If history bases its reconstruction of our past on textual documents, how are we to study peoples who have left pictograms for which we do not always hold the interpretive key? Historians must look to archaeology. Archaeology is the scientific study of life and activities in ancient civilizations.
Archaeologists dig potential archaeological sites using special techniques and tools that allow them to find materials – tools, useful objects, remnants of buildings, infrastructures and even landscapes – left by First Nations people. These findings enrich our knowledge and understanding of these peoples who have explored and inhabited our great region of “Vanier-on-the Ottawa”.
Thanks to geological studies, we know that 13000 years ago, the Ottawa valley was covered by an inland sea called the Champlain Sea that rose around 150 meters above the levels of our actual rivers. The environment being inhospitable, it is not believed that people lived in this region at that time.
The earliest human presence recorded in the Ottawa Valley dates from the Paleo-Indian era (8500 B.C.), but it is during the Archaic period (8500 B.C. to 2500 B.C.) that human settlements became permanent. The Archaic period is followed by the Woodland period which spanned from 2500 years ago to the contact between the First Nations and Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Woodland period is characterized by a demographic expansion and by the introduction of pottery, which was an important cultural event.
