Marquette Mission Site - St. Ignace, Michigan

Current Research
Following the 2001 excavation Dr. O’Gorman and her students undertook a research project that would assemble all of the data from the 10 years of excavation at the Marquette Mission site and begin to deal with spatial and temporal complexity of the archaeological record. This project began with the following observations and questions.

During a period of approximately fifty years, ca. AD 1670 to 1720, an assortment of Frenchmen and Indian men, women and children (Huron and Ottawa) created a community along a bay on the Straits of Mackinac. Some portion of the physical structure of this community and the social relationships of everyday life are reflected in the archaeological site called Marquette Mission (

20MK82). In order to examine larger questions regarding the early history of the Great Lakes and issues dealing with interethnic relations, it is imperative to delineate spatial and

temporal factors. What portion of what the French commonly referred to as Michilimackinac (only the Jesuits referred to the site as Mission de St. Ignace) do we have represented at the Marquette Mission archaeological site? Does the site contain Huron longhouses? Are there French-related areas at the site? Are these separated in time? In space?