New archeology exhibit at Grand-Pré

Something we have discussed quite a lot over the last few years has

been the idea of displaying a collection of artifacts from our

ongoing excavations at Grand-Pré National Historic Site. The field

school project, which is scheduled to enter its tenth season next

summer, is a collaborative effort on the part of Parks Canada, Saint

Mary’s University, and the Société Promotion Grand-Pré.

The project has unearthed many thousands of objects, most of which the public has

not seen. So when Victor Tetrault, executive director of the Société,

came to us at the site a few months ago with a wide smile and a brand new display

case, it didn’t take us long to get started. From thousands of artifacts, how did we make our selections, and

what kinds of things can visitors expect to see at the new installation?

The permanent exhibit in the interpretation center already has an

archaeology display focused on objects of daily life, though many of

the artifacts presented here come from other sites. To avoid

repetition, we decided to display only finds from our excavations at

Grand-Pré National Historic Site, and to organize them not according

to how they were used, but rather according to where they were found.

Recent visitors to the site may recall we have been most

active in two main areas to the east of the memorial church. Close to

the church, where we have just finished excavating a stone-lined

cellar of an Acadian-era building, and out in the area around the

Longfellow bust and Herbin’s Cross, which marks the site of the

Acadian cemetery. The top shelf contains objects from the vicinity of

the cemetery, while the middle and bottom shelve display artifacts

from the cellar, both portable finds and architectural elements.

Most of what we find at Grand-Pré is small and badly

broken. More than once over the years we have speculated that

pulverizing dishes must have been a recreational pastime among

Acadian and Planter children. For this reason, we have made an attempt

to show some of the larger pieces and contents of the display should

be recognizable.

Take that top shelf, for example. Here you will

find a collection of lead musket balls recovered from the area just

west of the Acadian cemetery. A number of gunflints have also been

found here two are on display. We would

love to know more about these objects given the history of military

activity at the site. There are also signs of civilian, domestic activity out here, such as the fragments of wine bottle glass, French ceramics, and melted pieces of windowpane glass. The

latter is a good hint that a building once stood nearby.

Assigning dates to these objects has not been easy. Some of them are

identifiable on stylistic grounds, which can provide a general time

frame. Many of the clay smoking pipes discovered at the site can be

approximately dated in this way.

What archaeologists really like is to find artifacts in that layer cake known as a

stratified context: distinct deposits of earth, each containing

objects from a different time, with the most recent on top. This is

where you get the true detective work, but it almost never comes to

this stage at Grand-Pré National Historic Site because the area was

so heavily ploughed over the past couple of centuries. The result?

Everything is mixed up, and we often find just one thick layer of

plough-disturbed and landscaped soil containing everything from 1970s

flashcubes to 17th century ceramics.

One place where things are different is in that cellar next to the

memorial church. Here, we have a proper layer cake of stratigraphy,

and, though it shows signs of having been dug into by treasure hunters

and antiquarians in the days before the park was established, enough

remains to tell a bit of a story. Some of that story is laid out on

the next two shelves.

In the middle shelf are the small finds from the cellar, chief among

which is a small silver cross unearthed in 2006. It appears to have

been part of a chalice lid or a ciborium, as you will see from the

broken tang at its base, and may offer compelling testimony

that the Acadian church of St-Charles-des-Mines once stood nearby.

A considerable amount of domestic refuse was also found in and around

the cellar, including the best preserved clay smoking pipe yet found

on the site, a small French silver coin and several fragments of

18th century wine bottles. This past June, one of our field school

students partly restored two of these vessels by patiently fitting

the pieces back together. He tells me that he is ready to move on to

other areas of study now, but you might enjoy the result of his days

of labour in the lab. Here, too, you will see a large iron skeleton

key found amid the destruction debris at the base of the cellar.

On the bottom shelf are architectural remains: likely the remnant of

whatever building or buildings that once stood here. There is a broken brick, likely made nearby, as well as a number of extraordinarily well-preserved, wrought iron nails. These do not usually survive very well in the ground, but there is no mistaking these samples: their heads still reveal the strike marks of the blacksmith’s hammer. Also on the ‘architecture’ shelf is a collection of daub, or torchis, the mud

insulation so often found within the wooden framed walls of Acadian

houses.

The cabinet contains more than this, as visitors will see, including

a ‘mystery object’ from the cellar that was just discovered this past

summer. We invite people to make a guess.

Elsewhere on the site, over in the triangular area of the park that contains

the blacksmith’s shop, are the remains of a substantial wooden sluice

recovered just last month from the Grand-Pré Marsh. The study of this

object, like the rest, is ongoing.

For those who would like to stay informed about

archaeological research into the colonial history of the Grand-Pré

area, I encourage you to look us up on Facebook.