OLD STATE HOUSE MUSEUM: Brown Bag Lunch Lecture: The State of French Colonial Archeology in Arkansas

In 1686, while in an attempt to rendezvous with René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, Henri de Tonti established the “Poste de Arkansea” at the Quapaw village of Osotouy. Garrisoned by a handful of adventurers, the Arkansas Post was the first ‘semi-permanent’ French settlement in the lower Mississippi River Valley. Over the course of the next century, the Post was relocated several times along the Arkansas River Delta. Over the past century, numerous archaeological excavations with the goal of locating the multiple manifestations of the Arkansas Post have taken place. Andrew Beaupré from the Arkansas Archeological Survey will discuss the current state of the archaeology of French colonization in the Arkansas River Delta.

Beaupré will also outline avenues for future research. Beaupré is from the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station at the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff. He is also a research assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville. His current research interests include historical archeology, culture contact and colonialism, landscape archeology, heritage studies and public archeology. He has excavated throughout the eastern seaboard of the United States, the Great Lakes Region and on the site of Fort Saint-Jean, in Quebec, Canada. Beaupre has focused on French contact and colonialism in North America. Prior to joining ARAS, Beaupré was the inaugural postdoctoral teaching and research fellow in the McCormick Center for the Study of the American Revolutionary Era at Siena College in Loudonville, New York.