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Archaeologists at Fort Michilimackinac discovers a pocket knife over the holiday weekend

Fort Michilimackinac by PNG441 is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Excavators unearthed a unique artifact at the Mackinac Archaeological site recently.Dr. Lynn Evans is the curator of archaeology for Mackinac State Historic Parks.

“We’re excavating a fur traders house and it has two root cellars and by the posts of one of the root cellars we found a pocket knife, at the time they were known as clasp knives. And that's very exciting because we rarely find things that are whole and intact.”

The age of the knife is currently unknown, but it’s believed to be of French or British origin.

More than a million artifacts have been pulled from Colonial Michilimackinac over the last 60 years.