Halloween
The nature of our job means that sometimes we stumble across unusual and eerie things. We’ve searched our archives to bring you three examples of creepy finds or strange sites, which most certainly sent a shiver down the spine of the archaeologist who uncovered them. The first object in our series is a tiny porcelain […]
Elmbank Cemetery
In the fall of 2000, ASI was involved in the relocation of Elmbank Cemetery, located within the active infield area of Lester B. Pearson International Airport (Mississauga). Established in the churchyard of the original Elmbank mission, from 1832 to ca.1933, Elmbank Cemetery was the burial ground for many of northwest Toronto’s early Roman Catholic settlers. […]
In Your Backyard!
Late Woodland point from the Beaches area, Toronto In April 2015, Shauna Kirk emailed ASI to ask about a point that her daughter, Jocelyn, recently found on a walk near their home in a ravine east of Toronto. We invited them both in to show us the point and see other artifacts found in their area. […]
New Fort Site
(East Enlisted Mens Barracks)
In 2004, ASI was contracted by Exhibition Place to determine the archaeological potential south of Princes’ Boulevard and immediately west of Newfoundland Drive in anticipation of a possible construction project in the area. The area is known to have been the site of New Fort – a complex of 29 military features (ca. 1840-1870) built […]
International Mother Language Day
February 21 was declared International Mother Language Day by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1999 to encourage multilingualism and advocate diversity of cultures and languages. This particular date is significant as it commemorates the struggles of the Bengali people to have linguistic recognition in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) that culminated in […]
Snake Hill Cemetery
One of ASI’s most notable projects was the Snake Hill Cemetery in Fort Erie, Ontario that involved the discovery, exhumation, and repatriation of 28 American soldiers from the War of 1812. Archaeological investigations began at the Snake Hill Site with the discovery of Burial 2, a 24-26 year old soldier. The binding of his feet […]
Labour Day
To celebrate Labour Day, we thought we’d show you just how arduous daily tasks were for some of the pre-contact populations that formerly inhabited southern Ontario. If you thought your job was hard, you haven’t seen anything yet… In the early sixteenth-century, the Mantle site in Stouffville, Ontario would have housed and fed over 1,800 […]
The Damiani Site
In 2006, ASI was retained to assess a large secondary plan in the City of Vaughan. Five sites were originally discovered on the property (three Euro-Canadian sites and two precontact Indigenous sites) during Stage 1 and 2 investigations. Additional work was recommended for all five. Further investigation revealed that one of the precontact sites was a […]
Mother’s Day
In honour of Mother’s Day, we thought we would show a few artifacts that are known examples of mothering in Canadian history. The first artifact is an example of a juvenile vessel fragment from the Dunsmore Site; a mid-to-late fifteenth century ancestral Iroquoian village site found in Simcoe County. Archaeologists call these finds ‘juvenile vessels’ because they […]
The First Parliament Site
People strolling along Front, southern Berkeley and Parliament Streets, downtown Toronto, would find a car wash, a parking lot, and a car rental agency and a Porsche dealership. However, if it was possible to peek underneath the pavement, one would find an impressive relict of our national history – Upper Canada’s First and Second Parliament […]
