Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

Researchers

Michael S. Nassaney (Ph.D., UMass-Amherst, 1992) is Professor of Anthropology at Western Michigan University and the principal investigator of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project. He has directed the annual WMU archaeological field school, now in its 34rd year, since 1994. His research interests include historical archaeology and the study of colonialism and the fur trade in the western Great Lakes. In 2006 he was elected to serve a three-year term as Secretary of the Society for Historical Archaeology, the world's largest group of archaeologists interested in the study of the recent past (A. D. 1400-present). He is also editor of Le Journal, the bulletin of the Center for French Colonial Studies.

Dr. José António Brandão is Associate Chair and Professor of History at Western Michigan University. Dr. Brandão specializes in the history of Northeastern North America to about 1783. His research focuses on Native-European relations in general, and upon the history, culture and interaction of the Iroquois Indians with their Native and European neighbours. In addition to his position at Western Michigan, Dr. Brandão is series co-editor of The Iroquoians and Their World, an on-going series of publications related to the history and culture of the Iroquoian linguistic group published by the University of Nebraska Press. He is also co-director of the French Michilimackinac Research and Translation Project. The FMRTP, a project of Mackinac State Historic Parks, aims at identifying and translating French language materials related to the early history of Michigan, especially of the Straits of Mackinac region.

Terrance J. Martin is Curator and Chair of Anthropology at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, where he is responsible for the day-to-day management of the Anthropology Section's collection management program and the Museum's zoological osteological laboratory. He is also an adjunct professor in the Sociology-Anthropology Department at the University of Illinois at Springfield. A native of western Michigan, he received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Michigan State University and has been active in interdisciplinary archaeological research projects for more than thirty years. He focuses on osteological evidence for animal exploitation in the greater Midwest, where he is especially interested in the archaeozoology of late prehistoric and early historic Native American sites and in eighteenth-century French colonial occupations. Since 2004 Martin has co-directed the New Philadelphia archaeological project in Pike County, Illinois, funded by two grants from the National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

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