Feature Exhibits at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology in London Ontario
Ontario’s archaeological heritage and First Nations history are revealed in our feature exhibits.
Lend an Ear to the Past
The Archaeology of sound
Curated by Marie Hoffmann with Dr. Rhonda Bathurst
Music is a global universal that humans have used as a form of communication, inspiration, and entertainment for millennia. As London prepares to host the Juno Awards this March, Lend an Ear to the Past through an archaeological exhibit about sound at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology.
Within the Great Lakes region, some of the oldest objects we recognize as instruments are fragments of bird bone whistles, many thousands of years old. Come explore these and some of the other items from our collections that explore the sounds of history, brought to life from archaeological fragments of the past.
Click here to listen to Exhibitions Coordinator Marie Hoffman and Julianne Hazlewood of CBC London Morning discuss our new feature exhibit!
Curated with funding by Virtual Museums Canada
The islands and coastline of Georgian Bay are among the most beautiful places in the Great Lakes. And throughout the past 12,000 years of human history stories of famine, war, and friendship unfolded.
The tragic tale of Ste. Marie II, details how a village with just one year of occupation illuminates the early history of Indigenous populations and their interactions with the French, English, and Dutch visitors to North America.
The Indigenous populations of this region, including the Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabeg, survived four long centuries of colonial domination and attempted assimilation. To this day, archaeological research continues to play an important role in efforts by First Nations to assert their rights and interests for both ancestral and contemporary territories.
This is the story of the last months of the Wendat and some of their Indigenous allies, along with the Jesuits, on Christian Island. The legacy of Ste Marie II rests with the oral histories of the Wendat and both the documentary and archaeological records of the settlements on this beautiful landscape.
Contested Histories: An Interactive Tour
Curated by Alyssa Logie
The relationship between archaeology and Indigenous communities has evolved immensely over time in both positive and negative ways. “Contested Histories” is an interactive tour that explores these changing relationships while touring around the MOA gallery space. This tour provides a critical perspective on the interactions between archaeology, Indigenous communities and museums.