Through a Mirror Darkly:Colonial Forts in Materiality and Memory

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The name “Fort Kaskaskia” has been applied to two adjacent colonial forts in Illinois, one French (11R326) and one American (11R612). Through time the separate identities of the two forts became conflated into one (11R326), whose still visible remains have served as a focal point for American commemorative activities up until the present day. The very existence of the American fort (11R612), in contrast, was forgotten as was the association of both forts with the eighteenth and early nineteenth century African-American and Native American peoples of southwestern Illinois. Archaeological investigations by Southern Illinois University since 2017 are serving to challenge these and other conventional historical narratives of the two forts as being solely Euro-American installations   through the recovery of artifacts and features that provide evidence that the two forts served as nodes of cultural interaction between peoples of different ethnicities and status through time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow