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AgHc-82: An Archaeological Site near Brantford, Ontario

Between May 15 and June 7, 1995, the Department of Anthropology mounted an Archaeological Field School excavation of a small Late Archaic Stage (approximately 3000 year old) site situated near Brantford, Ontario, under the direction of Robert W. Park. Six students participated in the project—unfortunately it was necessary to turn down several additional qualified applicants.

The site that was excavated (designated "AgHc-82" in the system used to record information about archaeological sites throughout Canada) is located on land owned by a gravel company, and will be completely destroyed in the near future in the course of gravel extraction. At present the site is in a cultivated field still used to grow corn.

Figure 1. View of AgHc-82 from the northeast, near the end of the excavation. Students are working in two different parts of the site.

Because this excavation was intended to be both a salvage operation and a training exercise, our research objectives were limited. However, I hoped to explore questions of intrasite distribution of cultural debris, an issue that I've explored in some of my research in the Arctic. This goal was in part stymied by the extreme paucity of formal artifacts at the site (see below). Almost all the finds from this site were lithic (stone) debitage--in other words, the many waste fragments that are produced and immediately discarded when stone tools are made.

Figure 2. Students using the transit and stadia rod to map the site (at unusually short range).

The first step of the project was to do a careful surface search of the site and its immediate vicinity. The distinct coloration and the sharp edges of the stone flakes allows them to be spotted against the exposed dirt of the ploughed field. All the surface finds (some 273 in all) were marked with pieces of orange flagging tape so that we could find them again easily. A datum stake was then established off the edge of the field as a reference point and the location of each find was plotted relative to the datum stake using an alidade and plane table, and with a transit and stadia rod. The resulting map (Figure 3) was used to guide our subsequent excavations at the site.

 

Figure 3. The dots on this map indicate locations where flakes were found on the surface of the site. The areas that were subsequently excavated are also indicated.

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