Inventory, Float Samples, and a Newly Designed Artifact Case

Hello,

Over the past few weeks in the lab for the archaeological analysis course, I have been able to learn a lot of interesting things. We’ve been improving on skills we had started learning during our archaeology field school this summer at Fort St. Joseph, such as identifying, sorting, labeling, and bagging of the artifacts we collected this summer. We are also building new skills now that we are in a different lab setting.

The inventory process is one new task that we have recently begun. We are being much more thorough in our labeling and bagging of artifacts (including counting and weighing of each), and have to make sure to record the information and compile it with all the previous years. This is a crucial part of the archaeological process as inventory is important for our own research and storage purposes as well as for the future preservation. Creating an inventory of artifacts collected helps us keep track of what has been found, the location that the items were found at (e.g. the depth, the excavation unit, distance from features, et cetera), the quantity of the different types of artifacts, and other identifying attributes. From this, we can also make conclusions--“it’s not what we find, it’s what we find out!”. For example, knowing what types of artifacts we find most often can tell us about the habits of the people living at the fort. If there were a lot of artifacts related to weapons, that might suggest a more militaristic function of the site, or high quantities of wampum could suggest an area of Indigenous occupation or a location where trade frequently occurred with surrounding Native communities.

Stefans and I working on processing
our sample.

We have also began processing flotation samples that we recovered during our excavations this past summer. We used the floatation machine to sift through our larger bags of collected soil into heavy and light fraction screens. The material in the sample that floated was collected in the light fraction and consists largely of botanical remains, while the material that sank was collected in the heavy fraction. We set aside the materials to dry off a bit and will start analyzing them soon, which I’m looking forward to.

Kierra posing by the artifact case
before the Archaeology Open House

One aspect that isn’t completely new to all of the students from this summer, but is new to me is working on the artifact case. The artifact case is where we display some of our favorite finds from the season. For our open house in the summer, only a couple of the students worked on the case as the rest of us were busy with other tasks. The students had originally organized the case so that artifacts from each unit were displayed in a general map. It looked great! However, for upcoming programs and displays, it made more sense to change the formatting around a little since we wouldn’t be on site to show the location of the units. Instead, we made general groupings of artifacts (e.g. glass, ceramics, gun parts, building materials) and displayed them like that to give people an idea of the variety of artifacts found on site. I got to work on a portion of the case; it was a lot of fun to work on and try something new.

Overall, this class is helping me pick up and practice more laboratory skills, some of which I didn't really expect or know about before. I’m excited to see what we find in the floatation samples and to show off our newly organized artifact case.

-Dante