Evidence of a Stone Age temporary hunting and skinning camp has been found in Eastern Ontario, Canada, on a site destined for use as a new housing estate.
     Under the Ontario Heritage Act developers have to employ an archaeologist to survey a site, before any new construction work can begin. This particular site is located at a place called Casselman, to the East of Ottawa, on the shores of the South Nation River, which was left behind when the Champlain Sea disappeared in approximately 8,000 BCE.
     Finds from other nearby sites show that the area was used over a 9,000 year period and over 7,000 items have been recovered from the Casselman site alone. Kelly Berckmans, a student member of the team, is quoted as saying "When I started seeing a lot of quartz flakes and a lot of chipped stone in the other test pits, I said something is going on here".
     When asked why he thought the quantity of finds was so high, the leader of the team, Paul Thibaudeau, an adjunct professor at Carleton University, Canada, believed that the contours of the land had made is unsuitable for farming and so the ground had remained undisturbed. Dr Jean Luc Pilon, curator of Ontario archaeology at the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, believes this find to be very important.

Edited from Ottawa Citizen (30 May 2011)