The 2013 field school crew – still cheerful after a solid day’s work.

The Grand-Pré Archaeological Field School is back for another season of archaeological investigations. This year we are searching for evidence of early colonial activity at three sites:

1. At Grand-Pré National Historic Site

Measuring our excavation unit east of Herbin’s Cross. The goal: the eastern end of the palisade surrounding John Winslow’s 1755 camp.

Herbin’s Cross marks the location of a pre-Deportation cemetery associated with the parish church of St-Charles-des-Mines. In 1755, Lieut.-Col. John Winlsow’s troops occupied the church and constructed a wooden palisade around it and the associated buildings for their protection. We know from primary sources that the palisade also enclosed the cemetery.

Through the late 18th and 19th centuries, the site has been ploughed flat, and no trace of the Acadian buildings remain above ground. The upper 25cm of the soil has been heavily disturbed by generations of plouging.  However, intact archaeological deposits still exist beneath the plough zone, and their outlines can be traced at the surface of the sub-soil. More on this later.

Our excavations in the plough zone east of Herbin’s Cross are designed to detect the eastern end of the Winslow’s 1755 encampment. With any luck, we’ll find evidence of his palisade trench here – that is, if his men dug the footer trench deep enough to survive the ravages of the plough. We’ll see.

2. East of Grand-Pré National Historic Site

Searching for evidence of early colonial activity with test pits and rocker screens east of Grand-Pré National Historic Site.

Visitors to the national historic site may not realize that the Acadian settlement extended far beyond the national historic site grounds. In fact, the Acadian hamlets that collectively made up Grand-Pré (or Les Mines, as it was often called), extended along the uplands for the full length of the Grand-Pré Marsh. That’s a lot of archaeology.

On or around the national historic site we have located approximately nine house sites that we suspect belonged to the pre-Deportation settlement. This is a very small proportion of the 150 houses Charles Morris counted at Grand-Pré in 1748 (to say nothing of all the other features that interest us: roads, mills, barns, orchards, garden plots), and so the hunt is on to discover and interpret what remains.

A short distance east of the national historic site there is a low field overlooking the marsh. Although it appears like a marginal environment today, it stands at the centre of the former Acadian community, is high (and dry) enough to support houses, and offers easy access to the marsh.

This area has not been ploughed for decades and has become a scrubland environment that is ill-suited for geophysical survey (our usual preference). Therefore, we are employing a more labour-intensive methodology: test excavations on a staggered grid at 5m intervals. We’ll see what turns up.

3. The Thibodeau Site

Yours truly conducting a geophysical survey at the Thibodeau Site in December 2012.

Speaking of geophysics, last December we conducted two geophysical surveys with the Geonics EM38B at Poplar Grove (Hants County), at the Thibodeau Village Site. We’ve been working here with Sara Beanlands and the Shaw family since 2004, and have identified two likely domestic sites associated with the Thibodeau occupation.

Toward the end of our field school, we’ll transfer over to these sites to surgically test some of the more prominent geophysical anomalies. I’ll provide more information on this fascinating site when we get there.

For now, let’s hope for good weather and a little luck!

As you probably know, I’ve been the primary contributor to this blog since I began working in the Grand-Pré region in 2009. In that time, I’ve seen some brilliant programmes come to fruition, seen fantastic new research conducted, and seen our understanding of the cultural history of all Canadians substantially enhanced. In that time, however, I’ve also seen disastrous losses to the capacity and quality of our staff by attrition, tight control exerted over employees, and a concerted ravaging via neglect of National Historic Sites, National Parks and other loci of your national heritage – what Parks Canada employees steadfastly promise to protect.

It is important to note that I’m no longer employed by Parks Canada in any capacity (an experience that a substantial number of Canadian archaeologists, historians, conservators, etc. have recently also been forced to face), and I am not writing any of this post under the auspices of any of my former affiliates including Parks Canada, le Société Promotion Grand-Pré, or Saint Mary’s University. I am acting alone.

I am writing to you simply as someone who has attempted over the course of the past several years to relate to you what archaeological research accomplishes in your country, for you. I have tried to do so through this blog and other social networking initiatives, through tours, through public archaeology experiences, through school programmes, through volunteer opportunities and university field schools. During that time, I’ve been truly inspired by the passion I’ve seen from ordinary Canadians for connecting with our predecessors in this landscape. I’ve met wonderful, everyday people who firmly believe, as do I, that those pieces of our history that we uncover form the building blocks of our identity, not just as Canadians, but as human beings.

In the past several weeks, budget announcements and the axes they drop have substantially and forever altered Parks Canada’s mission and its ability to accomplish what it was intended to do. Some of the news:

- The Archaeological Labs and Artefact Collections that you’ve seen pictured and represented on this blog are to be moved from Halifax, where they are accessible to researchers working on our sites, to a central location in Ottawa.
- Well over 600 jobs will be cut across the country.
- It’s estimated that 44% of the cuts to public service jobs this year are coming from the Parks Canada Agency.
- Approximately 80% of the archaeologists, conservators, historians, etc. will see their jobs eliminated
- For more info, please see this page, which includes letters written in protest, as well as details on the cuts: http://canadianarchaeology.com/caa/draconian-cuts-parks-canada

It is sometimes difficult to justify investing in archaeological research. It’s true, perhaps, that Canadians can live without broken bits of ceramic and glass. When tightening the budget is necessary, you may argue, should archaeology not be one of the luxuries we carry on without? The fact is, however, that Parks Canada and its services are not remotely burdens to the Canadian taxpayer. According to this blog‘s calculations, for every $1 that Canada spends on Parks Canada, it is getting back $2 dollars in foreign spending and 40 cents back in taxes. Parks Canada makes substantially more money than it costs Canadians.

But more than that, I would argue that the contribution that this direct connection with our past that archaeology gives us is beyond reckoning financially. We are mortal and our memories are short, and our historical memory is further blinded by those who benefit most from written history: the rich, the notable, the prolific, the safe. But everyone who has ever lived on the soil that would become Canadian has left a story here and archaeologists are the ones who can tell those stories. Those stories teach us, they give us a certain amount of truth, but far more than that, they allow us to see beyond the limits of our own lives, to the greater human story that extends backwards in this country for thousands and thousands of years. How does one calculate that value, the value of meaning?

An economist like our illustrious Prime Minister will not be convinced by an argument like that. (But that same economist also seems to believe he can save a buck by nearly eliminating an agency that makes him almost three times that for every one he spends.) But I believe that ordinary Canadians – not just scholars, or humanists, or poets – can see that the human story embodies value far beyond that represented by the comparatively recent invention of dollars and cents.

Please write to those who represent you and those who make these decisions for you, without you. Leave a legacy for your great-grandchildren. Or at least leave the instinct in the Canadian consciousness that your progeny should want to know who you were, that there should be someone who can posthumously tell them who you were, and consequently who they are, through all those things that you unknowingly left behind.

Thank you for your continued support,

Miriam L. C. Fry

We have one day left and much to do in that day, so we really only have time to achieve one more objective in terms of excavation: find out what lies beneath the tremendous pad of clay. By finding out what’s there, it helps us in interpreting what we’ve seen to date, but also helps us to justify the notion that this is an area worth returning to at a later date.

In addition to fighting time, we’re also fighting the weather a little bit. We’re in a yurt but we’re still not sure how well it would stand up in bad storm.

At the beginning of the day, it only looked quietly calm, if a bit grey:

The clouds are somewhat ominous but not too pressing.

Later, however, it definitely looked like we were about to be menaced:

A storm approaches.

The end result was that it did downpour pretty brutally, but the yurt held up against the rain perfectly. So another score for the yurts, which have proven themselves quite effectively over the course of the dig.

In clearing up the edge where the sand meets the clay, Becki found a small, seemingly circular pit feature that was full of heat-altered early 18th century artefacts, which are marked by the 10 and scored.

A very small pit with many artifacts shows up where the number 10 is positioned.

She also scored the possible drain trench, so the distinction between the trench and surrounding soil may be clearer here than in previous photos:

The possible drain trench, scored for your viewing pleasure.

On Becki’s side of our clay baulk, the clay dissipates about 50 centimetres below surface, sloping down into a pit.

A dark silty layer, full of wood and with artefacts on the surface shows up under the clay, sloping down.

This layer looks very intriguing and it’s a shame we won’t be able to get into it this year, but it’s encouraging to know that something is underneath all of the clay. For the sake of knowing if that slope continues or becomes steeper, I continued to dig to find it on the other side of the baulk.

It’s definitely coming up, but it’s 88 centimetres below the surface before the clay genuinely switches to this dark silty layer.

There's definitely something structural below the clay but we won't be getting into it this season.

So that was that… left with some answers, but only more questions. I really hope that someone will have the opportunity to return to this area soon. What’s especially interesting about  it is that no definitely post-1755 material has been found here, and with so much clay between this new layer and the surface, it could very well be that this is a wholly undisturbed Acadian context that’s been safely sealed by the huge amount of clay. That’s rare for us, and intriguing.

But our time this year is up, so our next task was to do the drawings, profiles, and close up the units for backfilling. To do that, we lay down geofabric to mark how far we got and then we dump all of the soil we’ve removed back in to the pit. When – next year or in a future year – someone wants to continue to dig here, they merely have to shovel out the fill until the geofabric is exposed, pull up the geofabric, and voila! It’s just like we left it, ready to continue. Doing this is safer for the resources than leaving a pit open and exposed, though it does take a bit of time, which is the only real downside.

Here’s B which has been fully excavated, but we lay down the geofabric so archaeologists of the future will know that we dug here:

Our one metre by five metre pit, rendered geo-fabulous.

On that note, I’d like it if geofabric came in a colour other than black, since it does seem a bit sombre to be shrouding our pits thus.

The larger excavation area covered with the geofabric, ready to be continued by a future crew.

We were aided by the Grand-Pré grounds crew in backfilling the units, and then worked at washing, drying and packing up our yurts so they can be returned to the Fortress of Louisbourg.

Getting ready to pack up the yurts, fold up the tarps and otherwise gather our equipment together.

And, finally, here it is, a shot of our excavation area at the end of the day, with units fully backfilled and everything gone:

Just as the sun comes out, everything is finished. For this year at least.

In my last post, I had mentioned that we were seeing a trench with large stones which seems to be coming off of our main feature, which we’re thinking may be a drain. Well, here are a few more photos of the trench and stones:

The trench with its large stones comes off of our main stone feature/pit at a slightly northwest angle.

A shot the opposite way around, facing south.

A view of the trench's relationship to the rest of the excavation area.

Some iron and wood is showing up in the trench alongside and under the stones.

Today’s dig was concurrent with the second day of the annual Acadian Days festival at Grand-Pré. On Saturday – which we weren’t around for – there were a number of public lectures on topics relevant to Grand-Pré and on Sunday, all sort of activities were going on on the grounds, including a Catholic mass, concerts, the construction of a traditional haystack, etc. If you’ve never been to Grand-Pré for Acadian Days, I strongly recommend you check out the Société Promotion Grand-Pré’s website next summer for details on next year’s events.

Anyway, so we were on site to dig a little ourselves, explain what we were doing to any tourists or other members of the public, and answer any questions about what we were doing. It was really great to see so many of the participants from the public programmes of the past come out to see how things had progressed.

I began to remove more stone in our window area, and below it is a considerable amount of charcoal and general dark staining.

Dark staining and flecks of charcoal are visible in the red clay right under the area where I've removed some stones.

I suppose it’s important to understand my frame of mind, here. We had worked very carefully around these stones for quite sometime, in the event that they were structural. When we got under the stones and there was lots of mottled clay, with a fair amount of artefacts (most of them heat-altered), timbers and burn material, I thought that we were in a destruction level (the material on top, caused by the structure collapse) which would peter out relatively quickly into an occupation level (the actual contents of the building).

This, sadly, proved to be both right and wrong. The destruction material did peter out fairly quickly, but in its place was not the occupation level I had hoped for, but thick, dense clay which seems to be fill. Half a metre of it. I don’t think I need to tell you that this was a very gradually discouraging discovery on the second-to-last day of our dig.

Nevertheless, at this point I was still optimistic that I could get through the clay in the window area and see what was below it within a few hours. I’d only just started into it and I was feeling extremely chipper about the possibility of getting through it quickly and into the good stuff. You’ll see in my next post how close and how far that goal became!

The nearly endless clay that at this point we did not yet realise was nearly endless!

The State of the Unit on our second-to-last day of digging. Still so much to do!

Sarah and André screening their soil for artefacts.

Sarah, trying to work the sifter by herself before André steps in to help again.

Today was productive but we were still trapped, it felt, in that oppressive clay layer and in removing more stone from the ‘window’ area.

The next layer of stone, prior to removal.

Over in the northwest corner, Becki found a trench with a number of stones coming out from our structure on an angle. The operating theory for now is this may be a drain feature.

Located in the bottom right corner of this photo, a narrow trench - full of stone - is emerging from our main feature at a bit of angle. A drain hooking up to a cellar, perhaps?

As Becki and Susan worked further in this area, even larger slabs began to emerge.

Susan clears off the large slate slab, which could be an ideal capstone for a drain.

We still don’t have conclusive evidence that our main feature of interest is a cellar, but at this point we seem to know three things: it was a structure of some kind and it burned down (since the destruction material we’re getting is both indicative of a structure with lots of evidence of burning) and it dates to the Acadian period (since all of our artefacts date from the late 17th and first half of the 18th century). This possible drain seems to seal a cellar as a further possibility.

Kelly and Sarah digging in the 'window' area.

Wait, I’ll draw it for you. Crudely.

The purple outline indicates the approximate area of our 'window'.

The idea here is that we’re quickly running out of time to excavate this feature and we’d like to be able to answer a few more questions about it to find out what it is and hopefully, make the case that this feature may be something to which archaeologists should return. In order to maximize the amount of information we can get in the few days remaining to us, we decided to take down just a section of it and get at least a few answers, or perhaps a few tantalizing questions.

Here, our participants begin to dig in the window area:

Digging down this cross-section of our excavation area.

Another shot of the 'window' area.

As mentioned before, one of the reasons our progress has been slowed has been due to our careful excavation around the stone rubble which is throughout our pit. Since we were unsure whether it was something structural or not, we had to proceed with caution. In the window, however, we will now remove the stone and be able to see what lies beneath. First, however, it was necessary (and prudent) to photograph the rocks before their removal.

Stones in the south end of the unit before removal.

More stone, halfway through removal.

As this stone was removed, we found more wood, iron, slag, and a significant amount of charcoal. It can also be noted here that many of the artefacts that we found, such as bottle glass and ceramic, came out heat-altered, possibly indicative – along with the charcoal and other debris – that this structure burned down.

Charcoal patches and stains show up under the stones.

Since we had a fair number of people out with us and a backlog of artefacts to be washed, we also had the field lab going for the first time since the beginning of the programme. Making use of our enormous bins of water at last, we washed the artefacts and then carried them into a specially prepared rack in the visitors’ centre to dry overnight.

Cleaning artefacts at our field lab tent.

Cleaning artefacts with toothbrushes and dental tools.

As the ‘window’ area came down further, larger chunks of iron started showing up, as below.

Large bits of iron are showing up in the clay pad under the stones.

At this point, we can say that the stones aren’t structural, so we were right to remove them. In doing so, we’re finding what looks to be a relatively thin destruction layer with a fair number of artefacts, then an ensuing amount of pure clay with the occasional artefact. Too early to say how much of this clay there will be, but a productive day nonetheless.

Taking a break from excavating, with a view of the screens in the distance.

An end-of-day crew shot.

The expansion, furthest away from the camera, seen in concert with the other two units.

We were also fortunate to finally get a beautiful day. If you’re reading this from outside Nova Scotia, you may not realise that this has been one of our worst summers in recent memory, with nearly constant rain. Since we have a yurt over our excavation area, a tent over our equipment and lab area and a small yurt over our soil sifters, we can work rather happily in any weather conditions. That said, we’d still rather see the sun, especially since the yurt allows us to take photographs in any weather, too, so we don’t have to be the typical archaeologists praying for overcast weather so we can take our photos.

A view of the excavation area from outside the yurt.

With two days of work, we were making progress in our area, but we had to work carefully around all of the stone you can see in the photographs above and below. At this point, the nature of the stone is unknown. Is it rubble that’s been tossed in on top of a feature? Is it something structural that collapsed in this pattern? Until we know the nature of it, we don’t want to remove anything, since on the light end, it will make patterns much harder to see and on the heavy end, it’s a change that cannot be undone.

Participants and I sitting on top of the stone rubble in question. Should we remove it?

The decision was to remove the stones in one section that Becki called ‘a window’ to see what resulted underneath. The window was a 1 metre by 2.5 metre subdivision of our existing excavation area, running north-south. The next day we began to carefully remove the stones and wood, charcoal and other debris began to show up underneath. A timber, to match the timber which had been running across the other side of the unit at the boundaries of our structure was seen running out of the expansion and into the other unit, but it had been pushed down, seemingly, by the tumble of stones on top.

Once these stones were removed, this wood started to resemble a timber running across the unit.

Elsewhere, Joanie dug into the sterile sand which we’re seeing as the boundary of our structure, to get some sense of its limits. As she did so, a clear cut into the soil began to show up clearly in the profile.

The profile shows the cut where our structure was dug down into the sterile soil alongside it.

A close-up of the trench cut.

Curiouser and curiouser.

And a few more photographs to sum up our day:

Screening soil on a (finally) sunny day.

Digging in the expansion area.

Screening again, with the excavation tents beyond.

I’ve been working in the lab over the past week or so, cleaning, sorting, bagging, labeling, and cataloguing our finds from the past two seasons’ Public Archaeology programmes. In doing so, I’ve watched our catalogue of found artefact types swell by nearly a thousand entries and our total individual artefact count rise by 4251 objects.

I often write on here that it’s not all about artefacts, as archaeology isn’t treasure-hunting, and that’s quite true. But what I really like about these stats is that they offer a physical representation of the new bits of information we’ve acquired in doing the public programme. So much academic research is airy and intangible, and one reason I love archaeology is that it involves both the quiet, cerebral reflection of historical and humanistic inquiry but along with a very physical enaction of the act of research: digging in the dirt and literally discovering new (well, old) things.

Anyway, my points are these, in no specific order:

We’ve had two wonderfully successful seasons of productive research at Grand-Pré conducted in large part by enthusiastic, friendly, thoughtful members of the public.  I’ve enjoyed it more than I can say. All of the participants were wonderful and we loved having you out with us. Not only that, but you’ve helped us make spectacular headway in research over just six weeks of work spread across two seasons. Thank you all so much for your interest and your help.

The geophysical machine we’d used, the EM-38B, had indicated that more of the feature lay to the south of where we were digging, so we decided to put in a 0.5 metre expansion in that direction.

Our newest expansion, D, expands 50 centimetres south of the 2008 unit, A.

We staked it out, triangulated it in, and then corded it off, ready to remove the sod.

The new unit expansion is furthest away from the camera.

Another benefit to expanding in that direction is that we’ll be able to take away the slumped in profile of A, which looks very crumbled due to having been left open for a few seasons. A cleaner wall will allow us a much better look at the stratigraphy of the unit.

Another view of the expansion to the south.

Becki and I began to take the sod off to prepare for a crew of members of the public the next day. As we did so, however, Becki came face to face with an army built for a single purpose: to destroy the world of archaeologists. Ants have been a problem in this area since we started work, but we’d clearly hit on one of the their great metropoleis, as hundreds of thousands of them came out of the unit once the sod came off.  We tried to hurriedly gather them and take them to the backdirt pile, but when they realised they were being attacked, they began to swarm. We have no photos from that encounter, but I suspect that it looked something like this.

Anyway, once the ants had been defeated, we got the sod off and we’re ready for more digging.

Philip, Shannon and Amy dig in the expansion.

One of the interesting aspects of the expansion is that, while the sod was particularly deep here, immediately under it we get very clear distinctions showing up between the stone feature area and what’s on either side of it. Lots of stone immediately starts jutting out at us as well.

Another shot of digging in the expansion.

Elsewhere in the unit, the northwest corner of our feature is getting more interesting, with more wood showing.

Wood showing up in the corner area.

Things are coming together, but there are still so many questions. Luckily, we still have another week or so to answer at least some of them.

An overall view of where we're at.