18th-Century Cemetery Excavated on Nova Scotia

News July 28, 2017

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Fortress of Louisbourg
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CAPE BRETON ISLAND, CANADA—Students from the University of New Brunswick are assisting with the effort to exhume approximately 1,000 eighteenth-century graves near the Fortress of Louisbourg before they erode into the Atlantic Ocean, according to a report from CBC News. The settlement began in 1713 as a French fishing village, but it grew into a commercial port and was surrounded by fortification walls by 1740. The site changed hands several times with the British over the following tumultuous 30 years. “What we’ll be looking at is overall health patterns,” said Amy Scott of the University of New Brunswick. “We will also be looking at elements of trauma, infectious disease, migration patterns, even potentially ancient DNA,” she said. The remains will be reburied when the project is completed. For more on archaeology in Canada, go to “Discovering Terror.”

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