HomeMy WebLinkAboutX2023-006-1604 PRFHISTflF
I 11.11 i all I I M
THE MILLER SITE, BEING EXCAVATED BY
THE ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM
Department of Ethnology in Pickering Township.
The Royal Ontario Museum welcomes you to
the Miller Site, a grove of locust trees where
Indians built a palisaded village about a
thousand years ago.
During your visit, we'd like to show you the
remains of the village, ritual burials and
whatever else turns up while our field party
is excavating. We want to explain the way
in which archaeologists go about their work.
And we will tell you why we are doing it.
Please feel free to ask questions.
FIELD DIRECTOR
WALTER A. KENYON, Assistant Curator of Ethnology
Art and Archaeology Division Royal Ontario Museum
v sI p;RFR"r4ne L!
BAY AND MELINDA STS.
TORONTO 1 — CANADA
I 11.11 i all I I M
THE MILLER SITE, BEING EXCAVATED BY
THE ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM
Department of Ethnology in Pickering Township.
The Royal Ontario Museum welcomes you to
the Miller Site, a grove of locust trees where
Indians built a palisaded village about a
thousand years ago.
During your visit, we'd like to show you the
remains of the village, ritual burials and
whatever else turns up while our field party
is excavating. We want to explain the way
in which archaeologists go about their work.
And we will tell you why we are doing it.
Please feel free to ask questions.
FIELD DIRECTOR
WALTER A. KENYON, Assistant Curator of Ethnology
Art and Archaeology Division Royal Ontario Museum
v sI p;RFR"r4ne L!
BAY AND MELINDA STS.
TORONTO 1 — CANADA
DIGGING UP ONTARIO'S HISTORY
Man has lived in Ontario since the Ice Age.
This should mean thousands of years of history.
But history is the continuous and methodical record
of man's activities and here in Ontario the greater
part of our history still lies buried in the ground.
Since the white man came to Ontario, about
300 years ago, written records have been kept and
these are the basis of our historical knowledge.
Before this time there are no written records at all.
The Indians had no written language and all that
they left behind were the remains of their villages,
their burials and their camp sites. It is from these
slight and incomplete evidences that the archae-
ologists of the Royal Ontario Museum are attempting
to piece together the history of our province.
HOW MUCH DO WE KNOW ABOUT
ONTARIO'S PAST?
Ontario's history today is like a book with
almost all of the pages missing. We know that
Iroquoian people were here in southern Ontario
when the white man arrived. Many Iroquois sites
have been investigated and we have a broad
picture of their way of life. They built palisaded
villages and lived in long -houses. They grew corn,
beans and squash. They had a complex political
and religious organization. It is estimated that they
have been in southern Ontario for about a thousand
years.
For several thousand years before the Iroquois,
southern Ontario was inhabited by a very different
kind of people —wandering hunters who knew
nothing about agriculture and who were in many
ways more {primitive. These were the Indians of
what we call the Woodland period. Before the
Woodland period there were even older cultures
going back in time at least to the Ice Age. Scattered
evidence of these earliest peoples has been found
by archaeologists.
THE MILLER SITE
The Miller Site, here at Pickering, belongs very
late in the Woodland period. The work which you
see going on may answer some of our questions
about the relationship between Woodland and
Iroquois cultures.
The origin of the Iroquois, for example, mystified
archaeologists for many years. Did they move into
Ontario from somewhere else a thousand years ago?
Are they the descendants of Woodland people whose
culture evolved over thousands of years to that state
which the white explorers encountered in the six-
teenth century? The differences between Woodland
and early Iroquois discoveries were so marked that
a theory of migration or conquest did not seem
unreasonable.
The Miller Site, however, is one of the excavations
that seems to indicate a link between Woodland
and Iroquois. The remains of the palisade around
the village, a few kernels of corn found in a
garbage dump, the design of the pottery, and other
discoveries suggest the beginning of Iroquois culture,
yet the site is unmistakably Woodland. By the end
of the summer, when much more of the village has
been excavated, the Museum's archaeologists may
have more answers. Two months of painstaking
work here at the site, and the research in Museum
laboratories next fall, could write another page in
the book of Ontario's history.
Professional archaeology in Ontario has been
going on since the 1890's, but the job has hardly
been started. Before the history of Ontario can be
written there must be many more years of research,
both in the field and in the laboratory. As excava-
tions give us answers to questions they will also
pose new questions.
The Royal Ontario Museum shares the responsi-
bility for this task with other museums and universities.
It is a search for knowledge that gives us not only
the history of our province but a better under-
standing of the history of man.
The Museum has been assisted in this project by
Miller Paving Limited
Township of Pickering
The Telegram
The Royal Ontario Museum is located at the corner
of Bloor St. and Avenue Road in Toronto. For
information phone WA. 3-6611 ext. 734. Public
hours: Tuesday to Saturday 10-5; Sunday 2-5; closed
Mondays. Adults 25c Wednesdays and Fridays.
Free at other times. Parking.
LET THE
TELEGRAM SERVE
AS YOUR GUIDE
TO ONTARIO
Every Thursday, in his Town
and Country trips, Harvey Currell
suggests a new and interesting excursion
for Tely readers.
For information call
THE TELECRAM HOLIDAY BUREAU
EMpire 2-5611
Printed in Canada
X2 -Z-oc�-)b0