our relationship with Matthew and the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi as the summer continues and into the distant future.

After participating in the smudging ceremony, field school students, staff, and volunteers began to clear the area surrounding the areas of excavation with rakes, loppers, lawn mowers, machetes, chainsaws, and weed cutters. The areas we will excavate this year are within a few trenches dug into the site’s modern landfill (20^th century), and required a lot of labor to cut back the brush, branches, and weeds that would impede an efficient and careful excavation.

 

After clearing a path around the trenches, students, staff, and volunteers began to clear a pathway for the Historic Walking Tour on July 15th at 6pm. The walking tour will involve the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project along its path, from the historical marker near Bond St. to the site itseld. The walking tour begins at the Niles Amphitheater, and will last for approximately two hours. An event page for the walking tour is on the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Facebook page.

Our work so far has been wonderful, and the students have shown their dedication to this project and their understanding for its importance to the community. We look forward to seeing what this year's field school season will teach us!

Back to the Base(ics)!

Hello to our fort followers! My name is Hannah Rucinski, and I am this year’s site photographer. I am also one of our public outreach coordinators along with Raegan Delmonico (also our Lab Coordinator) and Miro Dunham (also one of our field assistants). This past week, we held a very productive orientation for the 2019 Field School. This year, we had nine field school students and seven staff to get to know during the first couple days at Western Michigan University. We quickly became close with one another as our collective enthusiasm over site excavation and public outreach involvement was understood. The beginning of orientation involved brief icebreakers, questions about one another’s excitements and concerns about the field school, and bagels.

After we were comfortable with one another, Dr. Michael Nassaney gave lectures on the archaeology of the fur trade in North America, the Michigan underground railroad, and field & lab procedures in Niles. 

Students participated in several field exercises, including right-angle mapping, unit surveying, and operating a total station. 

The students and staff also had the opportunity to travel to a nearby construction site in Kalamazoo to examine some animal remains recovered by the construction crew. They were able to look at examples of stratigraphy at the dig site, soil colors in a pile of backfill, and the procedures that Dr. Nassaney takes when such a situation arises.

We are looking forward to the beginning of the field school’s excavation in Niles. It will be an education and memorable experience for all who participate. We can’t wait to see all of our fort followers at this year’s Open House, which runs from 10am – 4pm on August 3^rd and 4^th. For those who wish to participate in other public FSJ events this summer, we will hold four lectures at the Niles District Library as a part of our annual lecture series. This year’s theme is “Curation: Preserving the Past for the Future”, and will be held on each Wednesday in July at 7pm, beginning with July 10^th. Erika Hartley, the Fort St. Joseph Curatorial Fellow, will give the first lecture on the 10^th.

Feel free to follow along with this year’s events on our Facebook page, titled “The Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project”, by liking the page. We hope to see you, our dedicated fort followers, at some of our upcoming events!

Curation Research: Looking Back to Move Forward

FSJ Friends!

I hope everyone enjoyed the crazy April showers. While the rain isn’t good for field work, it is great for curation research and planning!

Figure 1. The Michigan History Center showcases wonderful exhibits
for all ages and hosts a variety of education programs and events
 throughout the years. If you haven't attended their event for
Michigan Archaeology Day, typically held in October,
 make sure to do so this year!

As I mentioned in my last blog, I had the opportunity to visit the repository for Michigan’s State Historic Preservation Office and chat with Dean Anderson, State Archaeologist, Stacy Tchorzynski, Archaeologist, and Jessica Yann, Archaeology Graduate Student Assistant. Most of the archaeological artifacts in the State of Michigan’s care are located at the Michigan History Center (Figure 1). Jessica informed me that the State cares for around 3,000 collections from terrestrial and underwater archaeological sites in Michigan. These include items from state-owned lands, donated collections from sites in Michigan, and collections from cultural resource management firms or government agencies resulting from work to comply with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.  For those who aren’t familiar with Section 106, the law requires an assessment of any federal undertaking so that its potential impacts on an historic properties (e.g., building, bridge, lighthouse, prehistoric or historic archaeology sites, etc.) can be examined and commented on by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. From these evaluations and in consultation with the State Historic Preservation Officer, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, and Native Tribes, preservation requirements are determined for the project if it is to move forward. For more specific information, here is a link that I think sums up Section 106 nicely:https://www.nps.gov/history/tribes/Documents/106.pdf. . 

During my visit, Jessica gave me an informative tour of the collection storage room. She showed me the various options used to store the collections, including archival cabinets, display cases, and storage boxes placed on metal shelving (Figure 2). We also discussed the room’s security access and its environmental regulations. Finally, Jessica told me a little bit about the new collection database that the State Historic Preservation Office was using. Previously, they had used the Argus database, the collection management system used by the Mackinac State Historic Parks. However, within the last few years a decision was made to switch to a new digital platform. This new system has the same recording categories (e.g., catalog number, site, provenience, material type, function, storage location, count, weight, description, etc.) as Argus and Past Perfect, but the screen layout is slightly different and there are some new map functions. One aspect that appealed to me was the fact that the database can be accessed online for those with appropriate credentials. How exciting! While there are still a few kinks to work out with this database program, it will be interesting to hear more about its capabilities as it continues to be developed.

Figure 2. These archival cabinets provide many options for storing collections. Artifacts that are fragile or frequently asked about are placed in display cases by the staff members to add another layer of protection. 

Through this project and from my own life experience, I have found that to look forward and explore new options for whatever your task may be, you must know from where you began so you can appreciate how far you have come. So, I reached out to a former Project member, Erin Claussen, who played a crucial role in setting up the management system the Project currently uses. She provided a lot of background information that let me take a step back to better understand the development of the collection’s organization, specifically in regards to the archaeological artifacts.

Initially, the artifacts were organized by Project members according to their three-digit accession number which details the excavation year, site number, and catalog number. For example, the accession number 18-2-1 indicates that the associated artifacts were recovered in 2018 from the second site excavated that year by the Project and that these specific artifacts were the first to be collected. Accession numbers have and continue to provide a link to the information recorded about each artifact as they were documented on a field specimen log and on the corresponding excavation field notes. After the field season, the artifacts were transferred (on loan from the Fort St. Joseph Museum, now the Niles History Center) to the archaeology lab at Western Michigan University so the Project could perform an inventory of the material recovered. The inventory included information regarding the artifacts’ accession number, spatial location, material type, function, description, count, weight, and other useful notations. Following inventory, the artifacts were transported back to the, then, Fort St. Joseph Museum for storage and long-term care, maintaining the accession number method of organization. Each year’s inventory was recorded in separate Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, requiring researchers to search each file individually for the information they were interested in.

After a decade of excavation, the Project began to rethink this organizational method, recognizing the vast amount of materials represented in the collection and the collection’s research potential. In 2010, Erin assisted in developing a management plan for the Project in her master’s thesis, “Fort St. Joseph 1.0: Creating a Comprehensive Information Management Scheme for the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project.” Erin implemented the tools needed for the Project to begin recording the artifacts’ information in the collection management system Past Perfect and helped in reorganizing the collection by raw material (e.g., iron, brass, fauna, etc.) and function (e.g., activity, tool, etc.) rather than by the artifacts’ accession numbers. The collection reorganization and recording in Past Perfect was a large undertaking for the Project and the, then, Fort St. Joseph Museum. Members of the Project worked on the tasks over the course of a few years to complete the transition.

Currently, inventory information is entered each year into Past Perfect as well as logged on an Excel spreadsheet. Some photographs are taken of various artifacts and stored on the archaeology lab’s computer. After these steps are completed, the artifacts are taken to the Niles History Center and integrated with artifacts found in previous years. For the most part, the Project and Niles History Center have continued using Erin’s system with some success as members have maintained this organization for the archaeologically recovered artifacts. There are some problems, however, with the system that have become apparent over the years and now need to be addressed. I will provide more details on this topic in my next post!

While there is more that can be gleaned from resources that have not been discovered just yet, the research gathered in Phase 1 of this curation project has provided a useful start. As our own collection challenges have come to light as well as potential future problems, it is now time to begin developing a specific plan of action.

Stay tuned for more updates,

Erika Hartley

Integrating Artifacts into the Collection

Hello Buddies! Rae here, back again and pleased to announce that I will be returning to Fort St. Joseph as the lab coordinator for the 2019 field season! I am so excited to continue working with the Project for another summer!

This year I had the opportunity to help take part in the collections integration process of Fort St. Joseph’s 2018 artifacts. It was a new process for me and there was definitely a period of figuring things out before I got the hang of it. After many hours spent inventorying by Dr. Nassaney and the rest of the FSJ crew, all of the artifacts from the 2018 field season were ready to be integrated into the permanent collection at the Niles History Center. Meghan, Cameron, and I packed up all of the artifacts at WMU’s archaeology lab and headed down to Niles!

In addition to the 2018 artifacts, we also brought all of the float samples from a couple of years that had still been at the archaeology lab at WMU. The float sample was also going to be given a new home in the collection and be transferred into new boxes! Once we arrived at Niles, we got to work putting together the new boxes. The float sample collection is organized by accessions. Within the accession there are the high fraction and low fraction samples. The collection was re organized into its new boxes and then we were able to start integrating the 2018 artifacts!

A few boxes of the permanent collection laid out while
 we were integrating the 2018 artifacts.
Photo courtesy of Raegan Delmonico.

Now a little background on artifact organization! All of the artifacts are sorted and cleaned by the students at the field school. They are separated by material, but all of the materials in the same accession are kept together, basically it is one big bag full of a bunch of smaller bags.  However, the collection in Niles, is sorted by material. All of the smaller bags from within each accession are then sorted into larger boxes, with all of the other bags of that same material in the entire collection. For example, we take all of the little bags of calcine bone and put them in a box of all of the other bags of calcine bones from all of the accessions throughout the years of excavation. The entire process wasn’t difficult but organizing it all in your head can be a little intimidating. It was definitely a good experience to have and a chance to learn something new!

Voyageur Culture and Pipe Smoking: A Lecture by Dr. Rob Mann

Dr. Brandão, Dr. Mann, Dr. Nassaney, and myself
after Dr. Mann's lecture. Photo courtesy of Cameron Youngs.

Hi everyone, this is Cameron again, and I’m a senior here at WMU. This week I’m writing to you about a public lecture I listened to a few weeks ago, given by a visiting archaeologist, Dr. Rob Mann from St. Cloud University. The presentation was about his research about the North American fur trade, but more specifically about the voyageurs and their pipe smoking habits. To me this presentation was 

really informative because it taught me more about the voyageurs, their occupation, their life ways, and the various dimensions that pipe smoking meant aside from its leisurely connotations. Which is a subject that I have found to be interesting, and it is my intention to share what I have learned with you guys!

As many of you probably know, the voyageurs were French Canadians who transported furs and trade goods along waterways, between forts or trading posts to Native Americans, who exchanged the furs for the European trade goods. But to the voyageurs, this was not merely just an occupation, but a way of life in which they had a deep sense of pride. Navigating along the rivers in the backcountry was dangerous and took its toll upon those who had the grit to pursue such an occupation. The average life expectancy for an individual that survived the day to day hazards was short for today’s standards, and the typical voyageur did not live past their forties or fifties. Their prowess in navigating the backcountry and braving the dangerous rapids along their trade routes meant voyageurs were highly sought after by many fur trading companies.

But what I didn’t know before this lecture, was that being a voyageur was not just an occupation, but it was also a unique class-based ethnic identity within the broader spectrum of French-Canadian culture. Within the class-based hierarchy of the French fur trade industry, most voyageurs would have occupied the lower echelons. This status hierarchy is salient while glancing at the roles and seating placement of the voyageurs within a canoe among its other occupants. Most voyageurs would paddle in the middle and were designated as the milieau, and thus they were at the bottom of the status hierarchy. And above them was the gouvernail, which translates to rudder, directing the boat at the back, and the avant in the front, who would lead the occupants in call and response songs. But also, in the middle were the bourgeois, who were the big wigs inside the fur trade business, and who traveled with the voyageurs to and from the forts and trading posts. But, everybody in the boat was subordinate to the bourgeois, and fortunately, when the French were in control of parts of North America, the milieu could ascend upward in status to the position of gouvernail or avant, and in some cases to bourgeois. And one way that this could be done was through an individual's skill in singing and memorizing songs, who could eventually lead the paddling pace and rhythms of the canoe. This is one-way that work and leisure was blended into the daily lives of the voyageurs, who could spend almost eighteen hours a day paddling.

Along with an individual’s skill in singing and memorizing songs, pipe smoking was another aspect of how the voyageurs blended work and leisure throughout their busy days. After 1763, the British expanded their control over North America, and the French-Canadian voyageurs had little choice but to work for British fur trading companies, who looked upon them with disdain. Despite their contempt, the British continued to hire the voyageurs because of their prowess in navigating and traversing the North American waterways. And during this period, there was very little chance for upward class mobility for the voyageurs. But, amidst their oppression, the voyageurs were able to maintain some sense of control through leisurely pipe smoking habits. As some of you may know, the voyageurs measured the distances they had traveled in pipes. But what I didn’t know, was that they were not smoking their pipes while they were traveling, but rather they used their habit to control how often they could take a break.  Which is believed to have lasted about ten minutes for every two to six miles traveled. So, an activity that was strongly associated with voyageur culture, which the British used to characterize them with as lazy, gave them some sense of power over the oppressive forces that sought to control every aspect of their day to day lives.

After hearing this from Doctor Mann, he began to present archaeological data which corroborated with these activities. Since the voyageurs occupied a maritime occupation, many of the artifacts associated with them are found underwater, where some unlucky individuals either crashed or sank their boat. But, one of the artifacts that was presented during the lecture was a pipe bowl with the inscription “T.D”. And I immediately drew a connection to my summer at Fort St. Joseph, because one of the artifacts that my peers had uncovered, was a pipe bowl with the “T.D.” inscription (Figure 1). I felt ecstatic after, seeing how Dr. Mann’s research made that connection to my time excavating in Niles. I mean, we know that the site was occupied by people in the past, because the materials are there, and the documentary sources tell us bits of what happened, but this connection really made it seem real to me. The voyageurs occupied a space which is now the city of Niles. In my mind, it brought the past to life through making that connection to the object. And it makes me happy to have had the feeling, and that I could share Doctor Mann’s research with you all.

"T.D." pipe bowl fragment.
Photo courtesy of Kaleb Kahler.

Thank you for reading,

Cameron

Abstract from "An Examination of Flintlock Components at Fort St. Joseph"

Hello Fort Followers, 

Kevin Jones recently defended his M.A. thesis at Western Michigan University! He received his bachelors from Purdue University, where he developed an interest in answering archaeological questions through material and composition analysis. At Purdue, he completed an honors project on Fort Ouiatenon, a French fur trading post established in 1717. When he came to WMU, Kevin decided to follow a similar path and work with Fort St. Joseph materials. Dr. Nassaney introduced Kevin to flintlock components when he was beginning to explore research topics. His initial research led him to pursue questions in regards to the origin, design, and work necessary to keep flintlocks functioning on the frontier. Below is the abstract to his thesis, “An Examination of Flintlock Components at Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), Niles, Michigan.”  

The purpose of this study is to identify the age, country and place of origin, function (e.g. fusil, pistol), and intended use (e.g. military, trade gun) of flintlock components recovered from Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), an eighteenth-century French mission-garrison-trading post in southwest Michigan. Flintlock muskets were a vital technology in New France throughout the fur trade era, both in their roles as weapons and as hunting implements. They were also important because their relatively complex nature necessitated localized, frontier supply and repair; their use and maintenance were integrated into many facets of frontier life. Historical documents and archaeological materials show that Fort St. Joseph was one location where flintlock-related activities occurred. Close examination of Fort St. Joseph's flintlock artifacts provides insight into the weapons that were used and maintained on the frontier, as well as the significant roles they played in the North American fur trade more widely.

Etched bow and quiver on an English buttplate found at Fort St. Joseph. Photo courtesy of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project.

Kevin’s thesis will be available through ScholarWorks at Western Michigan University in the coming weeks!