La Belle of the 2014 SAA Annual Meeting

My experience at the 79^th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in Austin, Texas was very informative and enjoyable, but the most fascinating aspect was a tour and presentation of the La Belle shipwreck and its artifacts.  I was able to meet the archaeologist who was in charge of the excavation, Dr. Jim Bruseth, who gave us a presentation on his work at the La Belle site.  We were also allowed to see and handle some of the artifacts (while wearing gloves) and were shown a recently produced film that will later be part of the museum tour.

Viewing this film was a unique experience for me because it was “4D”, meaning that three screens were showing different angles of the story simultaneously, and there were special effects such as vibrating seats, wind machines, flickering lights (to simulate lightning) and smoke billowing from the stage.  All of this combined to make for a very memorable experience and was the highlight of my trip to the SAA conference.  It was also an inspiring example of good public archaeology, because presenting the archaeology in an engaging and entertaining way helps to inform visitors and helps them to retain the information.

In 1681 La Salle commanded an expedition that explored the Mississippi River from New France, believing he would find a path to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, La Salle found a route to the Gulf of Mexico. Although Hernando de Soto had explored and claimed this area for Spain 140 years earlier, La Salle claimed the Mississippi River valley for the French king, Louis XIV, and named the territory Louisiana in his honor. La Salle proposed to his king that France establish a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, which would provide a base for attacking the Spanish at Nueva Vizcaya and gaining control of its lucrative silver mines. Since Spain had declared war on France in 1683, Louis agreed to back La Salle and gave him the La Belle to use as his flagship.

La Belle was one of four ships used by Robert de La Salle in 1685 to explore the Gulf of Mexico and start a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River. He miscalculated his position, ending up on the coast of Texas but convinced that the Mississippi River was nearby. The ship was wrecked in present-day Matagorda Bay the following year, one of a chain of events that doomed La Salle’s colony to failure.  The colonists had transferred most of their supplies onto the ship in order to protect them from raids by natives, but a storm soon sank the ship, leaving the colonists without most of their food and equipment. After three centuries underwater, it was discovered by a team of state archaeologists in 1995 and was regarded as a very important find and a major excavation was launched by the state of Texas that recovered not only the ship, but also over a million artifacts.

When the team of state archaeologists began diving on the wreckage, they discovered that the dark waters of the Bay severely limited visibility for the divers, and the decision was made to construct a cofferdam around the wreck site. They built a double-walled structure, around the entire wreck and then proceeded to excavate the site as if it were on land.  An interesting point that Dr. Bruseth made was that they had to teach the underwater archaeologists how to dig in squares like those of us who work on land do.

The ship was still fully loaded with cargo (the La Belle had contained all of the salvaged supplies from La Salle’s wrecked store-ship the L’Amiable) giving us insight into what colonists of the era thought was important to bring to the new world when founding a colony. There were many weapons on board including three bronze cannons, one iron swivel gun, several boxes of muskets, many casks of lead shot and gunpowder, a handful of ceramic firepots (used like hand grenades), and several sword handles. There were also numerous trade goods, including glass beads, brass finger rings with Catholic religious symbols, brass pins, brass hawk bells, wooden combs, and a barrel of iron axe heads. Tools and supplies such as smelting crucibles, a cooper’s plane, a shovel, rope, and long bars of iron stock were also recovered, as were a wide variety of ship’s hardware and rigging components. One complete human skeleton was discovered, that of a middle-aged male with signs of arthritis, who may have been the guard who was on the ship when it went down in a storm. I was able to view some of the recovered artifacts at the Texas State History Museum, where the hull of the ship will eventually be displayed.

An interesting discovery was that the La Belle was originally a “kit”, meaning that all the boards and planks had Roman numerals and letters on them, to be able to be assembled as if it were a puzzle. It is believed that the ship was originally intended to be brought over in pieces and assembled in Louisiana, so that it could be sailed up the river.  There was no room for it along with the rest of the cargo, and so it was assembled in France and sailed with the rest of the fleet. The entire ship was disassembled by the archaeological team, piece by piece, and transferred to a preservation facility. It was then reassembled in a special cradle to be preserved by being soaked in polyethylene glycol.  Dr. Bruseth noted that this process was too slow for such a large vessel, and so they built the largest freeze-drying chamber in North America in order to complete the preservation process in a timelier manner.

Once the excavation was finished, the French government filed an official claim for the ship and its contents, which was challenged by Texas. Dr. Bruseth told us that Madeleine Albright conceded to France’s claim just before the end of the Clinton administration.  Today, the official title to the wreck and its artifacts belongs to France, but control was granted to the Texas Historical Commission.  Dr. Bruseth jokingly noted that he had inserted language in the treaty recommending professional consultation and collaboration, which has enabled him to travel to Paris several times.

The excavation and presentation of the La Belle is a great example of how public archaeology can be informative, engaging, and entertaining.  Starting with the film that hooks visitors into the story of the ship and ending with a large display of interesting artifacts and information, the project should be a popular attraction for visitors to the museum.

Contributor Chris Dukes is an applied anthropology graduate student at Missouri State University. His focus is historical archeology. He is currently researching the history and disappearance of a small Ozark town in Southwest Missouri.

In Search of Historical Archeology at Annual SAA Meeting

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) held its 79th Annual Meeting in Austin from April 23 through April 27. Among the Mayan, prehistoric, and European archaeologists were the historical archaeologists who study the relatively recent past of the United States. So, what does the SAA meeting have to offer historical archaeologists? The answer, this meeting has quite a lot to offer if you look hard enough. Among the hundreds of forums, symposiums, general sessions, and poster presentations, there are historical archaeologists sharing their research. They may have their own society, the Society for Historical Archaeology, but they still remain connected to the archaeological profession at large by presenting at the SAA annual meetings.

The list of historical presentations at this most recent meeting is long. Not long relative to the number of other talks, but long enough that no one person could attend them all. I spent a good hour searching for presentations on historical archaeology and the dog-eared pages of my program attest to this. Even after my careful planning, I found myself missing presentations I really wanted to catch or getting stuck in a really boring presentation because the presenters did not stick to the schedule. Also, some presenters did not show up to their presentations. So, because I know I missed some really interesting topics, I returned to the program to search out session topics with papers on historical archaeology.

Several sessions dedicated entirely to the topic of historical archaeological include general sessions on American History, the Historical Archaeology of the Western United States, and the Historical Archaeology of the Eastern United States that dealt with gender, marginality, health, subsistence, the Civil War, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. Other general sessions dealt with historic Texas and Spanish colonialism in the United States, and Historic Cemeteries. There was also a symposium on historic cemeteries focusing on remembrance and a few poster sessions on historical archaeology. These sessions generally contained papers on almost every major topic popular in historical archaeology today.

Other historical archaeologist’s papers were scattered throughout other sessions focusing on a variety of subjects. There were general sessions on archaeological practice, Cultural Resource Management, culture contact, and Maritime archaeology. There were symposiums on what archaeology should be, Native Peoples in missionized areas, New Spain, Geophysical applications, modes of production, marginality landscapes, sound and human experience, the Irish Famine, bioarchaeology, consumption, working with the Navy, and diaspora. All of these topics had at least one or two papers on historic sites. For example, the session on sound and human experience had a paper on the Industrial past. So, even if the general topic of the session was not historical archaeology, some of the papers within these sessions focused specifically on historical archaeology.

In the end, I was able to listen to nineteen papers on historical archaeology from five different sessions, as well as an entire poster session on historical archaeology, many of which were applicable to my current research interests. Some of my favorite papers were focused on topics I had recently begun exploring, including gender, class, identity, company towns, and African American communities. In particular, the paper about public space in the home is directly related to a paper I am working on about the cult of domesticity and the paper about a company town was fortuitous because I am helping with a dig at a company town this summer. Overall, the broadness of the sessions on historical archaeology allowed for such a wide variety of papers to be presented that when I did miss a paper due to unforeseen time issues there was still something interesting going about historical archaeology somewhere else.

Contributor Grace Gronniger is a graduate student in the MSU Applied Anthropology Graduate Program. Her research focus is historical archeology, specifically pattern glass in the archeological record. Visit Grace’s webpage for more information.