22-An Archaeological Reconnaissance Survey to Locate Remains of Fort St. Joseph (20BE23) in Niles, Michigan

An archaeological reconnaissance survey was conducted in search of material remains of Fort St. Joseph in a 15-acre parcel owned by the City of Niles, Michigan. The French established the settlement in 1691 for religious, military, and commercial purposes and it served as an important frontier outpost for nearly a century. The British came to control the fort in 1761 until the Spanish briefly captured it two decades later. The site, which was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s, has local, regional, national, and global significance. Its changing fortunes have given Niles the nickname, The City of Four Flags. The use of the parcel as a landfill in the 20th century has obscured the exact location of the fort. Documentary evidence suggested that the fort was indeed located within the project area. A walkover survey, subsurface testing, backhoe trenching, informant interviews, and geophysical applications were employed to locate physical evidence of past land-use practices in the parcel. Evidence of Native American (pre-Contact?) through 20th century activities was identified. Native American remains consist of chipping debris, two projectile points, a few ceramic sherds, and three stone pipe fragments on the terraces overlooking the floodplain. Their distribution suggests limited use of the area, perhaps into the historic period. A light scatter of 18th and 19th century objects was also identified on these terraces. Bricks, nails, and ceramics were probably associated with the farmstead and barn that occupied the site when intensive collector activity took place prior to the 1920s. Other temporally diagnostic artifacts (a hand wrought nail, window and bottle glass, a musket ball) likely derive from colonial activity in the vicinity. Much of the area is now covered by a 20th century landfill. Testing of the landfill was limited to the placement of three backhoe trenches that were dug through the fill to examine the old ground surface for historic remains with equivocal results. The most significant findings of the survey are the materials that were brought to our attention by a local amateur collector who had used a metal detector to identify and recover a collection of predominantly metal colonial artifacts from the edge of the river in the project area. Subsequent subsurface testing located a smaller, but complementary assemblage of objects that include gun flints, gun parts, brass kettle fragments, lead waste, seed beads, and European earthenware ceramics. In addition, possible architectural remains were noted and a well-preserved assemblage of animal bones that probably derives from subsistence remains was collected. These materials appear to be associated with the colonial occupation of Fort St. Joseph. Further investigation is strongly recommended to determine the spatial extent of the deposits and assess their depositional context

20-Historical Archaeology in Battle Creek, Michigan: The 1996 Field Season at the Warren B. Shepard Site (20CA104)

An intensive archaeological survey was conducted at the Shepard site (20CA104) in Battle Creek, Michigan from April 29 through July 12, 1996. Historical background research had indicated that the site was the location of Native American activity until the 1830s when it was settled by the town\u27s first school teacher, Warren B. Shepard. In the early 1850s, Shepard constructed a large, brick Greek Revival house on the site that stands to this day. The house and its associated landscape have been the focus of our investigations. Documentary evidence suggested the presence of various outbuildings and other landscape features that were typical components of a mid-19th century farmstead. The purpose of the survey was to identify and evaluate material traces of buildings and activity areas in the vicinity of the house and interpret their changes in a political economic framework. Toward this end, a team of archaeologists and geophysicists from Western Michigan University conducted a walkover survey, interviewed local residents, and employed geophysical methods followed by subsurface investigations. The purpose of this work was to locate archaeological materials that have the potential to yield information about the site occupants, pioneer history, and the changing organization of space during the transition from agriculture to industry that characterized much of late 19th-century America. Investigations exposed artifacts and features in undisturbed contexts from the mid-19th century through the present. Although the site has experienced disturbances throughout its history and especially in the recent past, excavations have shown that there are many material deposits with contextual integrity. It is our opinion that the site is eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historical Places. Changing artifact frequencies and spatial relationships have allowed investigators to discern several different land-use patterns that correspond with changes in site function and activities, as well as the social roles and statuses of the occupants. In short, our findings demonstrate that the archaeological record at the Shepard homelot is sensitive to transformations in the lives of the occupants; the cultural landscape is a material microcosm of broader changes that characterized American society. Further work is recommended to refine our preliminary models of spatial organization by identifying the locations of outbuildings and other 19th century refuse deposits. This should include more intensive excavation near the house, to recover a larger artifact sample for comparative purposes, as well as more extensive surveys of broader areas to identify the full range of social roles and relations that contributed to the spatial organization of the landscape during each period

21-An Intensive Archaeological Survey of the James and Ellen G. White House Site (20CA118), Battle Creek, Michigan

An intensive archaeological survey was conducted at the James and Ellen G. White House site (20CA118) in Battle Creek, Michigan over a seven-week period from May 4-June 24, 1998. The house is a well-known local landmark that was occupied from 1856-1863 by a family that was instrumental in founding the Seventh-day Adventist denominational movement. Although the original site has been subdivided and subjected to significant modification since the third quarter of the 19th century, the 1856 wood-frame Greek Revival house remains extant. Investigations were oriented towards identifying the presence of subsurface archaeological remains and site features that can inform about the landscapes and social identities of the 19th century occupants and subsequent changes. Documentary evidence suggested the presence of various outbuildings and other landscape features that were typically associated with mid-19th century suburban households in the region. The purpose of the survey was to identify and evaluate material traces of buildings and activity areas in the vicinity of the house and the adjacent property to the south. The identification of archaeologically-sensitive areas would assist preservation planning by the Historic Adventist Village in their efforts to develop the neighborhood for interpretive and religious purposes. A geophysical survey employing magnetometry, soil conductivity, and ground penetrating radar was conducted to locate subsurface anomalies of potential archaeological interest. These results-along with information from local informants, surficial clues, and limited testing in 1996-were used to guide the placement of 29 hand-excavated units of varying size. Our survey indicates that the site of lot 64 in Manchester\u27s 3rd Addition has experienced disturbances, particularly in the areas south and west of the White\u27s house. However, investigations also exposed artifacts and features in undisturbed contexts from the mid-19th century through the present. Thus, there appear to be intact material deposits with contextual integrity, some of which probably date to the period associated with the Whites\u27 occupation of the house. Noteworthy artifacts and features include: significant quantities of mid-19th century ceramic types, canning jar fragments that may date to the third quarter of the 19th century (1858-1875), a cement-plastered cistern, and a possible root cellar in the door yard immediately behind the house. Given the presence of these deposits, the site appears eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historical Places. Furthermore, we recommend that subsurface disturbance be avoided in these areas of the site until further evaluation can be conducted

Experiments in social ranking in prehistoric central Arkansas

Anthropologists studying sociocultural evolution are interested in the processes that contributed to social ranking in egalitarian societies. Individual agents must overcome the inertia of communalism to extend their authority into various domains of social life by controlling resources, people, and places essential for social reproduction. Native North Americans maintained relatively equal access to resources through reciprocity. Under some conditions, however, agents undermined reciprocity to establish privileged positions of status. I develop a political-economic model to explore how social inequality is created and perpetuated through labor mobilization and resource monopoly from archaeological remains in central Arkansas. The model explicitly articulates social negotiation and hierarchy formation with strategies and tactics of surplus extraction and its resistance to explicate how the material world is implicated in experimental social forms. I analyze the changing form, function, and distribution of settlements and artifacts associated with the establishment and abandonment of the Toltec Mounds site--the paramount center of Plum Bayou culture in the Arkansas River Lowland. Longitudinal trends in settlement patterns, mound construction, exchange relations, and the organization of technology are compared with expectations derived from the model to interpret the archaeological record. There is meaningful spatial-temporal variation in the distribution of people and objects which reflects fluctuations in social organization within and between regions. This interpretation contrasts with that of a gradual, linear trajectory of growth and development. Furthermore, changing population integration relates to political and economic processes that operate over large spatial arenas that transcend ecological, stylistic, and social boundaries. Mounting empirical evidence suggests that social ranking harbored contradictions between generosity and accumulation which allowed individuals the opportunity to resist surplus extraction. The result is a cyclical pattern of social integration and disintegration associated with diachronic shifts in central places suggesting that the processes that contributed to incipient social ranking were tenuous and politically unstable in central Arkansas. Ranking does not represent a reorganization of egalitarianism within all realms of life, nor do elite strategies to mobilize labor and monopolize surplus operate as a totality. Institutions of egalitarianism seem to lie immediately beneath the veneer of power and authority in rank societies

S 2008 Identity Formation at a French Colonial Outpost

Abstract Identity formation is a central issue in colonial and post-colonial studies. The ways in which people defined and expressed their identities along multiple dimensions have material implications that are archaeologically accessible. For social archaeologists, material variation is actively constituted and the archaeological record is the residue of a system of signs that individuals used in the construction of class, status, gender, race, and ethnic relations. In the context of French and Native interactions, social identities were fluid, situational, and malleable. The interactions engendered by the fur trade and colonialism in New France had material consequences for identity formation that are being investigated at Fort St. Joseph, an 18th-century frontier outpost in the western Great Lakes