Early Studies of Crawford Lake Sediments

Welcome back to our continuing blog series on Crawford Lake. In an earlier post I noted that, while I was a graduate student based at Erindale College, U. of T., I was asked by Professor Roger Byrne to help locate an archaeological site he predicted would be found beside Crawford Lake. This small lake was […]

Before the Crawford Lake Archaeological Research Program – Part 2

Our excavations at the Brown site were quite different from those at the Milton site. We began our excavations at the top of a bank, hoping to unearth a palisade surrounding the settlement. We did locate a row of post moulds which may in fact represent part of the palisades surrounding the village. Of much greater significance though, we discovered a midden (garbage dump) just over the hill along the northern edge of the site. This midden had been covered by more than half a metre of soil eroded from the farm field above. As a result, it had never been disturbed . . . and we recovered some highly sought-after items.

Before the Crawford Lake Archaeological Research Program

Let’s look back at other investigations I embarked on during my time as a graduate student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. In 1969 Professor Mohr hired me to carry out an archaeological survey to find sites suitable for an archaeological field school he was to teach. The excavations were designed to introduce second-year Anthropology students to the basics of archaeological field work. As it turned out it also provided me with a broader knowledge of field methods, due to Professor Mohr’s extensive experience in archaeology in California, the America Southwest, South Korea, and Japan.