18th-Century Artifacts Recovered in Michigan Fort

MACKINAW CITY, MICHIGAN—The continuing excavation of an eighteenth-century row house root cellar at Colonial Michilimackinac has recovered a brass thimble, a knife blade, barrel bands, pieces of a white, tin-glazed earthenware jar, pieces of two blue-and-white Chinese export porcelain vessels, and a small piece of beaded English creamware, according to a Michigan Live report. Archaeologist Lynn Evans said the thimble had a small hole punched through its top. “Thimbles were sometimes strung to be worn like tinkling cones,” she explained. “A small section of string was preserved inside the thimble by the copper salts from the brass.” All of the item are thought to date to the British occupation of Fort Michilimackinac between 1760 and 1770. To read about another discovery in Michigan, go to “Leftover Mammoth.”