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Text: Greenwich Archaelogical Field School
Stories are found in the very earth of Greenwich.
The area around St. Peter's Bay has been a place of continuous human habitation for more than 10,000 years,
beginning with Paleo Indian, followed by the Mi'kmaq people and then later by Acadian and British settlers.
Today the land is uninhabited, protected within Prince Edward Island National Park.
But the rich cultural heritage of its previous inhabitants is still preserved within its soil.
In June 2008, an archaeology field school was established along Greenwich's Tlaqatik Trail.
Run jointly by Parks Canada and the University of Prince Edward Island, the dig's aim was to find artefacts that will help shed light on Acadian families who lived in the area during the mid-1700s.
Rob Ferguson is the Parks Canada archaeologist leading the dig.
He explains that this isn't the first time joint archaeological digs have been conducted on the Greenwich peninsula.
Rob: "The first interest came as a result of Rolly Jones and Jeannette Jones who are private collectors
and had found some unusual looking stone points at what's now call the Jones site.
They brought it to the direction of Dr. David Keenleyside at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
and he immediately recognized that these were quite early points, possibly dating from as much as 10,000 years ago.
David Keenleyside came here in 1983 and ran a field school with Anna Sovitsky from the University of PEI
and did some excavations on the site and found some more evidence of that site."
To begin this year's dig, a combination of historical documents, remote sensing technology and shovel tests
are used to pin-point several places along the coast thought to be locations of original Acadian homesteads.
Once several promising sites are located, members of the field school rope off a few 'pits' and begin the slow,
careful process of excavating and documenting any artefacts that they find.
Janette Gallant is working on one of the bigger excavation pits, and explains why they chose this particular location.
"This is a cellar site here, from an Acadian family, from the Oudy family.
So there were probably 9 Acadian families who lived in this area and they were all Oudys.
Back in 2000, Parks Canada did a test pit right in this area through here and they hit a cellar.
So we're back here in 2008 to excavate a little bit more."
Those who work on the dig are required to spend hours digging, scraping, brushing, and sifting the red PEI dirt in order to find these Acadian artefacts – as well as artefacts from other eras.
It's not always an easy job.
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For these UPEI students participating in their first dig, their tasks vary each day
Student 1: "If we're just digging in a normal excavation, then we'll be doing stuff like that, trowelling surfaces down and trying to, you know, uncover some artefacts from different soils.
But on other days we'll do shovel tests, where instead of doing a larger excavation, we'll do a smaller, usually 30 cm square and then just go down. It's faster."
Student 2: "We did a lot of that, this group"
Student 3: "A lot of shifting through dirt, looking for small pieces, that's always fun."
Student 1: "Pretty much we scrape dirt. Gardeners, historic gardeners"
Once artefacts are extracted from the ground, they are bagged and recorded in a log.
Then they are taken to the lab at the Greenwich Interpretation Centre, where they will be cleaned further and put in cases.
At the end of the dig they will be sent to Halifax for further analysis.
The dig yields some amazing discoveries in terms of Acadian artefacts.
Rob: "This is a very rare type of Chinese porcelain.
We do get Chinese porcelain on Acadian sites, but typically they are the very common little tea bowls.
These are all fragments of a pig skull that were found in what looks like a garbage dump area.
Wine bottle necks can be very useful because we can date the period that they were made by the manufacturing style.
We've found, also, three native-worked stone tools."
These artefacts reveal many clues about the daily life of Acadians who lived along the shores of St. Peters Bay.
They will help Parks Canada put together a more complete picture of their history.
Rob: "We're finding, I think, with all of the archaeology that's being done in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI that there is a greater complexity to Acadian culture,
which we should expect anyway, once you delve into the actual material culture and remains of the people."
This archaeological dig has helped bring to life the history of this landscape.
The rich cultural heritage lives on today in the island's vibrant Acadian community.
And while the field school focused on the Acadian era, continued archaeological research will give a voice to the many civilizations who called Greenwich home for thousands of years.