What Lies .28 10 Beneath

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01/ Early hunters in the Toronto region would have sought high vantage points, such as shoreline cliffs, to track herds of caribou and other large game.

IMAGE/ Shelley Huson, Archaeological Services Inc.

02/ 11,000-year-old stone points

IMAGE/ Museum of Ontario Archaeology, Wilfrid Jury Collection

03/ A 500-year-old human effigy that adorned a ceramic pipe

IMAGE/ Andrea Carnevale, Archaeological Services Inc.

04/ A 2,500-year-old artifact made of banded slate

IMAGE/ Museum of Ontario Archaeology, Wilfrid Jury Collection

Excavating the past

TEXT BY RONALD F. WILLIAMSON AND SUSAN HUGHES What Lies .28 11 Beneath

For more than 13,000 years, southern in Ontario require archaeological assess - planning guidelines for their management. Ontario has been home to indigenous ments, which are mandated by the Many regional municipalities, such as populations. These indigenous peoples Provincial Policy Statement, for projects Ottawa, Durham, York, and Halton, and once occupied thousands of encampments within their jurisdictions. cities such as Kingston, Toronto, Brantford, and temporary villages. They left no written London, and Windsor, among others, have record of their lives, and their legacy Some projects, however, may not undertaken archaeological management consists of the oral histories and traditions “trigger” a permit requirement. In these plans. In these municipalities, planners passed on to their descendants, as well instances, due diligence is critical, because use the potential mapping to decide which as the archaeological traces of their settle - encountering an archaeological feature projects require assessments. ments. These traces are fragile: whenever during project work can result in costly you dig in the ground, you could be delays. It is best to know the local munici - When preparing an archaeological destroying irreplaceable cultural resources. pality’s requirements for archaeological management plan, it is important to assessments, and to consult with the distinguish between lands where modern All types of development—from garden appropriate authorities early in the project development activities are likely to have landscaping or excavation for an in-ground design process. destroyed any archaeological resources, swimming pool to a single family dwelling and other lands, such as schoolyards, or an entirely new community—can remove One of the major problems in planning parks, and golf courses, which may be traces of the past. Any modification that for archaeological site conservation is that generally undisturbed. While most properties disrupts or displaces the upper layers we don’t know where all the sites are subject to recent development lack any of soil can have a huge impact on located. Comprehensive surveys of entire unknown archaeological resources. Thus, municipalities to complete archaeological 05/ A 700-year-old ceramic pipe bowl in advance of any construction or land- inventories are clearly not feasible. Planners IMAGE/ Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc. altering activity, most planning authorities therefore depend on models that predict 06/ A 500-year-old ceramic human effigy pipe whe re sites are located. The main objec - IMAGE/ Andrea Carnevale, Archaeological tives are to design predictive models that Services Inc.

map on a GIS platform the likely locations 07/ A 500-year-old ceramic vessel

of archaeological sites, and to establish IMAGE/ Andrea Carnevale, Archaeological Services Inc. What Lies .28 12 Beneath

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10 archaeological potential, the historic cores hunting strategies and developing more of municipalities may retain significant varied toolkits. By 4,000 to 5,000 years archaeological deposits, especially in ago, small bands of related families had parking or rear property lots and rear settled into hunting territories along major laneways. In downtown Toronto, for drainages, and were trading across the example, archaeological remnants of the eastern continent and producing exquisite first parliament buildings of Upper Canada stone art made of banded slate, which they were found in 2000 at the intersection of carved and ground to resemble animals. Front and Parliament streets despite the long history of disturbance at the location. Horticulture profoundly changed the lives of the indigenous people of southern Ontario. A number of municipalities have Maize was introduced into southern Ontario 11 defined historic settlement centres, about 1,600 years ago and, by 700 years melting glaciers. These early inhabitants along with known archaeological sites , hunted caribou, mastodon or mammoth as Archaeologically Sensitive Areas (ASAs). 08/ This small ancestral Huron ossuary, (now-extinct elephants), and other game containing the remains of 87 people, was In these areas, even small-scale found near Leslie Street and Highway in what was then an open spruce forest 401. Aboriginal leaders have viewed the activities, such as the construction of disturbance to this sacred site as an mixed with tundra. Evidence concerning immense act of disrespect that could a house addition, park facility upgrades , have been avoided by proper planning these hunters is very limited since their in advance of development. or tree planting, would trigger an populations were not large and few of IMAGE/ Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc. archaeological assessment. 09/ This map identifies the locations of their tools have survived. Seneca and Cayuga villages on the north shore of Lake Ontario in the late What constitutes an archaeological site, and 17th century including Teiaiagon, on the By 9,000 years ago, southern Ontario had Humber River, and Ganatswekwyagon, what do we find in them? The earliest sites on the Rouge River. changed from a tundra-like environment in southern Ontario date to about 13,000 IMAGE/ Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc. to one more like ours today. Nomadic years ago when people came to live on the 10/ A moose antler comb found at the site hunter -gatherers adapted to the changing of Teiaiagon (Baby Point, Toronto) shores of the glacial lakes formed by the environmental conditions by shifting their IMAGE/ John Howarth, Archaeological Services Inc. What Lies .28 13 Beneath

12 ago, it often comprised more than half of The Humber River settlement was called The comb included carved representations the diet consumed by people. Iroquoian- “Teiaiagon” (now “Baby Point”) and is situated of a human, a bear, and a panther (with speaking peoples, like the Huron-Wendat, on a large promontory overlooking the main a rattlesnake tail) possibly representing Neutral, and Petun, established base settle - channel of the Humber River near Jane Mishipizheu, the chief manitou of the under - ments and cleared land for crops, while Street. There are few historical sources that water realm. Etched designs were also sending out hunting, fishing, and gathering refer to Teiaiagon, although we know that present, some of which can be seen in the parties to satellite camps to harvest other the Recollet missionary and explorer Father art of Norval Morriseau and demonstrate resources. Groups in northern Ontario, Louis Hennepin as well as René-Robert the unbroken link between indigenous where the environment precluded Cavelier de La Salle visited the site in the Ontarians and their ancestors. It is every - the growing of crops, continued with mid- to late seventeenth century. While one’s responsibility to care for the traces their traditional lifestyles and were the hundreds of burials were documented of these ancestors, especially those of us ancestors of the Algonquian-speaking there at the turn of the twentieth century, who work with the land on a daily basis . Anishinaabeg peoples. archaeologists have recently encountered BIOS/ SUSAN HUGHES IS THE CITY OF TORONTO'S SUPERVISOR FOR ARCHAEOLOGY, AND OVERSEES the burial sites of two late-seventeenth- THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT PLAN.

By the 1660s, the Haudenasaunee or century Seneca women, both of whom RONALD F. WILLIAMSON IS MANAGING PARTNER AND CHIEF ARCHAEOLOGIST OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL Iroquois, whose homeland was in what were disinterred from the utility service SERVICES INC., A FULL-SERVICE CULTURAL HERITAGE CONSULTING FIRM THAT WORKS is now central New York State, had estab - trenches in which they were found and THROUGHOUT ONTARIO. lished a series of settlements in southern re-interred nearby during ceremonies Ontario at strategic locations along the trade performed by a Six Nations traditional chief. 11/ Late 19th-century map of Baby Point showing the locations of various routes inland from the north shore of Lake archaeological deposits

Ontario, including two villages in what is Both women had been laid to rest along IMAGE/ Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc. now Toronto on the Rouge and Humber with a number of grave objects meant to 12/ Recreated village branches of the Toronto Carrying Place— accompany them to the next world, one IMAGE/ Courtesy of Archaeological Services Inc. the canoe-and-portage routes that linked with a brass pot containing an ash bowl that Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay and the upper in turn contained squash, acorn, and grape Great Lakes, through Lake Simcoe. remains; a number of iron tools; and a carved and engraved moose antler comb.