Long before the creation of this blog, and before the digital Palisade E-Post, the museum sent out paper newsletters. First published in February 1979, each Palisade Post issue is a snapshot of what was happening in Ontario archaeology during this time, and is the basis of our Look Back series.
The Pipe Site Pipe
(Spring 1993, Volume 15 No. 1)
“Of all the pits, in all the fields, you had to pop out of mine.”
No, it’s not a bad line from a great movie, it’s just my way of introducing this article, which deals with the experience of finding that one artifact, in one test pit, on one survey.
This happened in November, 1992, when the Contract Archaeology crew conducted an archaeological assessment of approximately 64.5 hectares (160 acres) of land in Flos Township, Simcoe County. Only 30 percent of this property could be visually surveyed. The rest of the property that had both natural and reforested woodlot had to be surveyed using a technique known as ‘test pitting’. Using this method we were able to recover three isolated find spots and one undisturbed village. After a brief description of the survey technique, I will discuss the find spot which produced the pipe pictured here. Read more