Two units in Area A excavated to the pre-cultural surface on which the midden developed. Two large boulders can be seen in the units, and it is clear that the midden was deposited in and around many boulders like these.

The Area A Midden contains abundant and diverse fauna from at least 25 species of shell fish, birds, mammals, and fish (and likely many more – these are species we can identify without the aid of our references collection in Ottawa). These animal bones can be used to reconstruct ancient diets, hunting strategies, and seasonal mobility. The bones contain critical information which can be used to reconstruct the ancient coastal ecosystem (both terrestrial and marine components).

Caribou teeth preserved in Area A.

Cod vertebrae preserved in the shell midden.

In Area C, the last units associated with the house floors discovered in that area are being excavated. This has been a fascinating and complex deposit, likely composed of multiple alternating living floors from wigwam-like structures and a large associated midden.  The diversity of stone tools recovered from Area C is truly stunning, and this collection will provide significant information about stone tool technology on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.

A small selection of stone projectile points (likely arrowheads) recovered from Area C.

A selection of stone scrapers (used for working bone and wood) recovered from Area C.

The public archaeology program wrapped up this week, and I consider it to have been a real success. We met with hundreds of people during our time in Port Joli, including nearly two hundred who visited the excavation site alone. A highlight of the public archaeology was the time spent with members from Acadia First Nation. We were honored to be invited to their Cultural Day on July 4^th, where we had the opportunity to discuss the project with over 100 community members.

Our booth at Acadia First Nation's Cultural Day.

Vistors at the AlDf-24 site.

This week we will spend our time finishing the last of the open units and drawing the last profiles (wall sections) of the units. Then, the site will be backfilled and the sods replaced, to return it to its original condition. It will be a busy week, but it comes at the end of a summer filled with some truly fascinating and unexpected archaeology done in full view of the public.

It’s five weeks into the project, and to date we have recovered a delightful number of ceramics. As an archaeologist with an interest in ceramic technology, I have found this excavation exhilarating. The pieces we find range mostly from two centimetres across to two millimetres across, but we have had the pleasure of recovering some really impressive pieces of over three centimetres, many of which bear decorations that can be used to identify approximate time periods. One of these pieces came from my unit, measuring just over ten centimetres at its widest point, and decorated with a tool not commonly seen. Another fantastic piece came from a unit in the same area, and was from a lower region of the vessel, something we don’t see too often. All in all, it has really made my summer.

The large sherd I found in my unit.

Me carefully cleaning the sherd to inspect the decoration.

As a graduate student just about to defend my thesis, I have felt honoured and privileged to participate in this excavation. I am about to leave UNB after five years (two for my undergraduate degree, one for my qualifying year, and two for my M.A.) to pursue a PhD at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. I may not get another chance to work in the Maritimes for a number of years, and all my experience of ceramics would have been collections excavated by others, examined in the lab, were it not for the E’se’get Archaeological Project. I have worked as a field archaeologist before, but not on an academic project such as this one, and never once have I found ceramics. In my time at UNB, I have come to understand that ceramics are a special class of artifact in New Brunswick, elusive and fragmentary; only a handful of sites in New Brunswick have yielded a significant amount of ceramics. What this means is that most archaeologists working in New Brunswick never actually encounter ceramics in the field during their entire career. It is not lost on me that I am helping to excavate a kind of site that few New Brunswick archaeologists have the pleasure of experiencing.

A fragment of a vessel rim with unique decoration.

My hope for the future is that, though I will leave for Ontario, and whatever archaeological projects await me there, I will maintain ties with the pottery of the Maritimes, and will come back to this subject a more knowledgeable person. Unfortunately, not enough work is being conducted on ceramics from this region, and more specialists are needed to explore the intricacies of Maritimes pottery. But with more graduate students coming through the UNB Master’s archaeology program at UNB, the archaeological community will grow, and many of these archaeologists will choose areas of specialization. Perhaps there will even be another ceramic analyst in New Brunswick by the time I come back! Here’s hoping, anyway.

There are many important things to the enthusiastic archaeologist: a sturdy trowel, straight profiles, beautiful cross-sections, bug spray, nice weather, a tolerant crew, and perhaps most importantly, a well-packed, hearty lunch.

Here at the E’se’get Archaeology project we are blessed to have our very own in-camp cook, Laurie, who prepares delicious meals for us every evening. It has become routine for many of us on this project to bring along leftovers from these meals for our lunches (which are just as amazing the next day) while others have to suffer with sandwiches and crackers; the downfall of not claiming the remainder of supper before everyone else.

However, worse than missing out on leftovers is having your lunch stolen in the field. And yes, it’s been happening. Not by fellow archaeologists but by common forest dwellers: squirrels and chipmunks. They will, without fail, sneak into your pack and eat your lunch, if you leave a zipper open or clasp undone.

They will eat your left over leftovers, granola bars from the wrapper, and cookies from your hand. They’re determined little critters who are both curious and hungry for a taste of archaeology and what archaeologists eat.

It started with apples in unattended lunch bags.

Caught in the act.

Encouraging bad behaviour.

They are a constant and pleasant distraction but they are also a consistent reminder to those of us doing archaeology in Port Joli: archaeology can be an invasive and somewhat destructive discipline. Filling in your trenches, cleaning up your site, and appreciating your surroundings, down to the last thieving squirrel, are all part of this exciting job.

The pots and pans were used during the Mi’kmaw camp and field school. They took very good care of all our equipment, and everything was returned clean and dry – except for these.

The floral pattern is barely visible beneath the scorch marks.

It is difficult to see the melted handles in the photo, but this is proof that non-verbal communication is sometimes very effective.  Besides, I personally think they look better in this condition than they did previously.  In fact, now I should be able to get another season out of them…

The goal of the public archaeology program is to introduce local communities to the process of scientific archaeology, to discuss the dangers of unprofessional collecting, and to provide direct access to the results of the research as it is being conducted. Public archaeology is time consuming and logistically challenging, but is more than rewarded by the immediate reaction you get by showing artifacts and animals bones that you just unearthed minutes ago, or presenting your interpretations of the features and deposits of the site as they are being excavated.

Discussing Area C with the public. The tarp both provides shade for photographs and protects the fragile floor deposits from the rain.

To date we’ve had over 150 visitors tour the site, including local residents, park campers, summer vacationers, community organizations, Mi’kmaw groups, and provincial and federal staff. Some have come from as far away as New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. We’ve also had some good media coverage, which can be found here (find the July 21st news cast and forward to 54:30 to find our segment). With only two public days left, we hope to see over two hundred visitors at the site this season.

As a self-described paleoethnomalacologist, one of my chief obsessions in archaeology is human interactions with shellfish in the past. When we began excavating AlDf-24 this summer, Matt Betts and I believed that the shell content on the midden was composed almost completely of soft-shelled clams (steamer clams) collected by ancient Mi’kmaq people as food, and shucked on the midden— their shells discarded to form the mound we see today. The one midden sample I have completely sorted so far reinforces this belief; by volume, it is composed of soft-shelled clamshells (90%) and black soil (10%).

In most areas of the midden we have excavated to a depth of ca. 1 metre - 90% of the volume excavated is clam shell. Note for any archaeologists that might be reading: we have to taper our walls to avoid a collapse of the large unbroken clam valves in the walls.

However, as so often is the case in archaeology, the story is not that simple. Over the past two weeks of excavation I have kept a running list of shellfish species identified in the midden as we excavate. The number of species now stands at ten:

marine bivalves

1)         soft-shelled (steamer) clam     (Mya arenaria)

2)         Atlantic surf clam                       (Spisula solidissima)

3)         blue (edible) mussel                  (Mytilus edulis)

4)         common razor clam                  (Ensis directus)

marine snails

5)         northern moon snail                (Lunatia heros)

6)         northern (waved) whelk          (Buccinum undatum)

a sea urchin

7)         green sea urchin                      (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis)

and (at least) three species on land snails

8)         a garden snail                            (probably Helicidae)

9)         a disc snail                                 (probably Discidae)

10)       an amber snail                        (probably Succineidae)

… I expect more.

Part of my work with the E’se’get Archaeology Project will be considering how each of these shellfish species came to be part of the midden and what their presence can tell us about past human behaviour and the environments that ancestral Mi’kmaq lived in.

Crushed blue mussel shell in the midden.

An Atlantic surf clam sticks out like a sore thumb in a midden full of soft-shelled clam.

Each high school student is paired, one on one, with a university student who is their partner for the time they are on site. The students are very keen, and some are so enthusiastic that it is hard to tear them away from digging even when it is time for a break.

They also have exceptional eyes! Even the youngest of our university students have noticed how they can spot the tiniest fragments of bone, pottery, and stone in the middens – far  beyond the capability of our “old” eyes.  

Caitlyn and Chloe mapping the bottom of their unit. In the background, Chlesea, Tricia, and Dave are pondering a find.

Cora and Kaylee recovering pottery in the midden.

Jessica and Kolby screening dirt to find small artifacts.

Cheryl and Sarah picking through shell in the screen.

Ronny, Ken, Kolby, Kaitlyn, Natalie, and Jessica dig the small midden in Area C.

Kaitlyn showing off her find - a small chert biface - found in Area B.

Crew walking out to the site in the fog.

Students digging at the beginning of week three. Note taking still dominates the activity.

Tricia excavating in unit N51W50. Note the colour coordination.

Animal bones are very well preserved and the diversity of shellfish is much higher than we had expected from previous excavation in 2008 and 2009. Throughout Area A, we have been finding abundant amounts of caribou, geese, and cod, as well as occasional snowshoe hare and immature seal bones.  

Tiny fish bones preserved in the midden. Many of the bones in this photo come from the fins and tail.

 The frequency of stone tools and flakes has fallen drastically as we dig deeper, a phenomenon that seems common in many shell middens. However, pottery has been very abundant, and in fact we are finding large beautifully decorated pieces throughout. 

Decorated pottery found in situ (in place). The puncture mark is probably a "mend hole" where the pot was repaired after it was cracked or broken.

In Area C, we have fully revealed the surface of Feature 4, a house floor (probably an ancient wigwam floor) we have been carefully exposing for the last two weeks. We have recovered a tremendous assemblage of material from the house, including stone points (arrowheads) and scrapers (an implement for shaving wood, bone, or skins), as well abundant charcoal from cooking fires and the occasional pottery fragment.  We hope to find more of these tent floors as we excavate deeper, but for the time being we will be moving to the east of the structure to get a sample of the small “kitchen” midden associated with it.  

The surface of Feature 4 exposed. It is difficult to see the boundaries of the house floor in a photo, so they have been marked here with string. The pit in the background was created by a test excavation conducted in 2009.

 This week seven Mi’kmaw high school students from Acadia First Nation will join us in the excavations. It should be a busy and exciting time for all.

When most people think of the weather on an archaeological dig, they automatically think of sunny and warm. Although this is the ideal weather, archaeologists, as we have had the opportunity to find out, work in all sorts of weather, rain or shine.

This morning we woke up to fog and, upon checking the weather, discovered that it was going to rain. Like true archaeologists, we decided to go out to the site anyway and see how the day would play out. By the time we reached the site, it had yet to start raining, so we began to dig in our units. Within 15 minutes of digging, the rain began. We all got our rain gear on and continued to dig.

Then we heard thunder and it really began to pour. We went back to Area C to get some shelter from the trees and tarps back there. Tarps were placed over Area C to protect the living space that is being uncovered there from the heavy rain. After waiting half an hour, and with the rain yet to let up (and more heavy rain predicted for the afternoon), it was decided to pack up and call it a day. Although we hated to leave the site, we were all completely soaked, and our notes were getting wet. We spent the rest of the day drying out our gear and tools.

 Below are a couple of pictures of us in the rain:

Students trying to stay dry (from left: Cheryl, Caitlyn, Anna, Jessica, Tricia)

Rain hitting the ocean on our walk back to the van.

The sopping walk back to the vehicles. Spirits were curiously high despite the rain.

After getting rained out of fieldwork on Saturday, the crew ended up with two days off, taking Sunday (our statutory break day) off as well. It ended up being another fairly soggy day at the Harrison Lewis Centre and in the midst of reading and catching up on notes I had prepared myself some lunch in the form of a sandwich. Relishing in the new groceries Matt and Gabe had just provided the camp, the sandwich ended up having many layers, and while looking at these layers I took to thinking about stratigraphy.

One of the issues archaeologists face, specifically when dealing with a feature such as a living space (like the one we are currently chasing out in Area C), is organizing the data we collect in an understandable way. The means by which we achieve this goal is through taking away different layers of soil (and in a midden, shell), or ‘stratigraphic’ layers, one at a time. These different layers are defined by the colour, inclusions or textures within the soil, and can represent different cultural occupations, environmental episodes or even disturbances at the site.

Because of the ephemeral nature of house floors, Gabe, Natalie, Jessica and I have to be quite conscious of these different layers. Each deposit we move down through represents a different deposition, and as we draw closer to the living floor, Gabe’s excitement grows. For a brief overview of the stratigraphy we are currently dealing with in AlDf-25 Area C, I will reference the 2009 E’se’get report and my sandwich…see the following pictures:

Ham and cheese sandwich in profile.

Level 1- Sod (Bread)

Level 2- Black sandy loam (Mayonnaise)

Level 3/3b- Black compact sandy loam (Pickles and spinach)

Level 3c/3d/3e- Shell-bearing midden (Ham)

Level 3f/3g/3h/3i- Compact black loam with organics (tomato, more spinach, cheese and mustard)

South wall profile from a test pit in AlDf-24, Area B.