OTTAWA, CANADA—Newspaper archives have yielded information on forgotten nineteenth-century archaeological excavations in the region that became Canada’s capital city. Randy Boswell of Carleton University and Jean-Luc Pilon of the Canadian Museum of History say that the work of Edward Van Cortlandt, who investigated the area’s 4,900-year-old Indigenous burial ground in 1843 and 1860, had been recorded in the local papers at the time. The Canadian Museum of History now sits on the site. “Thanks to the old newspaper finds and Jean-Luc Pilon’s deep knowledge of the ancient history of this region, we now have a new understanding of the enduring importance of the Chaudière Falls and the nearby burial place in relation to various shoreline archaeological sites around the confluence of the Ottawa, Gatineau, and Rideau rivers,” Boswell said in a press release. “This region was a seasonal hub for Indigenous peoples for millennia, long before it was settled by Euro-Canadians in the nineteenth century and became Canada’s political capital,” he added. To read about the discovery of a nineteenth-century shipwreck in Canadian waters, one of the Top 10 Discoveries of 2014, go to "Canada Finds Erebus."
