Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The colonial era has attracted considerable archaeological interest in the American Midcontinent over the past few decades. Recent research aims to examine how that record is interpreted and the role it plays in contemporary social science inquiry. Before and during the early years of nationhood, French, French-Canadian, British, Native American, African/African American, and the Métis/métis peoples struggled to create and maintain their identities in a rapidly changing social, political, and economic world. The papers in this session explore the daily lives of these shifting colonial populations through archaeological study of gender, materiality, power, survivance, ontology, and landscape.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-13 of 13)

  • Documents (13)

Documents
  • Colonialism, Waterways, and Relationships in the Late Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amélie Allard.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late eighteenth century, the Mississippi Headwaters and Great Lakes area bustled with mobile European- and métis-descended traders hoping to make a trade with local Indigenous peoples. Often referred to as “the fur trade,” this willful exchange provided a stage for sets of relationships to be established,...

  • Colonialist Biases in Historical Markers in Detroit (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Suzanne Spencer-Wood.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Applying a feminist intersectionality theoretical perspective in close readings of historical markers in Detroit reveals their intersecting colonialist racist and sexist biases. Of Detroit’s 265 historical markers, 89% include men, 63% include white men, but only 26% include women, of which 71% are white. Native...

  • Cultural Identity and Remembrance at “French” Fort Chartres (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey Spanbauer.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Built between 1754 and 1765 in southern Illinois, Fort de Chartres has been interpreted as a French settlement in historical and archaeological interpretations and reconstructions. This continues to be the case, despite a large British garrison and attached civilian workforce and traders who have been erased or...

  • Daily Life through Thousands of Artifacts: Revealing Patterns at French Fort St. Pierre (1719–1729) via Multivariate Statistics (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only LisaMarie Malischke.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As archaeologists revisit old collections, we strive to develop new, efficient ways to analyze complex datasets with thousands of artifacts. My own work attempts to do so through a reanalysis of the collection and architectural features of Fort St. Pierre (1719–1729). Almost wholly excavated in the 1970s, Fort St....

  • Exploring Daily Lives through an Intrasite Comparison of Architectural Remains at Fort St. Joseph (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Erika Hartley. Terrance Martin.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations spanning 25 years at the historic site of Fort St. Joseph (20BE23) have uncovered over 320,000 artifacts and several telling features, allowing us to learn more about the daily lives and identities of those who once occupied this eighteenth-century mission, garrison, and trading post in...

  • Fire History and Red Pine: Ojibwe Cultural Burning in Northern Minnesota (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Dunham. Amy Burnette. Dan DeVault. Marcie Gotchie. Kurt Kipfmueller.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation highlights the work of our fire history partnership on the Chippewa National Forest and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Reservation in northern Minnesota. The research is a collaborative effort involving the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Leech Lake Tribal College, the USDA Forest Service, and the University of...

  • French or British? Identifying the Eighteenth-Century Ceramics from a Minnesota Fur Trade Post (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rob Mann.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper reports on a recent project to reanalyze the European-made ceramics from archaeological site 21MO20, an eighteenth-century fur trade post near present-day Little Falls, Minnesota. The original interpretation of site 21MO20 as a French-era trading post, possibly associated with French trader Joseph Marin, was...

  • Is It All Just Faïence and Honey-Colored Gun Flints? Examining the Material Record of Eighteenth-Century French Culture in Multiregional Perspective (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Beaupre.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the “blue crescent” of French land claims and settlement had spread across North America from the Acadian coast to southern Louisiana. While French colonial settlements existed contemporaneously throughout the middle of the continent, historians and archaeologists have...

  • Resurrecting Kaskaskia: A GIS and Archival investigation of the Multiethnic Town of Kaskaskia, Illinois (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mark Wagner. George Hunt. Rebecca Ramey.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Kaskaskia, Illinois, was established in 1702 as a Jesuit mission to the Kaskaskia. Through time it expanded into a large multi-ethnic fur trading and farming community that served as the gateway for the entrance of African slaves into Illinois. By the 1750s almost half of the town’s population consisted of African...

  • “. . . this distant and isolated post:” Fort Tombecbé and Frontier Community (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ashley Dumas.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The French established Fort Tombecbé in present-day Alabama in 1736 to secure their alliance with the Choctaws and to more firmly establish their presence in a region vulnerable to English takeover. During the following twenty-seven years, hundreds of Choctaws visited the fort to trade and confer, and they eventually...

  • Up in Smoke: Dating Pipe Stem Fragments from Fort St. Joseph (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Simmons.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Clay smoking pipes fragments proliferate archaeological sites in colonial North America. Clay pipes were in regular use, did not last for very long, and were often replaced. Pipe bowls and stems found at sites across New France not only provide evidence of daily life on the frontier, they also introduce and strengthen...

  • The Women of Fort St. Joseph, a French Colonial Settlement on the North American Frontier (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Nassaney. Erika Hartley.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Forts and fur trading posts conjure images of intrepid soldiers and jovial voyageurs engaged in masculine activities that implicated material objects like firearms, ammunition, smoking pipes, alcohol containers, and trade goods. Male colonial ambitions also structured many of the accounts that persist into the present....

  • Women's Portages: Colonial Encounters, Gender, and Indigenous Worldview in the Great Lakes (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sigrid Arnott. David Maki.

    This is an abstract from the "Recent Colonial Archaeological Research in the American Midcontinent" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Dakota and then Anishinaabeg women were central figures in water-based travel cycles in an annual round directed by plant, animal, and river relations within the Woodland Tradition. Portages, including Women's Portages, are material records of Indigenous women's labor before, during, and after the Fur Trade in the...