7 July 2016
Ancient campsite found in Canada
In an area of New Brunswick (Canada) the Canadian Department of Transportation had plans to construct a by-pass of Route 8 around the city of Fredericton, capital of the region.
As part of the investigations which are made for the planning of any major road, not just in Canada, an archaeological team was sent to see if there was anything of interest. What they found was actually so important that there was an immediate cessation of ground works and the by-pass would have to be permanently re-routed.
The find centred on a campsite, dated at 10,000 BCE, which would have been based on the shores of a long lost lake. So far over 600 artefacts have been unearthed, ranging from stone tools to arrow heads and a fire pit.
One of the First Nation tribes of this area of New Brunswick was the Maliseet and several members of the archaeological team were members of that tribe, including Shawna Goodall, who is quoted as saying "These are my ancestors. And just to be able to be the first one to hold things in 13,000 years - I get goose bumps every timer, (from) every single artefact. That never ores away, that feeling".
The other exciting part of the find is that it provides a missing link. Team Leader, Brent Suttie, is quoted as saying "We have a few sites down in the Pennfield area and then we have very famous sites in Debert, Nova Scotia that dates to 11,600 years old. We don't have anything between those two sites. This site just happens to fall within that".
Edited from CBC News, CTV News, Global News (23 June 2016)
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