Turtles! 🐢 🐢🐢

Hi archaeology enthusiasts! 

After wrapping up the 2023 field season at Fort St. Joseph, we had a lot of work to get done at the lab when it came to washing, sorting and cataloging artifacts. Personally, I am greatly interested in bioarchaeology and bones in general. The archaeological field school at Fort St. Joseph has given me my first experience with zooarchaeology and faunal remains. Since no human remains have ever been found at the fort, I kind of latched onto the zooarchaeology aspect of the fort. The majority of recoverable cultural evidence found at the site are actually faunal remains. I found it profoundly fascinating to recover bones myself, holding on to a piece of history, and wondering how the people at the fort lived their lives.

Back at the lab, I noticed my classmate washing the object in the image to the right. It did not look like any bone I had ever seen, or even a sturgeon bone. We had taken a closer look at sturgeon bones in Dr. Terry Martin's zooarch lab, and to me, this bone looked different. So, I started googling pictures of archaeological samples of sturgeon bones.

To me, the bone resembled that of sturgeon examples, but lacked the characteristic pitting. On top of that, sturgeon remains are rare to find at Fort St. Joseph. I was not satisfied with this comparison. I had to think. What animal would have a flat bone like that? Why? An idea struck me. A turtle! I knew turtles had shells, but had no clue if they would preserve, or even what they may look like if they did. Another google search of “freshwater turtle zooarchaeology” revealed something quite interesting.

Freshwater turtle remains from 60,000 years ago.
Photo credit: Assaf Uzan; Source: Archaeology Mag.

Now, I am definitely not an expert, so I am only making this conclusion based on comparative observations from the internet. Just by looks, the bone we cleaned in class much more closely resembles that of a freshwater turtle. I am not claiming it is definitively a turtle bone, but I think it is interesting that the internet can provide us with a comparative sample. I think it would be interesting to positively identify the bone recovered in class, then see where on the map it was found, and decipher why there may be that type of animal’s remains there. Additionally, there may be some associated artifacts found in the same unit at the same level that can help paint a better picture. In the end, it was an interesting side quest I went on to see if I could identify a strange bone. 

-Adyn