Archaeology on the Border: Recent Investigations at the White Fort Village in
Lorain County, Ohio
 
Dr. Brian G. Redmond, Curator of Archaeology, Cleveland Museum of Natural
History
 
When:  May 29, 1997 / 7:00-8:00 pm
 
Where:  Southwest Academic Center (The University of Toledo), Corner of Dorr
&              Secor Sts., Toledo, Ohio, Room 1019
 
Audience:  Public Welcomed, Free Parking, No Cost, Coffee & Cookies will be
                available.
 
Hosted By:  Black Swamp Chapter, ASO & The Laboratory of Archaeology, The
                  University of Toledo.
 
Additional Info: Contact Pat Tucker (419-693-1214/e-mail: [log in to unmask])
or Andy Schneider (419-530-4650/e-mail: [log in to unmask])
 
Abstract (slide-illustrated lecture):  Over the last two years, the
Archaeology Department of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History has
conducted survey and test excavations at the White Fort site (33Ln2) in
Lorain County, Ohio. The site was first described in an 1897 history of
Lorain County as a complex of bluff-top mounds and a ditch enclosure.
Archaeological Investigations in the first half of this century provided
little additional information. The recent excavations have revealed the White
Fort site to be a two acre, stockaded village settlement dating to about AD
1300. Pottery remains from the site place the occupation in the Late Eiden or
early Wolf phases of the Sandusky Tradition. Prehistoric features include
numerous storage and cooking pits, multiple stockade ditches and post mold
lines, and two forms of village dwellings. One structure is a circular,
wall-trench house and the other is a rectangular longhouse-like structure
measuring 50 feet (15 meters) in length. These very different house forms
resemble the summer and winter houses of historically known Indian groups.
The location of the White Fort site on the Black River represents (along with
the nearby Eiden site) the easternmost extension of Sandusky Tradition
settlement in northern Ohio.