BY WENDY ELLIOTT

welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

Test results on an artifact recovered from Grand-Pré National Historic Site have excited archaeologists gearing up to return to the site this spring.

The artifact is a long-lost fragment of Acadian church history; a silver cross measuring only three centimetres wide. The Grand-Pré find is the only one of its kind from what was one of the largest of the region’s pre-1755 Acadian communities, and an extremely rare archaeological example of colonial church silver.

According to Professor Jonathan Fowler of Saint Mary’s University, who has directed an archaeological field school at the national historic site for the past eight years, it represents “compelling evidence in support of the tradition that the church of St-Charles-des-Mines stood nearby.”

The Acadian parish church, established in 1687, was used as a headquarters by New England’s Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow during the 1755 deportation of the Acadians from Grand-Pré. During this time, it served as a temporary prison for nearly 500 Acadian men and boys. Long believed to have stood at the centre of the national historic site, the structure’s precise location is still a mystery.

Broken at its base, the cross appears to have once been joined to a larger object, such as a chalice lid or a ciborium, sacred vessels used during the celebration of the Eucharist. The artifact was recovered from the cellar of a building that appears to be a burned Acadian home. Archaeologists will continue to investigate.

“There were undeniably less spectacular items that I uncovered,” says Donna Matheson-LeFort, the student/archaeologist who discovered the artifact and who is currently pursuing graduate studies in the Saint Mary’s Atlantic Canada Studies program. “That little silver cross made up for a kilo of roofing nails!”

“Silver objects were rare outside elite circles in early colonial times,” Fowler adds, “and very little church silver survives from pre-deportation Acadia. We’ve seen nothing quite like this before.”

Grand-Pré is currently on Canada’s list of sites to be submitted to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization for inscription on its list of world heritage sites.

The Grand-Pré Archaeological Field School Project is a joint initiative of Parks Canada, Saint Mary’s University and the Société Promotion Grand-Pré. The project returns to the field May 14-31 at the Grand-Pré site and welcomes visitors.