The Bone Lab

By Jacob Enos    

Some of Dr. Martin's samples

    When we're looking at the recovered artifacts from Fort St. Joseph, one type of material is incredibly dominant in the record: animal bone. The long occupation of the site has left us with a rich record of the animal activity at the fort, from residents' daily meals to the remnants of the site's most valuable trade goods. The first samples I had the opportunity to personally take in were rich with the fragments of the many local critters and the abundance of their remains all over the site shows just how busy this location has been across history. 

To help us interpret these many finds, we were visited by zooarchaeologist Dr. Terry Martin who specializes in the faunal remains of archaeological sites. Dr. Martin arrived with a truck-load of contemporary animal remains that represent the usual profile of the Fort St. Joseph site, such as white-tailed deer, raccoon, and American black bears. he walked us through the process of identifying and tagging these remains which are collected in general samples and later processed in a more detailed analysis. A sample bag I opened contained dozens of bones, mostly in fragments, which yielded many easily identifiable specimens. After a few rounds of side-by-side comparison with the intact examples, all of us students were quickly able to pick out distinctive bones like scapulae, vertebrae and mandibles. 

The initially unidentifiable fragment

    However, one fragments that really threw me off was the little segment pictured to the side. The unique curvature looked like it would be an easy marker but, after a few rounds with the larger mammal skeletons, I kept coming up short. After just one glance at the sample Dr. Martin suggested that I spend more time browsing the beaver skeleton, and with an extra set of eyes, we were able to get a spectacular match with the ulna of a North American beaver. These animals were an incredibly important trade commodity in New France, with their much sought-after pelts; this was exciting to me to make a real physical connection with the sprawling global network of eighteenth-century trade. 

A small number of our 
thousands of bone fragments

    It is incredibly exciting now, after screening our first samples in the field, to be able to immediately put this new knowledge to the test. Dr. Martin's bone lab left us with applicable skills that are already helping us interpret this season's work. I am looking forward to finding challenging specimens in our units in the coming weeks and hope for any interesting patterns in faunal artifacts to present themselves.