The archaeological dig that prefaced the building of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights unearthed important evidence about the role of The Forks in aboriginal lives over the last 900 years.
More than 400,000 artifacts were found and identified in two stages of the digs between 2008 and 2012. The first stage was the largest one ever conducted in Manitoba.
There was also no evidence the museum site has ever been a burial ground.
“They reveal important evidence of The Forks among its early inhabitants,” said Stuart Murray, the museum’s president and CEO. “(It) shows that it was the site of peaceful meetings, interaction between the first aboriginal groups, and it was a place of reflection and a place for dialogue — a place where people gained a better understanding for each other.
“The Canadian Museum for Human Rights will continue the tradition of respectful dialogue, discussion and learning. We will acknowledge the lessons of the past, examine what we have achieved by coming together, and what we have lost by standing apart. We will examine what it means to be human, simply human.”
Local aboriginal elders were consulted about the oral history of the site and how to respect the land being excavated. On the advice of those elders, a medicine bag was buried with each of the 500 pilings constructed to support the structure.
“Bringing archaeology and oral history together will give us all a better understanding of Manitoba’s ancient past,” said Mireille Lamontagne, the museum’s manager of education programs. “The museum will undertake key oral histories related to the archaeology project that will be kept as part of the museum’s corporate family.”
The digs cost the museum about $1 million. The Provincial Historic Resources Branch will be home to most of the artifacts recovered “because we are an ideas museum, not an artifacts museum,” Murray said.
The museum is slated to open sometime in 2014.
David McLeod, senior archaeologist for Stantec Consulting, relished his role in the digs.
“It was a thrill. I had never been at a site that had so many levels superimposed one over top of the other and with the range of the material,” he said. “So, it was very exciting to work on and to see the stuff come to light.”
It wasn’t all aboriginal artifacts, either.
“I found one of the earliest Budweiser bottles I’ve ever seen from the 1800’s,” McLeod said.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDINGS AT THE FORKS
— 191 hearths, or fire pits.
— At least five completely new and previously unseen types of ceramic pottery.
— The presence of maize and bean residues on ceramics, scapula hoe fragments, and squash knives.
— An intact ceremonial pipe adorned with a beaver effigy.
— A high concentration of sacred materials, such as ceremonial pipe fragments, possible sucking tubes, and a significant presence of red ochre.
— More than 13,000 ceramic pottery shards, with 121 vessels identified (5-10 of them have never been found anywhere else before).
— More than 200 stone tools, such as projectile points, scrapers, flakes, an adze, rare pallettes, hammerstones and groundstones.
— More than 50 bone tools, such as awls, spatulas, a double-pointed needle, harpoon, possible hoe fragments and squash knives; a rare shell tool; shell beads; pipe fragments.
— Two human footprints, including one very clear impression from a person who lived about 800 years ago, apparently wearing moccasins.
— Evidence of a major bison kill.
— A complete female horse skeleton and fetus bones.