https://www.smu.ca/anthropology/fowler.html

Archaeology in Acadie, Halifax, NS (2026)

09/24/2026

"3D" Radar Cube:
An Interesting Archaeological Perspective

Toward the end of last season, our team was engaged in a very interesting archaeological investigation here in Nova Scotia. We cannot say to much about it presently, for reasons that will soon be clear, but for the moment I can share this little ground-penetrating radar animation, which shows one of our geophysical survey grids.

It may not look like much, but this little clip tells us a lot about subsurface conditions. Broadly speaking, the colour ramp shows high-amplitude reflections (caused, for example, by buried stones and gravels) as green, yellow, and red features. General background soils, which are less dense and more homogeneous, are bluish.

I think we can discern archaeological remains of two back-filled cellars here, and I'm pretty sure this is an accurate interpretation in at least one case, because we partly tested it with excavation.

We'll have more to say about this one before the snow flies. It is quite an interesting site with a very compelling story attached.

09/19/2026

Workshop: Identifying and Recording Archaeological Sites
Monday, Sept. 21, 2026
4-7pm
Musquodoboit Harbour Railway Museum

Archaeologist Andrea Richardson will be holding a practical workshop this Monday, in the field. Details below!

09/19/2026

Mystery Walls

Back before the pandemic, we took a close look at this interesting site in the Bayers Lake area, outside Halifax, Nova Scotia. It had generated a lot of speculation - and it still does - but previous archaeological investigations had not quite nailed down a definitive age or function.

There is nothing wrong with speculation, of course. After all, you have to start somewhere. But at least nine tenths of professional archaeology is grounded in the scientific method, so we must always look to empirical evidence.

Such evidence has been hard to find in this case. The stone walls themselves are certainly evident, but these features do not tell us how old they are. In cases like this, we generally look for associated artifacts, like ceramics and coins, to date the occupation. Many professional excavations have taken place hereabouts, but only modern rubbish has been found.

This, in itself, suggests that, whatever this place was, it was likely not a domestic site. Dwellings generate a lot of garbage, from hearth sweepings, to broken dishes, to rusted nails, and food waste. We don't see any of that here and, as I say in the video, the 5-sided stone structure that gathers a lot of attention at this site does not even have a hearth. While the absence of dateable archaeological material puts a big question mark over this site, therefore, it also constitutes a kind of negative evidence.

If not a house, then what? Many people equate stone walls to military activity. Could be. The Halifax Citadel is made of stone. Sure, but so are a thousand other features, and in any case this is a much cruder construction, built of unmortared stone. And, unlike the Citadel and other known fortifications, this site is completely unattested in the historical record. You can suffocate under the paperwork generated by the construction of fortifications, all of which engaged parsimonious bureaucrats in meticulous bean-counting, but here: nothing.

Nor do we expect the French or British militaries to have been particularly concerned with this location. If they were, they would likely have placed a blockhouse here, like the one we see still standing today at Fort Edward National Historic Site in Windsor, Nova Scotia. In any case, their preferred method of power projection and surveillance was via the more economical and mobile foot soldiers, primarily warriors and ranger units.

That leaves one other major possibility, which is that these stone features were built by farmers, likely engaged in animal husbandry. This is perhaps less dramatic, but people in the past, just like people today, spend most of their time engaged in not-very-exciting tasks.

Shortly after the founding of Halifax in 1749, the British government established a group of German families along the isthmus connecting the Halifax Peninsula to the rest of the mainland. Their properties fronted the route now taken by the (suitably named) Dutch Village Road. The 'mystery walls' site is situated in one of their back lots, so it may well be associated with their farming activities.

If it was, and these walls were built by late 18th century farmers to facilitate animal husbandry, you would not expect to find either copious records of their construction or abundant, dateable artifacts, like ceramics and coins. Their houses - spewing all the waste that archaeologists love to puzzle over - were located 2.5 km away. More convincingly still, there are significant similarities between the stone walls at Bayers Lake and enclosures built for sheep, for example, in northern Britain.

That's why I lean toward the animal husbandry hypothesis in preference to the previous two. As for other and more speculative notions, which seek to link this site to Vikings, medieval knights, or similar origins, these may be fun to consider, but they are completely unmoored from the evidence required to substantiate them. It is healthy to be wary of orthodoxies and arguments from authority, but doing so does not free us from the need for evidence and clear thinking.

In the end, that's probably one of the main lessons of this site and sites like it. It forces us back to critical thinking and rules of evidence. Whatever it was and however old it is, it is a great site to think with.

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By way of a conclusion, please take care if you decide to go out to inspect this site. The brush is thick, the ticks are hungry, and the footing is very uneven, with plenty of damp roots to slip on and loose rocks to turn ankles. If you do go, please observe only.

09/17/2026

Digital Louisbourg

We're perhaps more familiar with the term 'citizen science' than 'citizen heritage', but there is plenty of the latter. Close to the core of both concepts is a spirit of empowerment and a motivation to engage creatively, investigate, and make meaning for ourselves, even if we haven't necessarily gone to grad school and collected a string of letters behind our names.

A lot of people make very significant contributions to the study of the past without having been formally trained for that role, and the same goes for interpretation. Here is a recent story profiling the work of Cape Breton resident Daniel MacNeil, who is building a digital model of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site of Canada.

I sense that we are just on the cusp of rapid development in this area, and Louisbourg, with its plentiful archive of 18th century maps and plans, is an excellent test bed. This kind of modelling will necessarily become much more speculative as we move from the well-recorded centers of historic communities to less-well-attested hinterlands, but I suspect we'll see some very creative and interesting efforts in the years to come.

It's tempting to try something similar for early Halifax...

You can check out Daniel's work here:
https://digital-louisbourg.ca/

08/31/2026

Poutrincourt's Mill: A Conversation with Mark Borton

Independent research Mark Borton had a really interesting interview with As it Happens last week here on national radio in Canada. And it's about a fun and very interesting project: the search for our earliest grist mill.

Of course, any easy-sounding research question is bound to get complicated the closer you look at it. The site has been changing for over 400 years since it was first established. People have built more mills and d***s nearby, sea level has risen, the head of tide has moved, the river has wiggled, the marsh has grown in step with the tide.

So, it's not so much a needle in a haystack as a needle likely sedimented under several tons of marsh mud. Hopefully, we'll be able to look a little more deeply into matters later this season with the aid of ground-penetrating radar.

I quite like this project and I've got to hand it to Mark. He's been very focused on learning more about this storied site and, as he observes in the interview, he approaches all of this as an outsider. He's a US citizen rather than a Canadian, and he is not a formally trained historian or archaeologist.

However, I think his determined engagement highlights something important about our relationship with the past: it is not the exclusive preserve of any one group, professional or otherwise. Memory is communal. Providing community interests and local laws are respected, and the integrity of fragile and unique archaeological materials are protected, we should welcome newcomers to 'our' little patch of history, especially when they approach it with reason and care. We all stand to gain in the dialogue.

08/30/2026

History Under the Marsh

Here is a great little story about recent efforts to relocate the mill associated with the deMonts fur trade habitation on Nova Scotia's Annapolis Basin. The site dates to the first decade of the 17th century and is now the subject of investigation by a multidisciplinary team convened by independent researcher Mark Borton.

Link to the story in the comments, and more soon.

08/24/2026

Ground-Penetrating Radar:
It's Not a Bone Detector

Not all that long ago, I was watching one of those police procedurals. A murder needs solving, a troubled detective is on the job, and a call goes out: "we need to get the GPR in there." Flashing blue lights.

Change of scene, and an actor in a hazmat suit can now be seen baby-stepping a cart-mounted radar unit over a neatly trimmed lawn before, some scenes later, an over-the-shoulder-shot shows detectives and technicians eagerly viewing the data on a computer screen. A complete, x-ray-style picture of a human skeleton emerges as the dramatic music intensifies.

Nah.

It doesn't really looks that way in real life, and although archaeologists sometimes use x-ray instruments in the field and in the lab, GPRs are not x-ray instruments. Instead, they emit tiny, controlled pulses of radiowave energy and then record "echoes" of the part of this energy that bounces back to a receiver.

It doesn't have to wait very long to record this response, as the wave travel at just shy of the speed of light. Because we can estimate wave velocity, we can use the wave's two-way travel time to calculate the depth of whatever is causing the reflection.

The resulting picture is not nearly as neat and clear as they would have us believe on TV. Instead, most GPR data is chaotic and lumpy. Many objects in the ground will alter the speed of a radio wave and cause some of that energy to reflect: tree roots, buried pipes and cables, stones, voids, even the natural soil strata themselves can cause reflections. The result is usually a jumble that we must manually assess, line by line, to identify telltale patterns.

Broadly speaking, GPR cannot resolve and visualize individual human bones at depth. Rather, we tend to see disruptions in the normal soil layers caused by the digging and backfilling of the grave shaft (the hole in the ground into which the body and perhaps coffin have been placed).

Sometimes the coffin itself - and the void within it - can be discerned, but with older burials, in which the coffin has collapsed through decomposition and pressure from the overlying earth, we see a more reduced reflective feature. In any case, it won't look like a coffin.

Soil conditions greatly influence the viability of GPR because soils of different composition differentially permit the transit of radio waves. In general, sand = good, clay = bad, but, despite what some well-intentioned guides might advise, meaningful evidence can still be obtained from clay-rich soils.

Here is one example from a cemetery survey in Nova Scotia just the other day with the Noggin 500, a 500MHz instrument designed and built by Canadian GPR manufacturer Sensors & Software. Circled at centre on the screen is a reflective feature consistent with a burial. In this case, it is a marked burial, and you can see the grave marker at right. The important thing is that the GPR detected what appear to be several unmarked burials in this survey grid. That's not surprising, as not everybody who is buried is provided with a durable, stone marker.

This survey data was collected along parallel transects spaced 25cm (about 10") apart, in both x and y dimensions. This kind of methodology allows us to better understand large, reflective features by seeing how they appear on multiple, adjacent survey lines of different orientation. If it is a human burial, you should be able to see it on multiple, adjacent lines.

GPR isn't a super quick methodology. This modestly-scaled grid (6m x 19m, or about 20' x 62') took me about three hours to set up, survey, and take down, and data processing took even longer. But it's a much better method - and much less intrusive - than digging.

The time saved can be devoted to even more incredulous consumption of TV crime dramas.

PS - If you'd like to learn more about GPR applications in Archaeology, S&S has a page for that:
https://www.sensoft.ca/ground-penetrating-radar/archaeology/

They also have a rental pool and offer training courses for those who wish to learn more. You may also be interested in attending one of our GPR / Remote Sensing field courses in the Anthropology Department at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia:
https://www.smu.ca/anthropology/

08/17/2026

An Encounter with the Past

A friend told me recently that he was looking forward to his son's 11th birthday. They are scheduled to play laser tag.

Without guidance or intention, my mind shot back to memories of my own childhood birthdays around that age, and I'm grateful to recall that they were good ones: lots of cake, ice cream, friends, and fun. My parents even arranged a scavenger hunt for us once. It was a pretty fortunate childhood, and I can appreciate that much more clearly now than I could then.

Yesterday provided the opportunity to conduct ground-penetrating radar surveys in a local cemetery. It was a solo operation, which I don't at all mind. The weather was good, warm but not too humid, with a light breeze. As I often do in old cemeteries, I found myself reading some of the stones in the moments between tasks, and this one really hit me.

Part of it was that recent conversation, no doubt, and those recollections of my own childhood. But mainly it was the sorrow and tenderness behind those cut lines.

Moving on to the next survey grid, it occurred to me how powerful the encounter with the past can be, and how it's not something we are professionally encouraged to admit. Those of us who practice the historical sciences tend to be dispassionate and analytical, trained for accuracy, precision, and reasoned inferences.

And then we round a corner and meet little Hughie, who presents us with a valuable reminder:

We are quite wrong to regard the people of the past as merely things to be studied (or worse, to be disregarded and forgotten). Meeting them and learning their stories can surely expand our humanity as much as our knowledge.

It feels that way sometimes, anyway.

08/08/2026

An Opportunity to Dig at Fort Sainte-Marie-de-Grâce
Fort Point, LaHave, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia
August 17 - 23, 2026

If you've ever wanted to join an archaeological team and learn how archaeologists uncover and interpret physical evidence, this opportunity might interest you.

Fort Sainte-Marie-de-Grâce was the capital of Acadie for several years in the 1630s, before most of its inhabitants and the colony's administrators relocated to Port-Royal.

Antiquarians, historians, and archaeologists have been studying Fort Point for generations, leading to the notion that this coastal site had largely eroded. Recent research has revealed that, actually, much of the site is still intact, but in variable states of preservation and accessibility owing largely to subsequent building activities. (In archaeology-speak, we call these "site formation processes").

Our intrepid colleague and Saint Mary's University Archaeology Laboratory Technician Wesley Weatherbee will be directing exploratory excavations during the week of August 17th and invites you to join the crew. Our equally intrepid partners at the Fort Point Museum are managing enrollment, and you'll find all the details you need in the poster below.

Make no mistake: Fort Point, like a great many archaeological sites, has been significantly impacted by post-abandonment changes, but a great deal of early evidence is still present. Some of it has been practically staring us in the face, while other traces are more difficult to discern. It's just the kind of puzzle we like working on, and all the better if you'd like to join us.

Please note that participants must pre-register to attend, but that visitors are most welcome any time. It is always great to meet others who share our interest in the past.

07/25/2026

Yesterday's News

Old newspapers are endlessly diverting. The events of the day appear afresh. Some of them we know through memory, but most of them have been forgotten. The language used is both familiar and distant. And then there are the ads. I'm tempted to order some "Ayer's Hair Vigor" now.

Newspapers were often the places where public conversations were held, and this includes news and announcements relating to archaeological discoveries. We often lament that antiquarian diggers did a poor job of documenting their work, but occasionally you catch pieces of it in the contemporary press.

Here's a fragment from the Sept. 18, 1891 edition of the "The Acadian and Kings County Times," aka the Wolfville Acadian. It was passed to me some years ago by Archivist Garry Shutlak of The Nova Scotia Archives, and now I'll share it with you.

Under the intriguing title of "An Interesting Archaeological Discovery," we learn that "Nearly everyone has placed the site of the old Acadian village of Grand Pre..."

This in itself is an interesting statement, as it pre-dates the establishment of the memorial park by more than a decade, and of the national historic site by more than half a century. It tells us that the site was well known and well visited, but this is not the scene of the action.

Rather, the story's focus is "About two miles west of modern Grand Pre," where "Mr. W. C. Archibald, while cutting away a dry sandy knoll, came suddenly, evidently, upon the remains of what was to be an old blacksmith shop."

Our anonymous reporter notes that about 4 feet of alluvial sediment covered this deposit, which consisted not only charcoal and slag (blacksmithing waste), but also two cartloads of foundation stones, some quite large.

The structure's floor was reportedly of clay that had been "beaten so hard that Mr. Archibald had to loosen it with the plow before the scoop would fill."

Not exactly modern archaeological methods.

It is further said that, about 12 years previously, Mr. Archibald "came upon the foundations of a house" a short distance away. Did it likewise fill his scoop?

The validity of claims like this are very difficult to assess on their own terms. Part of the problem is that testimony of this sort tends to blur the line between observation and inference. We can accept that 'something' was found, and even that that something was old and architectural, but how do we know whether it was part of the pre-Deportation Acadian landscape?

Diagnostic artifacts, like datable ceramics recovered from stratified deposits, are the archaeologist's preferred smoking guns. But those guns are silent here.

Nevertheless, the landscape itself may contain other clues. About two miles west of the Grand Pre rail station and its visible Acadian ruins (likely "the site of the old Acadian village of Grand Pre" to which our author refers), brings us to the eastern end of Wolfville. Here, two old Acadian roads met. And on the adjacent marsh, just east of Wolfville Harbour, an old Acadian d**e once stood.

Even so, we must resist the temptation to snap together puzzle pieces that do not quite fit. Mr. William Charles Archibald, who was a well known local figure, writer, businessman, and Civil War veteran (he fought with the Union Army), owned land and was active on the west side of Acadia University's campus in Wolfville. This stretches our two miles by some distance, breaking the association with the aforementioned roads and d**e.

Still, it's an interesting lead, and there may be other evidentiary associations.

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If you'd like to read yesterday's news, you'll find this article here, at the bottom of page 3.

https://www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm.N_00092_18910918/1

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Archaeology in Acadie

09/24/2026

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09/19/2026

09/17/2026

08/31/2026

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