significant maritime archaeological excavations of its time. As the muddy sediments were carefully removed from the wreckage, many wooden boxes and casks were exposed loaded with a wide variety of artifacts. La Belle had contained all of the salvaged supplies from La Salle's wrecked storeship (L'Amiable) and thus offered a unique insight into the supplies deemed necessary for a successful colonization venture. As this was considered enemy territory by the French (Texas was claimed by their Spanish rivals) and local Indians proved hostile, there was a wide array of weapons on board the vessel, including three bronze cannons, one iron swivel gun, several boxes of muskets, many casks of lead shot and gunpowder, a handful of ceramic firepots (used like hand grenades), and several sword handles. There were also numerous trade goods, including hundreds of thousands of blue, white, and black glass beads, brass finger rings with Catholic religious symbols, brass pins, brass hawk bells, wooden combs, and a barrel of iron axe heads. Tools and supplies such as smelting crucibles, a cooper's plane, a shovel, rope, and long bars of iron stock were also recovered, as were a wide variety of ship's hardware and rigging components. Faunal remains included the remains of salt pork, skeletons of rats, and the trophy skulls of deer, complete with antlers. One complete human skeleton was discovered, that of a middle-aged male with signs of arthritis. Part of this individual's brain was intact, preserved by the anaerobic environment caused by the thick muddy sediments at the bottom of the bay. After osteological analysis, these human remains were buried at the Texas State Cemetery. All of the artifacts were removed from the hull by the start of March 1997. From that point on, the archaeologists concentrated on the remains of the ship itself. The entire ship was disassembled, each timber being carefully recorded before and after its removal from the hull remains. Fieldwork was completed by May 1997, after which the cofferdam was disassembled and sold. The recovered timbers were eventually reassembled in a special cradle and vat designed at Texas A&M University's Nautical Archaeology Program, the institution in charge of the conservation of all the artifacts recovered from the shipwreck site after 1995. The hull was treated by long-term soaking in polyethylene glycol and freeze-drying, a process which took over ten years. Exhibit In October 2014 the La Belle: The Ship That Changed History