Matters of Material: Collection Spotlights for Ohio Archaeology Month

October is Ohio Archaeology Month!

As we reach the end of October, we'd like to briefly reflect on a few archaeology sites and collections cared for by Ohio History Connection and our site partners. Ohio History Connection stewards several sites which focus on archaeology, the study of the past through the material people left behind. While you can find a full list on our website by following this link and entering "archaeology" for the historical topic, explore some spotlights of sites and Ohio History Connection collections below.

An archaeological site with wide Ohio and North America connections is the Flint Ridge Ancient Quarries & Nature Preserve. Located about ten miles southeast of Newark in Licking County, this is the site of quarries for Flint Ridge chert, a type of rock used in making stone tools. The variety of chert from the Flint Ridge area is known for its high quality and beautiful colors. People have mined chert from Flint Ridge and traded or carried it across Ohio and a large part of North America since the Paleoindian period over 10,000 years ago (Lepper et al. 2001). Ohio History Connection curates tools made of Flint Ridge chert from counties and sites all over Ohio, including Fort Ancient, Newark Earthworks, and Hopewell Mound Group.

Someone crafted this Riverton projectile point 3,600 - 2,800 years ago. Around that time, they carried it from Flint Ridge or knapped it from quarried Flint Ridge chert in Warren County, over 100 miles from the chert source. Note the pink and gray coloring, as well as the glassy texture of the rock. The flintknapper chose this piece of chert specifically for the quality and color of the projectile point they would produce. This projectile point is just one of many tools which contribute to the stories of artistic choice, tool production, and people's movement throughout the Ohio River Valley and North America.

While many of these types of stories are told with an emphasis on objects, some archaeological sites also coincide with historic records. During the 1960s and 1970s, Ohio History Connection (then known as the Ohio Historical Society) and Defiance College conducted archaeological investigations at Fort Meigs, another archaeological site under the care of Ohio History Connection. Pictured here are students participating in the archaeological excavation. Objects excavated during this research project are curated in the archaeology collections at Ohio History Connection.

Documents and records tell us that American forces constructed Fort Meigs on the Maumee River in Wood County, Ohio to serve as a headquarters for Great Lakes-area troops during the War of 1812 (Nass 1982). The British and Tecumseh's forces laid siege to Fort Meigs twice in 1813. Fort Meigs is a significant site not only for the American soldiers stationed there, but also as a representation early American and Ohio identities in conflict with British forces, as well as the agency and resilience of the Shawnee and other Tribal Nations who allied with the British during the war (see Warren 2014; Bowes 2016). Archaeologists uncovered traces of the conflict and everyday life during excavations, such as this pair of iron scissors. Objects like these scissors work in tandem with the historic record, expanding the stories that can be told about multifaceted experiences at Fort Meigs.

The different ways people have experienced archaeological sites in the past is uniquely exemplified at Fort Ancient. Fort Ancient Earthworks & Nature Preserve in Warren County, Ohio, was the very first site under the care of Ohio History Connection, which purchased the property in 1891. Unlike Fort Meigs, Fort Ancient is a ceremonial earthwork, not a military fort, constructed by American Indian peoples around 2,000 years ago. Ohio History Connection curates hundreds of objects from the Fort Ancient Earthworks site. Many are on display at the museum at Fort Ancient as well as in the Indigenous Wonders of Our World exhibit at the Ohio History Center. These objects include stone tools, pottery fragments, copper offerings, and many other material remains left by American Indian ancestors building, visiting, and living near the earthworks (learn more on the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks site).

Most objects from Fort Ancient were made during the Precontact era Middle Woodland period, when the earthworks were built. However, some archaeological collections from Fort Ancient uniquely reflect the stories of Black Ohioans in the early-mid twentieth century. Fort Ancient hosted Company 588 of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) between 1933 and 1935 as a state park receiving public relief from the Great Depression under the New Deal. Company 588 was one of only a few Black CCC companies in Ohio (read more about Company 588 at Fort Ancient in this news article). They worked in a context of segregation, nationalism, and threats of violence facing other Black CCC companies working in Ohio at the time (Feight 2017; Fortuna 2021). The company completed dozens of projects at Fort Ancient. The shelterhouse, the South Fort lookout, and erosion mitigation walls are just a few of the enduring conservation measures they carried out. Some of the remnants of their daily lives as conservation workers, such as the simple pleasure of drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola after work, have been found on site. The experience of Company 588 at Fort Ancient is reflected in objects like this discarded bottle.

The chert at Flint Ridge, the scissors from Fort Meigs, and the many objects from Fort Ancient all represent unique and individual stories of people tied to archaeology sites cared for by the Ohio History Connection. Each object embodies part of someone's experience living in the place we now call Ohio. Learn more about archaeological sites on our historic sites page, or explore archaeology collections curated by Ohio History Connection on our museum object catalog.

Sara Polk, Curator of Archaeology

References

Bowes, J.P.
2016 Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal. New directions in Native American studies. University of Oklahoma Press.

Feight, Andrew
2017 The Burning of CCC Camp Adams: Segregation & Sabotage in Ohio's Shawnee State Forest. In Extreme Appalachia. Shawnee State University.

Fortuna, James J.
2021 The New Deal and the Old Frontier: American Identity, Environmental Design, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-42. Environment, Space, Place 13(1):37. DOI:10.5749/envispacplac.13.1.0037.

Lepper, Bradley T, Richard W Yerkes, and William H Pickard
2001 Prehistoric Flint procurement strategies at Flint Ridge, Licking County, Ohio. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 26(1):53-78.

Nass, John P.
1982 Refuse Disposal and Military Behavior at Fort Meigs, a War of 1812 Military Site in Northern Ohio: An Intrasite Analysis. North American Archaeologist 2(3):239-250. DOI:10.2190/X9CN-WXTH-1THU-DNW4.

Warren, Stephen
2014 The worlds the Shawnees made: migration and violence in early America. The University of North Carolina press, Chapel Hill.

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