Archaeological Digs: Mission for an Apprentice Archaeologist

Welcome!

You’re an apprentice archaeologist? Welcome to the Fort Ville-Marie dig site!

We’re busy excavating the site right now. Here’s your mission, if you decide to join us: Find what kind of trade was conducted in the days of the Fort. Maybe you’ll find some clues on the site to help you answer the question. What artifacts do you think you can unearth?

I’ve left you a book describing the seven steps you need to follow. I look forward to seeing what you find!

What is archaeology, exactly?

Archaeology is a science that tells us about the history of a place, by interpreting clues found in the soil. These clues may be objects, buildings or footprints, for example, showing us who lived there and how, in times gone by. These archaeological clues help us understand how we got to where we are today.

Archaeology in 7 steps!

Archaeologists have to follow a standard procedure, the archaeological approach, to figure out what to look for and where.

Follow the steps!

Step 1: Consult sources of information

Archaeologists find their first clues by looking at books, letters, official documents, travel journals, maps and plans. They consult these sources in order to determine a site’s potential and confirm their initial assumptions. They find clues about the site – its history, geography, resources and inhabitants.

Materials required: Books, journals, journals, maps, etc.

Step 2: Explore to find remains

Over time, traces of the past may have been buried or covered up by more recent structures. Before excavating a large area, it is important to check that it is worth digging there and ensuring that the layers of soil that have accumulated over the years are still in place and in good condition. To do so, archaeologists make small exploratory excavations, a process known as coring.

Materials required: Site plan, core drill, shovel, trowel, backhoe

Step 3: Excavate methodically

Archaeologists dig down though the soil, layer by layer, to find traces of old buildings and the layout of the site, and recover any lost or discarded artifacts. This is a methodical process. That’s why dig sites are divided into grids of smaller sections, each with a specific number identifying its position and depth. Archaeologists take notes on the type of soil they remove, photograph, measure and make drawings of each grid section, note any outlines of buildings and collect any objects they find.

Materials required: Trowel, sieve, bucket, wheelbarrow, hand broom, dustpan, camera, pencil, sketch pad.

Step 4: Clean and label the artifacts and inventory the finds

Any objects found are cleaned and numbered with the number of the grid section where they were found. Then they are identified according to their material, use and date.

Materials required: Toothbrush, soap, water, soft brush, basin, pencil, label, pen and India ink, catalogue card.

Step 5: Analyze the finds

Based on all the information from the dig (site plan, remains, inventory of objects, drawings and photos of the dig), the archaeologist writes a report suggesting an interpretation of each layer and placing it within a given time period and setting.

Materials required: Inventory software, data from the dig.

Step 6: Integrate the findings with history

The aim of archaeology is to integrate the knowledge acquired through excavations with our knowledge of the past. This makes it much more than just a series of techniques.

Materials required: Dig reports, archival documents.

Step 7: Disseminate the findings

For archaeologists’ work to be as widely useful as possible, they have to share their research findings. By disseminating the new knowledge acquired through their painstaking work, these “historical investigators” offer an interpretation of the past to the general public and to their fellow archaeologists and historians.

Fort Ville-Marie ... its history

Jacques Cartier was the first European to sail up the St. Lawrence River as far as the Iroquoian village of Hochelaga, in 1535, followed by Samuel de Champlain in 1611. But it was on May 17, 1642, that Paul Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve, founded the first Christian mission on the site of what would later become Montréal. He and a group of about fifty people claimed the Island during a mass celebrated shortly after they landed, and set up camp on the point of land where the St. Lawrence met the Little Saint-Pierre River.

What we really know about the Fort comes from archaeological research conducted on the site, since there is no reliable plan of its layout, and very few historical documents.

From the remains discovered to date, we can now presume that the Fort consisted of:

a blacksmith’s shop,
a number of buildings used as homes and storehouses,
a kitchen or warehouse,
an oven,
a well,
privies,
a cemetery,
a few gardens.

Up until 1654, the inhabitants of the Fort stayed mainly inside its walls. In 1665, Maisonneuve was dismissed and left Montréal. The fur trade was growing in importance by that time, and the settlers were spending more of their time outside the palisade. The Fort remained occupied until about 1674.

Over the following years, Fort Ville-Marie was gradually abandoned and left to fall into ruin. Despite its dilapidated condition the site remained a popular place for gatherings, including the annual fur fair.

Conclusion

Trade in European religious articles.

If you found any religious objects on the Fort Ville-Marie site, that's because the settlers who lived there were a group of Christians who had come there with the goal of founding a nation of like-minded people and converting the Natives.

But selling religious objects was not part of their mission. The newcomers from Europe gave rosaries to the Natives as gifts, to help convert them to Christianity, but didn’t trade them.

Jesuit rings were religious objects at first, but later on they were probably traded for furs. So you can conclude that there was likely fur trading going on at Fort Ville-Marie.

Would you like to go back to the dig site and make sure you found all 16 artifacts buried there?

The fur trade with Natives.

That’s right, it’s the fur trade!

The site you were excavating was used as a meeting and trading place by Natives before, during and after the days of Fort Ville-Marie (1642-1688). The French used glass beads, Jesuit rings, gunflints and other objects as trade goods. The Natives made projectile points and ornaments out of the copper kettles.

Would you like to go back to the dig site and make sure you found all 16 artifacts buried there?

Trade in weapons for hunting and defending the Fort.

The French living in Fort Ville-Marie received the weapons and ammunition they needed for hunting from France. The lead shot and gunflints found on the site may well have been used for this purpose, but were also likely used as trade goods to obtain furs from Natives.

So it was the fur trade that took place at Fort Ville-Marie, and not trade in weapons.

Would you like to go back to the dig site and make sure you found all 16 artifacts buried there?