Fel Brunett has always had a passion for the past.
Going well beyond antique, he thinks in epochal terms. His fascination is to delve into what was life like for human inhabitants of the area 5,000, 10,000 and more years ago. "I got involved in archeology because I really wanted to do the whole story of man and nature plus the environment,” said Brunett.
Describing more than four decades of archeological research and work at digs, Brunett gave a presentation to the Grand Traverse Pioneer and Historical Society Thursday evening. The talk at the Grand Traverse Heritage Center drew 40 attendees and sketched out the human history of the region.
Starting with the theorized land bridge to the continent via Alaska and speculating about possible water routes from Europe, Brunett described the geology, wildlife, living conditions and technology of these early humans.
"It wasn't until the end of the glacier period that the Western hemisphere began to populate,” said Brunett: "We have some of the thickest deposits of the glacial world here of anywhere in the world and very few of them show evidence of people.”
Brunett is curator of the Fife Lake Historical Museum and has literally sifted through that area's past since he was a boy. Burial mounds and artifacts piqued his interest early and he headed to college at the University of Michigan after high school to study archeology.
"(I) decided when I was down there that I really wanted to do an environmental history of the area where I was born, but, gee, where do you start?” he recalled. "On New Year's Day of 1964 I set off to discover the mounds of Fife Lake.”
From that beginning, with a two-year hiatus thanks to the United States Army, Brunett spent his career working in archeology. He worked at the Chippewa Nature Center in Midland from 1970-76, where he led excavations in 1971-72. Other career stops included a stint with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and participating in digs around the state of Michigan and in the region. Even when he served as a mail carrier on the Old Mission Peninsula he kept his eyes open, noting for the audience that there were prehistoric cache pits at the end of the peninsula.
Life as an archeologist was not all about digging, however. A trained eye, precise manner and keen discernment were also needed.
"Archeological is a process by which you excavate but also take notes, photograph and document,” said Brunett, who showed slides during the talk from his work over the years. "You can't go back so you have to use the scientific method.”
As the glaciers melted and retreated and the land stabilized, people began moving into the region, sharing space with mammoths, mastodons and giant beavers six feet long. Brunett shared a speculative theory that technology wielded by humans of the time might have had a hand in the glaciers' demise.
"They possibly caused the end of the glacier period by burning to catch animals,” he said. "In two to three thousand years, [they could] warm the atmosphere quite a bit.”
The acidic soils of Michigan actually work against archeologists by dissolving potential artifacts such as bones, wood or woven material. Other times, progress coupled with ignorance has been the worst enemy, destroying irreplaceable sites and the stories of the people who lived there.
"The mounds in Traverse were leveled when they built the courthouse,” Brunett noted. "Not uncommon in the past because the places where cities sprang up were the best places to live in the prehistoric period, too.”