Around S5 W11

 Hello Fort fans! 

    We have had a busy week so far preparing for the open house this weekend, August sixth and seventh. I wanted to take a moment and update everyone on some great finds from Mary and my unit, S5 W11. Today we powered through another five cm across our entire one-meter by two-meter unit. We found a variety of artifacts including teeth and bone from deer and beaver, seed beads, lead buckshot, a possible flint core rock, and a beautiful Jesuit ring! The ring itself is a very exciting find because it represents a possible piece of evidence that women lived in the fort when it was in use. It is so rewarding to look at our unit and think back to when we were struggling to dig through the roots at the surface and were hoping to find something interesting. Now it feels like we really have a good hold on what we are doing and are finding artifacts of historical value. I am very proud to be a part of this field school and to have the opportunity to contribute to the history of Fort St. Joseph. Everyone in the field school has been working very hard to put together events, tours, demonstrations, and a display case of our discoveries this year for the open house. I have heard that there will also be food provided by a local boy scout troop and live historical reenactors. As an Eagle Scout myself it is a great feeling to see young men of the community come out to events like this build memories that I know they will take with them for the rest of their lives. I hope I get to see a great turn out this weekend and get to share the joy of history with the greater Niles community. 

        Prost! 

               Matthew Runk

Updates from South 9 West 21

    Hello, Carson Manfred here again this last week on the dig site my Unit South 9 West 21 has made some interesting discoveries in our unit. We are currently at Level 7 40 cmbd and are moving onto Level 8 which is 45 cmbd. We are still in the plow zone and in our East half of our unit we have begun to unearth an unidentified bone currently. Some other interesting recent finds at our unit have been a lead musket ball and a pipe stem but overall Unit South 9 West 21 is still having less artifacts found than surrounding units. Now over these last two weeks at Fort St. Joseph, we have had Middle School and Highschool campers come on site with us to help us excavate. These students did excellent on site doing stuff such as excavating out units alone and with help from staff while also wet screening the dirt that was being excavated from these units. I think everyone could agree though that the students favorite thing was finding artifacts especially the middle school group they would get really excited when they found artifacts. Overall, I would have to say that being able to show and talk to the students about archaeology was very enjoyable for me and the rest of the FSJ Crew.

Can't wait to see everyone at the open house!

        Carson Manfred

Mole Team

 Hi there! 

     It is Katy writing to you from unit S5W7! Cole and I have been busy at our unit this week as we continue to find a wide range of artifacts. With help from the middle school campers last week and the high school campers this week, we have made it to 30cmbd level all around. Getting to excavate in the floodplain has been an exciting experience for sure. Excavating in uncharted territory has led us to some potential answers about the size of Fort St. Joseph, which is our main goal for the 2022 field school season. In our unit, Cole and I have hypothesized that it could have been a potential structure, or place where the cooking was done based upon the variety of artifacts that have been found thus far. For example, we have been finding teeth both from deer and beaver, bone, calcined bone, pottery, redware, lead shot, hand wrought nails, lead, a possible kettle lug, seed beads both regular and tubular, along with a clear mulberry bead, a possible piece of a clay pipe stem, gunflint, a couple larger structural stones which have since been removed from the plow zone, and 18th century window and container glass. Getting to work with the campers these past two weeks has been great! They are all super eager to learn and excavate the units down in the floodplain. Some challenges that the campers and I ran into were having to dig around the structural stones and bioturbations within the entirety of our unit. We have a larger bioturbation in the N1/2 of the unit that goes down roughly 20cm. We also had some unusual soil changes that we were instructed to excavate around just in case it was a potential feature underneath. The soil went from a dark brown to a lighter yellowish color which was sandy in texture. Around 25cmbd was when we learned that the soil changes were not crucial to our unit, and they were dug through until our unit was level at 30cmbd. Our next goal is to excavate further and attempt to make it to the occupation zone by next week. Overall, Cole and I are having so much fun this field school season and are excited to see what else we can discover and reveal about Fort St. Joseph. Thank you for reading!

Katy Dreger

Updates from S5 W11!

Hi everyone!

    Here’s a small update on Matt and I’s unit! So far, we’re at 25 cm bd on the North half and around 23 cm bd on the South half! We’re currently getting about 5 cm done each day in the field. Once we complete 25 cm bd on the South half, we’re going back to the North half and going to either 30 cm bd, or where we can see a distinct change from the plow zone (or Level 2) to the occupation zone (or Level 3).

So far, we’re finding some really cool artifacts! We’ve found many seed beads, most of them are white but I managed to find a blue seed bead in the wet screen! We’ve found many bones, and even some teeth. There’s glass, and some slag, which is the core or remnants of burned charcoal. We’ve also found an awl and a few nails! The awl and one of the nails are in pretty good condition, the awl is 11 cm long and has very little corrosion. Both in the wet screen and during excavation, we’ve found multiple lead shots and even a musket ball. Those are my favorite to find because they’re so small but because they’re made of lead, they’re so much heavier than they look! Remember your lead wipes!

    Matt and I are getting a lot done and have developed a pretty good system to be as efficient as we can! We dig together in the mornings, and I take our dirt up to the wet screens in the afternoons. This way, we get as much dirt excavated in the morning while it’s cooler as we can while not getting backed up on buckets of dirt! Overall, S5 W11 is cooking with gas and finding some really cool things! Check back soon for more unit updates!

        From,

                Mary

Middle Schooled

Hi everybody!

    My name is Isaac Strodtbeck. I am a senior at Western Michigan University, and I currently plan to graduate next spring with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. My minor is Music, and that is primarily what I studied at Jackson College for two years before transferring to Western. I am from Spring Arbor, Michigan, which is about ten minutes from the city of Jackson. Later in life, I hope to study ethnomusicology, which would involve researching how different cultures develop, notate, and perform music. It may be a bit obvious, but cultural anthropology is my favorite type of anthropology, though archaeology is a close second. This is my first experience being enrolled in any kind of field school, and when I heard about the program, I was eager to sign up. So far, it has been a valuable learning experience for me, and I think other students in the program would agree. What made week 3 interesting was that we were no longer the only students digging on the site.

     We were joined for the week by an archaeology day camp comprised of middle schoolers. They visited us in the afternoon during lunch from Tuesday to Thursday, then stayed with us all day on Friday. The general expectation I held was that we would be supervising the students while teaching them how to perform certain archaeological techniques around the site. Skimming dirt with a trowel and washing artifacts at the wet-screens were the primary focus for the middle schoolers. My expectations were blown away, however. As it turns out, there were some students among them who have been into archaeology longer than I have, and it showed.

    There were a couple of middle-schoolers who had discovered lead seals in the wet-screens, which still remain some of the most exciting and significant artifacts discovered this year. Other middle-schoolers I had worked with were way more proficient with using trowels than me. Every day, I had always felt like I was learning more from them, which was a pleasant surprise.    

    Week 4 is when we will be visited by a camp of high-schoolers. If I have already learned this much from middle-schoolers, then I cannot wait to see what the following week brings!

With regards,

Isaac Strodtbeck

Neshnabe

Bozho jayek. Cole Rattan nde zhnekas. Gigo o ndodem. Bodewadmi ndaw. Tecumseh, Oklahoma ndoch bya. Shawnee, Oklahoma nde da. Shishibeniyek Ndebendagwes. 

   Hello everyone! My name is Cole Joseph Louis Rattan. I am enrolled Citizen Band Potawatomi (historically referred to as the St. Joseph Band of Potawatomi) and I belong to the Moutaw, Welch, Ouilmette, and Chevalier families. I am a cultural resource management major at East Central University in Oklahoma. I have always had a love for history and a dream of becoming an archaeologist. The research areas I want to focus on are the Algonquian speaking peoples, anything to do with the 3 Fires Anishinaabek (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadmi), the French fur trade, and the Great Lakes region. This is not my first field school, and I am not here by coincidence. My ancestors are Francois Peirre Chevalier (Metis) who was a headman for the Potawatomi who married Chopa Neeboash, daughter of Potawatomi Chief Naunongee (prominent Gigo Clan member) who fought and died at the Battle of Fort Dearborn. I'm proud of my heritage. I know I'm connected to the Chevalier family that was at Fort St. Joseph. I just don't know how yet because the connections haven't been made certain for Francois' lineage (Chief Shobbonier). 

  I am fortunate and thankful to all who have made it possible for me to attend this field school. It was a 15 hour drive from Oklahoma. I wouldn't be here if Justin Neely Zagnenibi, our language director of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, wouldn't have put the word out that I needed a place to say. Then, Nicole Keith Wasnode, food sovereignty director of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, said I could stay in her game room at the Pine Creek Indian Reservation. I also wouldn't have made it without my grandpa Don Moutaw who gave me the funds to get up here to the Home Land. Igwiyen! I'd lastly like to thank Dr. Michael Nassaney (who discovered the Fort's location in 1998) and field director Erika Hartley for letting me be a part of the 2022 Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Field School.

Thank you all!

Cole Rattan

Awl That and More!

 Hi there!

   

    My name is Matthew Runk. I'm a senior at Western Michigan University majoring in Hydrogeology with a minor in Anthropology. I have an associate degree in Sustainable Brewing from Kalamazoo Valley Community College and took a year off school to brew beer in Sacramento, California before coming back to WMU in 2021. The 2022 field school has just finished up our second week on site and we are all pretty excited to share what we have been finding so far. My unit is designated South 5 West 11 based on its location on the search grid that has been laid out for the site. So far, we have found a good amount of animal bone, glass fragments, nails, and white seed beads in S5W11, but a recent find from Thursday this week had everyone smiling. We found a leatherworking and sewing tool called an awl that was still sharp to the touch on one end and had very little oxidation that can be common with metal tools and nails in a wet area like our site. The awl is roughly fourteen centimeters long with a clearly intentional bend in the middle. There would have been a wooden or cloth handle on one side to protect the user from blisters and cuts from the metal. Awls are used for a variety of craft activities ranging from punching holes in leather, to scoring wood for further tooling, to etching designs into wood/metal/leather, and many finishing sewing stitches are made easier with the use of the awl. This is an exciting discovery because it lends evidence to craft production activities being done around our excavation area. To find tools, beads, and glass along with the awl is a good collection of evidence to draw from. There is the possibility of this being a residential location where fort residents engaged in home craft production for themselves and other members of the community. This falls directly in line with our research objective for this field school. We are trying to discern how large the footprint is for the fort so that a more systematic excavation can be designed for future field schools. Hopefully as we continue to dig deeper to out unites, we will be able to confirm the existence of residential habitations in this area or other evidence that will be able to help us better define our hypothesis. This course has been tremendous fun and I have enjoyed all the support and outreach from the community of Niles. Thank you for your interest in this project and for allowing me the opportunity to spend my summer with amazing people stepping through parts of history.

Have a great day!

Matt