Fur Trade Archaeology Research Papers (original) (raw)

Fort Churchill or New Severn Post was constructed by the Hudson's Bay Company barely fifteen years after the company was incorporated, in 1670. The palisaded enclosure would remain standing for only five years. At that location, more than just European wares were exchanged for furs and vice versa. Two worlds came into contact and would be forever marked by the process. The brief period of occupation attested to at Gllw-1 illustrates some of the probing that was taking place between two distinct of life. Local Indigenous traders and their families learned about new technologies and tools, but also experimented with the properties of these new materials and objects, and incorporated them into their traditional, but changing, lifestyle. The English realized
that trading was not viewed by the Indigenous peoples as exclusively an economic equation, thus entering into social relationships with their Indigenous clients.

In 1954 Harry Moody of Denare Beach, Saskatchewan organized the excavation of a burial on Amisk Lake, adjacent to Fort Beaver Lake. The latter trading post was in operation from 1775 to 1778. This burial has proved to be a of a woman who was interred with numerous grave goods, including an awl, two knives, a hide scraper, a fish hook, an ice chisel, glass beads, and several objects of copper and brass. The latter included a finger ring, tinkling cones, pendants, a pair of ornate shoe buckles, brass kettle fragments and a medallion commemorating the battle of Culloden. Objects of bone included two snowshoe netting needles, two bone tubes, part of a beaver mandible and the beak of a sandhill crane.

- by David Meyer and +1
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- Historical Archaeology, Fur Trade Studies, Fur Trade, Archeology of Forts in the Fur Trade

Archaeological excavations conducted at Hudson's Bay Company Fort Vancouver recovered 100,000+ trade beads of 152 varieties, including 80 varieties of drawn, 57 of wound, 10 of mold-pressed and 3 of blown glass beads, as well as one variety each of "Prosser-molded" ceramic and cut-stone beads. An additional 6000+ beads recovered from excavations at the HBC Kanaka village and riverside complex sites may include 39 additional varieties possibly associated with the HBC occupation: 17 varieties of drawn, 12 of wound, and 5 of mold-pressed glass beads, as well as one variety each of stone, bone, wood, metal, and shell beads. The bead assemblage has contributed to the initial definition of a complex temporal and cultural horizon marker dating from 1829 to 1860 for the Pacific Northwest, and provides insights into mid-19th-century Native-American and Euro-American bead preferences. Analysis of the assemblage demonstrates difficulties inherent in the existing archaeological bead classification system, and suggestions for revisions are discussed.

- by Karlis Karklins
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- Beads, Fur Trade Studies, Native American Glass Trade Beads, Glass Beads

With funding from the American Battlefield Protection Program (grant #GA-2255-12-025), personnel from the University of Southern Indiana (USI) conducted archaeological investigations at three sites related to the summer 1791 Scott and Wilkinson expeditions against the Wabash River Indian villages. The 2012/2013 investigations focused on developing a better understanding of two Native American villages that may have been destroyed as part of the Scott and/or Wilkinson expeditions. Both are located in present-day Tippecanoe County. The first site, 12-T-9, encompasses the former location of Fort Ouiatenon (initially constructed by the French in 1717) as well as one or more unnamed Kickapoo/Mascouten Indian villages. The second site, 12-T-335, is located immediately north of 12-T-9 and likely also represents one of the Kickapoo/Mascouten villages in the Ouiatenon vicinity. Fieldwork was performed in two phases. The first, which occurred in November/December 2012, consisted of magnetometry survey at sites 12-T-9 and 12-T-335, with limited, non-systematic surface collection. The second phase consisted of additional magnetometry and ground-truthing excavations at 12-T-9 only. Excavations resulted in the identification of a Native American wall trench structure approximately 6.2 m in diameter. Artifacts suggest that it was occupied sometime between 1760 and 1791.

- by michael strezewski
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- Old Northwest, Fur Trade Studies, Great Lakes Fur Trade, Fur Trade Archaeology

This study assesses the organization and intensity of hide processing from sequential occupations at the Late Fort Ancient (A.D. 1400-1680) Hardin Site located in the central Ohio Valley. Historical and archaeological sources were drawn on to develop expectations for production intensification: 1) an increase in production tool quantity, 2) an increase in production debris quantity, and 3) an increase in tool utilization intensity. Many Native groups situated on the periphery of early European colonies intensified hide production to meet demand generated by an emerging global trade in hides. As this economic activity intensified in the 16th and 17th centuries it incorporated and ever greater network of native communities. By documenting production intensification at the Hardin Site, this study evaluates the degree to which global markets incorporated regions beyond the colonial periphery before A.D. 1680. This study also examines the social dimensions of economic activity by asking who processed hides, who may have benefited from the products of this labor, and whether or not either of these were influenced by participation in the tumultuous interaction sphere of the eastern North American Contact Period.

- by Smoke Pfeiffer
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- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, Material Culture Studies, Bibliography

Les fouilles archéologiques récentes réalisées sur le site de l'ancien poste de traite de « Pano » (DdGt30), le plus vieil établissement eurocanadien découvert à ce jour en Abitibi, jettent un nouvel éclairage sur le commerce des fourrures dans cette vaste région. Les ouvrages architecturaux mis au jour et plus de 31 000 objets témoins ont permis de reconstituer l'organisation spatiale de ce comptoir, érigé pendant le deuxième quart du xviii e siècle, et d'en définir les principales aires d'activités. Enfin, la distribution de certaines catégories significatives d'artefacts et d'écofacts révèle non seulement la fonction des bâtiments, mais apporte également des précisions sur l'usage des zones périphériques qui auraient servi tant aux traiteurs qu'à leur clientèle amérindienne.

- by Christian Roy
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- Historical Archaeology, Fur Trade Studies, Fur Trade Archaeology

There is no other North American fur trade establishment whose longevity and historical significance can rival that of York Factory. Located in northern Manitoba, Canada, at the base of Hudson Bay, it was the Hudson’s Bay Company’s principal Bay-side trading post and depot for over 250 years. The existing site of York Factory is the last of a series of three posts, the first of which was erected in 1684. Completed in 1792, York Factory III functioned as the principal depot and administrative center for the great Northern Department until the 1860s when its importance began to wane. It finally closed in 1957. Archaeological work at the site has revealed many structural features and associated artifacts including a large and varied assemblage of beads, mostly glass, which are the subject of this report.

- by Karlis Karklins
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- Beads, Native American Glass Trade Beads, Glass Beads, Hudson's Bay Company

Кулешов Вяч. С. Серебро за меха из Страны мрака: памятники византийской, восточной и западной торевтики и нумизматики в сакральной экономике югорского общества V–XV вв. // Византия в контексте мировой культуры : Материалы конференции, посвящённой памяти Алисы Владимировны Банк (1906–1984) / Редакционная коллегия: В. Н. Залесская, Е. В. Степанова (научные редакторы) и др. (Труды Государственного Эрмитажа. [Т.] LXXXIX.) СПб.: Издательство Государственного Эрмитажа, 2017. — С. 363–372.

The red-on-white drawn glass bead is an under-used 19th-century temporal marker for cultural objects and archaeological assemblages from Native American and fur trade sites in the Plains region of the United States. This bead variety is referred to as "cornelian" in Plains fur trade records, but is also known by several additional names in other places including cornaline d'Aleppo, cornaline, and corniola. By examining bead sample cards, historical references, fur trade ledgers, beaded cultural objects in museums, and beads from archaeological assemblages, it was determined that this bead variety first appears in the latter part of the 1830s in Plains ethnology and archaeological collections. Plains fur trade ledgers first refer to cornelian beads in 1837, and are common therein by the mid-1840s. These multiple lines of evidence provide a chronology for drawn red-on-white beads that is relevant for both the Plains and other regions.

In this essay, we explore the gathering power of rivers, highlighting their role in constituting fur trade history. We argue that, as components of the riverine landscape, rapids and portages are deserving of our archaeological attention. We illustrate this through two examples. The first one emphasizes the importance of portages and places in the establishment of trade posts like Réaume’s Leaf River Post in Minnesota, as well as the social relations that are entangled in this use of space. Portages, or “carrying places,” were land-based paths that river travelers took in order to circumvent rapids or waterfalls. Portages and rivers are therefore closely related; portages, by definition, depend on the rivers for their identities. The second example draws from our current research on underwater archaeological collections recovered from Ontario’s riverbeds. It highlights the materiality of the rivers themselves, and their indomitable gathering power.

- by Amélie Allard and +1
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- Landscape Archaeology, Human-Nonhuman Assemblages, Fur Trade Archaeology
- by Brett E
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- Fur Trade Studies, Fur Trade, Hudson's Bay Company, Early Modern Buttons

In this paper, I consider the issue of change and continuity that was at the root of Quimby's acculturative models for understanding fur-trading relations in North America, and consider the usefulness of recent theoretical shifts toward survivance and "residence" (after Silliman 2014) to offer a more comprehensive picture of social dynamics in the late eighteenth-century social and physical landscape of the western Great Lakes and the fur trade. Rather than focusing on terminal narratives associated with acculturation, I argue through the examination of archaeological and documentary sources that Anishinaabeg peoples performed "acts of residence." As a process of emplacement, such acts also empowered indigenous peoples. This performance was contested: Fur traders' own practices and geographic preconceptions also planted the seeds of an increasingly race-based colonial mind-set, in which Indians and their way of life represented an "Other" that was simultaneously desirable and repulsive. This tension played an important role in the creation of a contested fur-trade landscape, perhaps more so than the seemingly power-free concept of the "middle ground" would suggest.

Кулешов Вяч. С., Сапаров Н. Ж. Пайкендский клад 2014 года // Материалы Бухарской археологической экспедиции. Вып. XIII : Отчёт о раскопках в Пайкенде в 2013–2104 гг. / [Редактор А. В. Омельченко]. СПб.: Государственный Эрмитаж, 2016. — С.... more

Archaeologist Douglas A. Birk’s career as a Minnesota archaeologist spanned nearly 50 years and he was a pioneer in many ways. He was instrumental in the development of the underwater archaeology of fur trade era sites, including both submerged terrestrial sites (e.g. Fort Charlotte on the western end of the Grand Portage) and canoe wrecks. He is thought to be the first archaeologist to use shovel testing in Minnesota. He was a founder of the very influential Institute for Minnesota (IMA). Through the IMA, Doug established the Little Elk Heritage Preserve (LEHP), a 93 acre archaeological and nature preserve that contains several archaeological sites. These include the NRHP listed MO20 site, an 18th -century fur trade post and the Little Elk River Mission Site, a 19th-century Methodist-Episcopal mission to the Ojibwe. The IMA was dissolved in 2003. Today the LEHP is a unit of Charles A. Lindbergh State Park.

- by Rob Mann
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- Historical Archaeology, Great Lakes Archaeology, Midwest Archaeology, Fur Trade Studies

Paper presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Meetings. Since the inception of fur trade archaeology, scholars have struggled to understand these relationships: from acculturation models to practice- and postcolonial-inspired approaches, the histories told have in turn placed the emphasis on the power of technologies and materials or on human interests, identities and agendas. In this paper, I muddle the waters between these two positions in suggesting that a slightly different vantage point might be obtained if we consider agency as belonging not only to objects or people, but as emergent from the relationships between them. To do so I draw from the rich accounts produced by fur traders, my research on a Minnesota trading post – known as Réaume’s Leaf River Post - and on my analysis of underwater collections recovered by curator Walter Kenyon in the 60s and 70s from the French and Winnipeg rivers in Ontario, and which are now housed at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Specifically, I use one particular artifact category, firearms, to illustrate how human relationships, including those emergent from colonial settings, are part of a larger assemblage of humans and non-human participants that includes rivers, people, their fears and hunger, and the things they carried.

- by Amélie Allard
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- New Materialism, Fur Trade Archaeology

Fort St. Joseph, located on St. Joseph Island near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada, was a British military fort and fur trading center which operated primarily from 1796 to 1812 when it was abandoned for Fort Michilimackinac. Although the traders apparently never returned, the British military reoccupied St. Joseph’s in 1815 and maintained a garrison there until 1829. In 1975 and 1977, Parks Canada conducted the archaeological investigation of the new bakehouse complex and 11 of the nearby traders’ huts to better interpret them to the public. The huts were all semi-subterranean structures and many details about their construction could be discerned. This report concentrates on the construction and architectural details of the various structures that were investigated, and only artifacts related to these aspects are discussed.

- by Karlis Karklins
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- Historical Archaeology, Fur Trade, Archaeology Ontario, Canadian Archaeology

In previous research, the Alnösundet channel was considered a unified district during the Iron Age, centred in Skön on the mainland. Previous research has not, however, focused on the island of Alnön, despite being a rich source of material from excavations undertaken in the 1930s. Today, almost everything is available online. This study draws attention to the possibility of analysing the results of these surveys. In particular, the focus is on previously formulated questions about whether the size of burial mounds is a mark of rank, and if this is reflected
in the contents of the graves. No general pattern has been detected; but phalanges (claws) from bears, presumed to originate from the bear skins worn by fur traders or practitioners of the Oden cult, are seldom associated with imported items of bronze and glass. There is also an analysis of population concentrations based on the triangulation of these graves and the locations of 18th century farms. During the Iron Age, proximity to the channel was probably more important
than access to the productive land. During the 1700s, however, the population moved towards the middle of the island and the productive land.

Drawing from archaeological data collected from Réaume’s Leaf River Post (Minnesota) and fur traders’ journals, this article considers the ways in which mobility impacted the performance of masculine ideals within the colonial spaces of the western Great Lakes trading posts of the late eighteenth century. It is argued that in this overwhelmingly male environment, the gendering of daily practices such as foodways and use of space worked in complex, dynamic ways and at multiple levels along lines of rank, experience, and, to some extent, ethnicity. Differing masculine ideals and the impacts of a mobile lifeway on their performance are particularly evident in the differences between men of high and low ranks: where the former struggled to attain ideals of civility and respectability in the interior, mobility enabled the latter to value independence and physical prowess. The case of Joseph Réaume illustrates how a man occupying a middle position was able to navigate both ideals of masculinity.

- by Amélie Allard
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- Gender Studies, Historical Archaeology, Mobility/Mobilities, Great Lakes Fur Trade

The mainstay of the North American fur trade was cloth, which composed at one time over half of the goods shipped out of Montreal for trade with Native Americans. However, this cloth rarely survives in archaeological context, leaving only other artifacts that yield limited information on the textiles that once existed at a site. Among these artifacts are lead seals, which functioned much in the same way as modern day clothing tags, with lettering and symbols that reveal information such as the origin, quality, and quantity of the cloth to which they were once attached.
This study examined seals from Fort St. Joseph (n=66) to determine their origins and to identify cloth types common in those regions that may have been present at the site in the 17th-18th centuries. Through creating a typology and attempting to identify seals using comparative and historical sources, this study identified the exact origin of 21 percent of lead seals examined, the majority of which were from woolen producing regions in France (64%). The data from this study corresponds with the information concerning lead seals from another major fur trading site, Fort Michilimackinac (Mackinaw City, MI), and reinforces the historical fact that though several other types of cloth (cottons, satins, silks) may have been present at the fort site, woolens were the most common trade cloth variety.

Кулешов Вяч. С. Югорское общество V–XV вв.: модель сакральной экономики, археологическая атрибуция и проблема этнической принадлежности // Труды Камской археолого-этнографической экспедиции. Вып. XII : Средневековая археология Восточной Европы: от Камы до Дуная. Сборник научных трудов к 50-летнему юбилею Н. Б. Крыласовой / Под общей редакцией А. М. Белавина. Пермь: Пермский государственный гуманитарно-педагогический университет, 2017. — С. 74–89.

Югорское общество V-XV вв.: модель сакральной экономики, археологическая атрибуция и проблема этнической принадлежности Югре не повезло: письменные свидетельства об этом народе и его стране не особенно многочисленны и их непросто свести в единую и непротиворечивую картину. Несмотря на выдающуюся выразительность некоторых сообщений, они до сих пор не получили исчерпывающей, убедительной и общепринятой трактовки в специальной литературе. С самого начала вхождения югорского общества в мировую историю и письменную традицию информация о нём была включена в мифологизированный и мифологизирующий контекст знаний о «Стране мрака», северном пределе мира, стене Александра, диких народах и подобных мифологем нордического комплекса. Тем не менее, следует самым определённым образом указать на то, что наряду с мифологическими компонентами в основе истории и динамики югорского мира лежит непосредственная и вещная реальность, археологическая и текстовая, формулу и ключевые аспекты которой я хотел бы сжато проанализировать ниже. Эту реальность -реальность серебра и мехая вслед за рядом предшественников квалифицирую как исходную для понимания историко-культурных процессов в самых восточных и северовосточных районах Европы, примыкающих к Уральскому хребту и прилегающих к Западной Сибири (от степи до океана), и обращаю внимание на необходимость тщательно и внимательно учитывать её в любых историкоэтнических построениях и моделях.