Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Post date: Apr 20, 2017 12:48:40 AM

On Wednesday, April 12, 2017, we were honoured by having the president of the main body of the Ontario Archaeological Society, Paul Racher. Paul is also a manager of Archaeological Research Associates Ltd. He called his presentation "De Profundis, (which is Latin for "A cry from the depths") Big, Deep and Scary Urban Archaeology."

Mr. Racher spoke about how unlike in the old world where archaeology is respected and seemingly prolific, in Canada archaeology is often pretty much ignored. After all how can we possibly have any to do when Canada is only 150 years old?!? (Sarcasm!!) There is often a culture of disrespect towards the indigenous peoples and the belief that they did not create anything of worth, especially since so little of it has survived to today. We know that they built and created many things, it is just that those items did not all survive to be found by archaeologists today.

Also unlike how things are done in other countries, archaeology in Canada is generally performed by consulting firms working in advance of development. Then there are the times where it sadly doesn't happen at all.

Paul then spoke about a site in Brantford he had been working on where the archaeology should have been done prior to the destruction of a block of businesses which were torn down by the city and then covered with fill. To add insult in injury, after tearing down the businesses the city sold the property to the YMCA and Wilfrid Laurier University for $1 so that they could build a new YMCA center there. The only catch was that the university and the YMCA had to pay for and perform an archaeological assessment of the land. You may think, "How can there be anything? You just said it was developed with buildings that were later torn down and fill was added on top!?!" Well thankfully given the nature of the landscape, where they were built on a hill side ,there was a great deal of archaeological remains left behind.

The archaeologists uncovered over 400,000 artifacts, and they ended up leaving some of the more historical artifacts behind because there was just too much to collect! The landscape was such that layers of settlement remains were layered on top of each other on a hill side. They were able to identify three major periods of settlement on the hill side. Period 1 was from approximately AD 1000-1300 with native occupation, Period 2 was 1830-1850 and was coined the Pioneer era (when the first development of the village of Brantford began) and then Period 3, 1850- WWI (1914) which was an era of industry. Again you may be asking how the more modern development didn't destroy the indigenous occupation sites. Well the construction of buildings in the early days of Brantford were done very differently than they are today. They would only dig out what areas they needed to be able to erect their structures and absolutely no more than that. This left major components of the earlier settlements completely undisturbed.

Mr. Racher gave a very interesting an enlightening presentation that intrigued our members. He brought several examples of artifacts found on the site and passed them around. His presentation exemplifies the fact that significant archaeological remains may be present under urban properties even in heavily developed areas. This is a lesson that every community needs to learn.