The Lost and Found of Material Heritage through Flooding   Last month we documented the impact fires can have on documentary and material heritage. This month we discuss the impacts and opportunities that flooding generates. Although we didn’t feature it last month, focusing instead on destructive outcomes, fire can also lead to positive heritage outcomes, one example being the work of the Skeetchestn community and archaeologist Joanne Hammond after this year’s forest fires in British Columbia. This “post-fire” survey is an innovative approach to archaeology that replicates recent post-flood surveys in other parts of the country. However, like fire, flooding also threatens collections of heritage materials. Natural Disasters to Plumbing and Drainage Failures to Intentional Large-scale Floods In addition the widespread effects of watercourse flooding cycles and the effects of…

  Challenging Colonial Narratives: Nineteenth Century Great Lakes Archaeology by Dr. Matthew A. Beaudoin TMHC celebrates the upcoming release of our own Dr. Matt Beaudoin's first book Challenging Colonial Narratives: Nineteenth Century Great Lakes Archaeology based on his doctoral research and subsequent insights. From the publisher: Challenging Colonial Narratives demonstrates that the traditional colonial dichotomy may reflect an artifice of the colonial discourse rather than the lived reality of the past. Matthew A. Beaudoin makes a striking case that comparative research can unsettle many deeply held assumptions and offer a rapprochement of the conventional scholarly separation of colonial and historical archaeology. To create a conceptual bridge between disparate dialogues, Beaudoin examines multi-generational, nineteenth-century Mohawk and settler sites in southern Ontario, Canada. He demonstrates that few obvious differences exist and calls for more nuanced…

The Loss of Material and Documentary Heritage to Fire   On September 2, 2018, a significant repository of human history was erased when Brazil’s Museu Nacional (National Museum) was destroyed by fire. What made this event particularly tragic is that the building was one of the largest museums in South America and early estimates suggest over 90% of its collections were lost. As staggering as this single loss is, history shows that this is an all too familiar event as the destruction of documentary and material heritage to fire is not uncommon. Documentary (paper) records are particularly susceptible to fire. It should be unsurprising that large quantities of paper necessarily stored in dry environments are persistent accidental fire hazards. The Library of Alexandria (Source: Wikimedia Commons no alteration Additionally and…

Rural Historical Farmsteads in Ontario George Bland Farmstead (Photo Credit: D.R. Poulton) “Why Do I have to Dig up Grandma’s Broken Plates?!” While there is general acceptance of the need for archaeology on Indigenous sites, archaeologists often face tough scrutiny when further work is required for the archaeological remains of rural historic farmsteads dating from the mid-19th to early-20th centuries. To archaeologists, the value of farmstead archaeology is self-evident, but most non-archaeologists need an explanation of what valuable information grandma’s broken plates have to offer.  Often clients will ask “Who cares about Grandma’s broken dishes?” Rural farmsteads differ from other sites as they: 1) are only a couple centuries old; 2) often have standing structures and available historical records; and 3) are thought to be ubiquitous. The easy answer for…

Site Leads in Ontario: Underutilized but Important Resources for Identifying Site Locations Site Leads in Ontario: Underutilized but Important Resources for Identifying Site Locations Information from landowners and local residents about the possible location of an archaeological site has long been an important resource for archaeologists.  “Site leads,” or hearsay accounts of site locations deriving from local knowledge, often translate into the discovery of previously unrecorded archaeological sites.  The early explorers of archaeological sites in the province often used site leads to find some of the most important Indigenous archaeological sites in Ontario, many of which were recorded in the early-20th century issues of the Annual Archaeological Report for Ontario (AARO).  In addition to archaeological sites, site leads were sporadically published in the AARO.  These early accounts are important today…