Thursday, Jul. 03, 2014 - 9:49 a.m.
Archeology and Me
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I live at the mouth of the Niagara River
where it flows into Lake Ontario.
I have been finding weird things
under water or on the beach after storms
for many years .
On clear days in spring
I can see various ancient beaches
under water I sometimes hover over
in a kayak and look down
and dive for choice items
I am an artist and can pick out
human fashioned stones from the rock piles
and pottery frags on farmland
and construction sites.
In some places on the beach
there are _only heaps of tools,
in other places they tumble out
of the cliffs and onto the beach below.
In the 19th C first euro farmers
found mammoth bones and tusks
right downtown in a little gully
and I have found rotten rib bones
3 inches wide in the clay in stream beds
not far away
I read that pro archaeologists
are finding post Ice age game trails
underwater in Lake Huron studded with
stone cairns . One even has a mammoth
scratched into the stone face
. Same era all of Niagara was a huge marsh
when the actual Falls of Niagara
was 14 km closer to the Lake than it is today,
it is still one of the best fresh water fishing spots
in the world.. all year round,,
and the microclimate that favours grape culture also made Niagara one of the earliest
prehistoric farming zones in the entire North East
of North America
The original native people in Niagara
( Neutrals ) were here long before
the Huron Iroquois , and I read
the Neutrals had more in common
with the Ohio Mound builders
than anyone else,
The Neutrals practised
skull elongation in infants
and maintained a community ossuary
that was looted in the early 20th C,
I believe it was teeming with copper goods,
Conch shells, beads and votive
oversized spearpoints of which
most of it ended up in the basement
of the U of Buffalo across the river in the USA
I correspond with Indian expert Wm Fenton
before he passed away
and he encouraged me to keep at it and I did .
The provincial archaeologist is not amused
so I have to be very careful what I show.
I do catch and release photographs,
and stack the good items
near where I found them
and move along.
I have found dozens of sites
each as rich and untouched as the next.
Some are completely underwater
other further inland.
The water worn items
are glassy smooth from
a very long time submerged
The weirder and more obscure an artifact i is,
the more I like it
