A Lead Seal from Nîmes

    

   

 Hey! At the time of writing this we are in our third week of the field school, and our first week excavating our units. Earlier this week I made a very cool find and I wanted to share that with you all! On Tuesday, I found a lead seal! Not just any lead seal, but one that we haven't recovered at Fort St. Joseph before.

    A lead seal was used to mark and tag things such as textiles, bags, and different bales of goods. A good way to think of a lead seal is as a modern day merchandise tag, but the colonial version (Davis 2014). They can also vary in size, anywhere from 5 cm to 7 mm (Davis 2018). Lead seals are an important find because they can tell you a lot of information. The lead seal I found this past week is thought to have been attached to stockings, likely wool (but it could have also been silk), because of its small size. Another line of evidence for fort occupants purchasing stockings is found in historic trade documents from 1694 that list them as one of the items brought to Fort St. Joseph (Davis, 2018). Textile seals, such as this one, are what make up most of the lead seals found at archaeological sites in America (Davis, 2018). This information is important because we aren’t able to get a lot of information on clothing simply because it deteriorates over time and therefore isn’t often available for us in the archaeological record. 

 

    The lead seal is really cool and intact. It may be hard to see in the picture, but the seal features a crocodile chained to a palm tree with the abbreviations “COL” and “NEM” on either side of the palm tree. The abbreviations stand for the Roman name for Nîmes, Colonia Nemausensis (Nassaney, Pg. 120-122). The palm tree and crocodile also stand for an historic event; they commemorate the defeat of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra (or Egypt in general based on who you ask) by Emperor Augustus (Elton). This is a French symbol because the French king Francois I made it a part of the French coat of arms. It became a symbol of strength and was used after that and continues to be used today. 

 

    We're not totally sure right now what the numbers and letters on the back are, but we are hoping that after some much needed T.L.C. in the lab we will be able to read it more clearly. What we do know right now about the back is that it says “A2 F” and after looking at an M.A. thesis done on textile seals by Cathrine Davis, I believe that this “A2 F” tells us it was attached to stockings that were made with two types of yarn, woven together, in order to make the stockings stronger (Davis 2018). 

I am sure that there is more information we could gather from this seal once it's cleaned up! That’s all I’ve got for you all today, I hope to write back to you after our lead seal here is cleaned up, and I can tell you more about it! 

- Brandy

Davis, C. (2014). Lead Seals from Colonial Fort St. Joseph (20BE23). [Honors Thesis, Western Michigan University]. Scholar Works. (Pg. 1-2). 

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3417&context=honors_theses Davis, C. (2018). Threads Across the Atlantic: Tracing the European Origins of Eighteenth-Century Imported Cloth in New France Using Lead Seal Evidence from Three French Colonial Sites. [Masters Thesis, Laval University]. Corpus.ulaval.ca. (Pg.30, 57, and 99). https://corpus.ulaval.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/38502a78-bd17-456b-abcb-158ebb17711d/con tent 

Stuart, F. Elton. (2017). Cloth Seals: An Illustrated Guide to the Identification of Lead Seals Attached to Cloth. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. 

https://books.google.com/books?id=bIBEEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA289&lpg=PA289&dq=lead+seal+ with+crocodile+chained+to+palm+tree&source=bl&ots=TJj0TEqhEX&sig=ACfU3U1WiON-tz 78R4h4QnkgolXCY9BPYA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvr6fgysuHAxWGAHkGHb2eCQk4 ChDoAXoECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=lead%20seal%20with%20crocodile%20chained%20to%2 0palm%20tree&f=false 

Nassaney, S. Michael. (2021). Fort St. Joseph Revealed: The Historical Archaeology of a Fur Trading Post. (Pg. 120-122).