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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