February 3, 2011

Project Manager Robert Mazrim gave a powerpoint presentation at the Fete du Bon Vieux Temps (or Festival of the Good Old Days) at the village of Cahokia, Illinois. The presentation, titled “Recent Archaeology in the French Colonial District of Illinois”, was hosted by the Church of the Holy Family.

January 20, 2011

Project Manager Robert Mazrim visited the La Salle County Historical Society Museum, to give a presentation to its board members. The presentation followed Mazrim’s reanalysis of materials from the Zimmerman site, excavated in the 1970s. Watch a video excerpt of the presentation HERE

November, 2010

Under the direction of Dr. Margaret Kimball Brown and Project

Manager Robert Mazrim, The FCHP joined the Prairie du Rocher

Preservation Society in a new testing project at the site of the

second Fort de Chartres (circa 1732). This followed a revised

study of the fort and the associated village of Chartres,

conducted by Brown and Mazrim over the past three years.

Remote sensing, conducted by Tom Loebel, soon located a

large subsurface anomaly that is quite possibly the well-preserved remains of that French fortification.

September 25, 2010

February, 2010

Related to protohistoric studies in the Illinois Country,

Mazrim gave a presentation to the Ojibwe tribe at

Madeline Island Wisconsin, concerning his recent

analysis of protohistoric materials from the Cadotte

site, excavated there during in the 1960s. It was at

Chequamegon Bay where Father Jacques Marquette

first met members of the Illinois Confederation, who

came to the region to trade during the 1600s. As a

result of this meeting, Marquette traveled to what

would become Illinois in 1673. The results of Mazrim's

work with the Cadotte site collections will be published this year in the Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology.

At the beginning of 2010, the FCHP initiated a project to

stabilize and reexamine one of the most important

archaeological collections in the state, excavated over 30 years

ago. The Zimmerman site, in La Salle County Illinois, was the

home of the Kaskaskia tribe of the Illinois Confederation during

the 1600s. In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette arrived at the

Grand Village of the Kaskaskia, building a mission there and thus initiating what we know as the period of European history in Illinois. Archaeological

excavations, funded by the La Salle County Historical Society,

were conducted at the site during the early 1970s.

By the 1990s, the artifacts from those excavations were largely inaccessible, and were thought have been lost. In 2010, Mazrim worked with Historical

Society board members to relocate and stabilize the collection.

He also took the opportunity to reanalyze the ceramic and trade

goods assemblages, to better understand the character and

chronology of the Illinois Confederacy presence at this

important site.