Before we move on to an artifact, I want to address a question that someone asked. They didn't ask it via email or comments (and if you have a question about anything La Belle related, please ask in comments!), but rather in a google search that led to our blog. They wanted to know how we found out that the ship we have is La Belle. That's an entirely fair question, and a good one.
In 1995, during the first exploratory field season in Matagorda Bay, the crew was investigating a wreck, one of several candidates for Belle. On the wreck, archaeologists found white tin-glazed ceramics of a type only usually seen on French sites.
This was good evidence for the ship being Belle, but the real evidence was the bronze naval gun (or "cannon"), which you can see right here at the Museum. It carries a cartouche, or insignia, of the admiral who was in charge at the time of La Belle's sailing. These artifacts together linked the wreck at the bottom of Matagorda Bay to La Belle.
On to artifacts.
I've started cataloging pewter objects, but I'll post about that another week. Right now I'm going to show you another ceramic artifact with a pretty unique feature.
What's more remarkable to me is what's on its interior.
What I'm talking about is pretty hard to see here. You might want to click the image to see it bigger. If you look up at the top of the image, you might be able to see something really pretty interesting - two fingerprints on the interior of the jar. These are, in all likelihood, the fingerprints of the French potter who created the ceramic in the early 1680s. I love this sort of artifact - something that is genuinely linked to people, in this case, an individual.
That's all for this week. As always, please get in touch if you want to know more about anything at all!
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The serial numbers on the cannons matched those written on an inventory of cannons loaded onto La Belle, providing definitive evidence that this vessel was that of the Belle. The wealth of late 17th century material culture, most identifiable as French, left little doubt in the excavators' minds even before the matching serial numbers were located in the French archives. We were convinced it was the Belle within days of its discovery.
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