
LAFAYETTE, LOUSIANA—During the French and Indian Wars (1755-1764), the British expelled thousands of French-speaking colonists from the Canadian maritime provinces. Many of these people, known as Acadians, migrated to southwestern Louisiana, where they initially settled in camps and developed what we know today as Cajun culture. Now an archaeological effort, the New Acadia Project, is aiming to identify the sites of these early Cajun camps, as well as locate numerous Acadian burial sites lost to history. "It's really these people that were the founders of the Cajun culture that is so well known around the world today," says University of Louisiana at Lafayette historian Warren Perrin. "We need to find out what they ate, what they threw away as trash, what kind of shelter they had."