Archaeologists dig to tell Michigan’s story

For eight summers, a team of archaeologists has carefully excavated the site of a trader’s house within the fort at Colonial Michilimackinac.

They’re working now, not far from the green where visitors watch regular musket demonstrations. Inside a designated area, a tenth of an inch at a time, they remove layers of earth to reveal clues as to how people who lived in the house did 250 years ago did in their day-to-day lives. They’re learning how they dressed, what they ate and how they managed to organize their stuff without an IKEA store nearby.

“We find small things on a daily basis,” said Lynn Evans, curator of archaeology for Mackinac State Historic Parks. “Bones from the animals that they ate, little glass seed beads, nails, lead shot, straight pins, broken glass, broken ceramics.”

Those small things — among more than a million objects unearthed since summer digs at the fort began in 1959 — tell the story of everyday life in Michigan when it was the frontier of European settlement.

The Michilimackinac dig is the longest-running archaeological dig in North America. Other Michigan digs this summer included a field school on the Keewenaw Peninsula, looking for mining history; and a dig on MSU’s campus, where field school students dug up dishes, jars, bottles and even a vintage toothbrush.

Those sites are among more than 22,000 places on land in Michigan where artifacts have been found, said Dean Anderson, state archaeologist. There are also more than 1,000 underwater sites, many of them shipwrecks.

“We add to these numbers all the time,” said Anderson, whose office is responsible for such things as approving dig permits on state land and reviewing building projects to make sure they don’t disturb anything significant.

Many people associate archaeology with hunting for dinosaur bones, but those are really paleontologists, not archaeologists. And Michigan’s not the right spot for bones, anyway There are fossilized algae, coral and fish to be found, and ice-age animals such as mastodons. Archaeology in Michigan focuses on people, Anderson said. There are two distinct periods: prehistorical, before the arrival of European settlers; and historical, which begins with the arrival of colonial traders in the 1600s.

A single projectile point — that’s arrowhead, to most of us — could be enough to get a prehistorical site designated as archaeologically significant, Anderson said.

“We want to keep track of where those kinds of things are found,” he said. More evidence may be needed from a historical site.

“Archaeological sites are places where people lived or conducted some kind of activity in the past,” Anderson said. “For example, at a campsite where Native Americans camped 5,000 years ago there might be stone tools, there might be waste flakes from the making of stone tools.” There might be rocks cracked by the heat of campfires.

Historical sites could be homesteads, farmsteads, trading posts, logging camps or mines.

Anderson said new sites are found through archaeological surveys, which often take place before large building projects. Park workers and others who spend a lot of time outdoors often find sites, and others are discovered by accident.

At Michigan State University, a focus on campus archaeology was intentional, said Lynne Goldstein, an anthropology professor and leader of on-campus archaeological efforts. University officials realized the campus was rich in history that was being ignored or destroyed. The first dig was at the former Saints Rest dormitory in 2005.

Digs can be connected to campus construction projects, such as the rebuilding of West Circle Drive, where an outhouse excavation revealed such objects as two porcelain dolls, a set of dishes and a shoe. Students spent most of June digging at a spot between the administration building and the river.

They pulled out a variety of artifacts dating from 1890 to 1925, Goldstein said, including a cold cream jar, pieces of high-end china and other household objects.

“We found a bunch of things that didn’t make any sense to us, way too fancy to be dormitory stuff,” she said.

But not too fancy to belong to a popular and renowned professor, Thomas Gunson. A little research into Gunson’s life reveals possibilities about the artifacts found at the dig, Goldstein said. Gunson’s wife died and he later married his housekeeper and remodeled his home.

The possibility: “They put the remains of his remodel into this low spot, to fill it, and I think his wife decided to get rid of her predecessor’s stuff,” Goldstein said.

A place she’d like to excavate in the future: The site of Prof. W.J. Beal’s botanical lab.

“It burned down,” Goldstein said. “We don’t know a whole lot about it. We know that Beal wanted to put his new lab right in the middle of campus and that it wasn’t allowed.”

The dig at Colonial Michilimackinac is the fourth house in a five-unit row house to be excavated. It started as a French trader’s house, but a map from 1765 indicates it is a British trader’s home.

“That’s a little unusual, because many of the English traders had to live outside the fort,” Evans said.

Besides digging inside the area of the home’s foundation, the crew also is digging in a trash pit, where they’ve found seeds and animal bones. The year’s biggest find is an intact ivory rosary, a string of beads used by Catholics to help keep track of prayers.

“We don’t find things like that every year,” Evans said. Three or four years ago, the big find was an intact pocket knife, which Evans described as “very exciting.”

She said the digs shed light on a time that was not well-documented through diaries and daily histories.

“How were people eating, how were they organizing their space?” she said. “Now we can see, they are preparing their food here and they’re storing their trade goods over here. It’s being able to answer some of these questions.”

Contact Kathleen Lavey at (517) 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @KathleenLavey

Where can you dig?

• Anyone can dig on their own property, and items they find belong to them. However, key evidence and history can be lost if inexperienced diggers try to work alone. One exception: human remains. People who find human remains must call the police for an investigation. State archaeologist Dean Anderson said the discovery of human remains rarely indicates a crime. It’s likely just an unmarked grave.

• Qualified archaeologists can apply for permits to dig on state land.

• Diving is allowed at shipwrecks and other underwater archaeological sites in marine preserves, but taking artifacts is forbidden.

Archaeology events

• The dig at Colonial Michilimackinac in Mackinaw City continues through August. Fort visitors are welcome to stop by the excavation site and talk to archaeologists about what they’re doing.

• Artifacts unearthed at Walker Tavern Historic Site near Brooklyn will be discussed and displayed from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursday. Activities and artifacts will help visitors learn about daily life at the site more than 175 years ago. Young visitors can make their own historical toys and take home archaeology activity books. The event is free. A day pass or state park license plate passport is required for entry to the Walker Tavern site.

• Michigan Archaeology Day takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Oct. 10 at the state Historical Museum, 702 W. Kalamazoo St. The event includes presentations, exhibitors and special displays. Visitors will have a chance to meet archaeologists and discuss projects happening across the state. Museum admission is $6 for adults, $4 for seniors, $2 for ages 6-17 and free for ages 5 and younger.

Darwin Discovery Day is on Feb. 14, 2016, at the MSU Museum, Archaeologists and paleontologists will be on hand to identify objects, answer questions, and offer hands-on activities.

Some Michigan sites

• Norton Mounds: The Norton Mound Group is one of the best preserved burial centers of the people of the Hopewell culture, first excavated in 1874. The remaining 11 mounds were part of a much larger system of mounds destroyed by the expansion of the City of Grand Rapids. Hopewell culture probably originated in Illinois between 500 B. C. and 300 B. C.

• Colonial Michilimackinac: The reconstructed colonial fort includes homes, a church, a blacksmith shop and costumed historical interpreters who demonstrate cooking, cleaning, gardening, cannon-firing and musket-firing daily. The archaeological dig continues through Aug. 22 this year. Learn more at www.mackinacparks.com.

• Huron village: French explorer and priest Jacques Marquette founded a mission in 1671 at the Native American village on the north side of the Straits of Mackinac at what is now St. Ignace. Artifacts from digs at the site are on display at the Museum of Ojibwa Culture and Father Marquette Mission Park, 500 N. State St., St. Ignace. It’s open 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily through Labor Day.

• Sanilac petroglyphs: About 100 carvings in sandstone that depict handprints, flying birds and men with bows, carved between 300 and 1,000 years ago. The petroglyphs are unique in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. The petroglyphs are contained within the 240-acre Sanilac Petroglyphs Historic State Park. It is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday through Labor Day. It’s at 8251 Germania Road, Cass City.

• Alpena-Amberley Ridge, under 121 feet of water, is about 35 miles southeast of Alpena, on what was once a land corridor connecting Michigan to Ontario. It contains the most complex hunting structure found to date beneath the Great Lakes. It includes three circular hunting blinds and stone alignments that may have served as obstructions for corralling caribou.

• Fort St. Joseph: The French established a fort in 1691on the St. Joseph River in southwestern Michigan. The fort changed hands a few times and was abandoned by the British in 1795. Rediscovered in 1998, a dig has been ongoing since 2002, led by Western Michigan University.