Current Research: USA - Midwest
Reported by Lynn Evans evansll@michigan.gov
(Spring 2008 SHA Newsletter 40[4])
Michigan
Fort St. Joseph, Niles (submitted by Erin Claussen and Meghan Cook, Western Michigan University):
Fort St. Joseph, Niles (submitted by Erin Claussen and Meghan Cook, Western Michigan University): Excavations at the site of the eighteenth-century mission, garrison, and trading post complex of Fort St. Joseph in Niles, MI resumed for five weeks in May and June 2007 under the auspices of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project directed by Michael Nassaney. As in previous years, numerous volunteers as well as the city of Niles and the Fort St. Joseph Museum collaborated with Western Michigan University (WMU) archaeological field school students and staff on all aspects of the project.
The field season began at the Lyne site, which is located roughly 200 meters south of the site of Fort St. Joseph. This location provided WMU field school students the opportunity to become familiar with archaeological field and lab procedures before moving on to excavations at the fort site. A major goal of excavations here is to determine whether or not the Lyne site contains deposits contemporaneous with those of the fort site. Evidence of an 18th-century presence has thus far been ephemeral, in the form of only isolated artifacts, however the site has yielded other interesting finds. This past season we uncovered two clusters of smudge pits for tanning hides, containing large amounts of carbonized corncobs, an unexpected and exciting find. Subsequent sorting of flotation samples has yielded a glass bead in association, perhaps indicating that the pits post date European contact.
Installation of the necessary drainage system, employed to lower the groundwater table at the site to allow excavations to cultural deposits, was the first order of business at the fort site. Excavation units were then laid out adjacent to features uncovered in 2006 including a fireplace, a sheet midden, and a possible stone foundation, with the goal of learning more about the extent of these features. In the case of the architectural remains, the objective was to determine the size, orientation, and construction methods of the associated structures and to obtain a larger artifact assemblage from which to infer the activities and the identities of the structures’ inhabitants. Though time constraints did not allow excavation below the plow zone in all opened excavation units, more of the 2006 fireplace was revealed including a portion of its hearth, and oxidized soil to one side of the suspected foundation led to its reinterpretation as another fireplace. By the close of the 2007 field season, the project’s efforts had added to the growing understanding of the physical layout of the fort and resulted in hundreds of artifacts attributable to the fort’s predominantly French and Indian occupation from 1691 to 1781.
Fireplace feature with hearth.
The field season included a public education and outreach component as well, as has become a tradition since 2002, through week-long archaeology summer camps made available to area high school students, continuing education adults, and teachers who are trained in field and laboratory procedures and take part in excavations. Campers engaged in classroom activities in the morning, where they learned about the fort’s history, its material culture, and the field of archaeology, then moved to the field in the afternoon to apply what they had learned. University students cemented their own new knowledge through teaching, as they worked side by side with the summer campers.
Field work culminated in a two-day open house in which the community was treated to lectures, demonstrations by historical reenactors, period music, an outdoor museum including informational panels and artifact displays, and the opportunity to view ongoing excavations and meet archaeologists face-to-face, all with the purpose of bringing the history, culture, and archaeology of Fort St. Joseph to life. Approximately 2,000 visitors attended the event, which was organized with the help of WMU students, staff, and volunteers (often past summer campers) from the local community. The efforts of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project were recently rewarded with the 2007 State History Award in Education, presented by the Historical Society of Michigan in recognition of its public archaeology program.
French voyageur at the 2007 Open House
Over the past year, graduate and undergraduate students and staff have represented the project at the Niles Apple Fest, Michigan Archaeology Day (Lansing), and Support the Fort Education Days (Niles). They have also presented on the project French voyageur at the 2007 Open Houseand the results of scholarly research at several professional conferences including the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, the Midwest Archaeology Conference, the Midwest Historical Archaeology Conference, the Conference on Michigan Archaeology, and the Society for Historical Archaeology’s annual conference on historic and underwater archaeology, and will present a symposium summarizing 10 years of the project at the upcoming French Colonial Historical Society meeting in Quebec in May. A return to the field is planned for the second half of summer 2008, with the open house scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, 26 and 27 July.
