AUGUSTA — Old Fort Western is poised to become a regional repository for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of artifacts from Fort Richmond and Fort Halifax in Winslow, making it a center for the study of the Kennebec River region’s history.

The three forts are connected by more than the Kennebec River, officials noted, so it makes sense to keep the artifacts together at Fort Western, where they will be preserved and accessible to the public, something that may not be the case if the artifacts were to remain in the hands of the state. So far, nails, tobacco pipes, pieces of ceramic pottery, buttons and animal bones are among the items researchers are studying.

Linda Novak, director and curator of Old Fort Western, said Leith Smith, an archaeologist with the Maine Historic Preservation Commission who worked on a large dig at the former Fort Richmond site, approached her to ask if Fort Western would be interested in providing a new home for the hundreds of Fort Richmond artifacts they dug up. Fort Western has offices in the adjacent Augusta City Center where it has climate-controlled storage space for artifacts.

“They were worried it’d be like ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,'” Novak said, referring to the 1981 action film in which the mysterious Ark of the Covenant ends up stored in a giant government warehouse alongside countless other wooden crates of unknown items. “That they’d be put on a shelf in a warehouse and nobody would ever see them again. And they wanted to find a good home for this stuff.”

In Augusta, some of the “glitzier” items will be kept in glassed display cases in the offices of Fort Western inside the City Center, where they would be accessible to researchers and the public by appointment when the City Center is open. Other, less-interesting items that aren’t likely to draw much interest will be put in deep storage. Novak said she hopes to win grant funding to create a traveling exhibit to display items from the forts at schools and other locations.

“We may have just stored them,” Smith said of what would have become of the artifacts had Fort Western not agreed to take them. “A nice thing about them being here is they’re really going to be more accessible to the public.

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The Fort Richmond artifacts will be joined by a similarly large number of artifacts from Fort Halifax.

On March 9, the Winslow Town Council voted unanimously to transfer ownership of artifacts excavated from town property at Fort Halifax Park by the Maine Historic Preservation Commission between 1987 and 1995 to Old Fort Western, so they can be kept and curated there. The agreement between Winslow, Old Fort Western, and the Maine Historic Preservation Commission gives the town the right of first refusal for the items if Old Fort Western can no longer house the collections.

Novak said the only cost to the city of Augusta will be space in the fort’s existing offices at the City Center.

Fort Halifax artifacts are being cataloged and added to a book about Fort Halifax by Lee Cranmer, a former state archaeologist who has worked extensively on digs at that fort.

 


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