Archaeology Season in Review

Fragment of feather-edged creamware found in the cellar.

The 2018 archaeology field season at Colonial Michilimackinac concluded August 25. The second half of the season was as exciting as the first (see July 19 blog post).

Table knife parts

Some of the finds were additional fragments of artifacts discovered earlier. In the center of the house, we found what appears to be the tip of the bone-handled table knife found earlier in the summer. In the cellar we found another large fragment of feather-edged creamware plate under the earlier pieces.

Lead seal found in the cellar.

Trade Silver Brooch

The cellar continued to yield both trade goods and personal items. After the several pieces of trade silver found last summer, we were excited to recover another intact trade silver brooch. An unusual lead seal also came from the cellar. We have not yet been able to trace its origin, but it would have been attached to some kind of textile to indicate quality, taxation, and/or ownership.

Sword handle

The most unusual artifact of the summer was the handle from a small sword. This type of sword was worn by mid-eighteenth century European gentlemen for fashion, rather than for any practical purpose.

We opened an additional quad late in the summer which should be just inside the north wall. We did not succeed in reaching the underlying beach in any of our open squares this season, so there is plenty more work to do next summer. We will be trying to locate the bottom of the cellar and to better define the deep features in the center of the house. In the meantime, our focus has switched to cleaning, identifying, quantifying and storing all the artifacts and records from this season.