Transcript

[Standard Parks Canada Intro]
[An archaeologist points out artefacts in a dig site while Janette, a Parks Canada Employee, looks on]

Archaeologist: . . . and then below that, where we're just getting to now there's bottle glass here, there's some green ceramic, that's very typical of the French, a little bit of a drinking glass, some window pane. And there's a lot of animal bone in this, so we're down on the level where French soldiers were living and working, so we're anxious to get into this.

[Janette stands in front of trees]

Janette: Port-La-Joye-Fort Amherst encompasses the history of 4 cultures which include the Mi'Kmaq, the French, the Acadians and the British. However, whenever we're digging for archaeological items these days we're generally looking in the French fort area and in the Acadian homesteads.

[Children kneel over a strip of exposed dirt in a dig site, sweeping up soil into buckets]

Interviewer: What's your name?

Gabrielle: Gabrielle Blunt.

[Gabrielle sits at a table with artefacts in front of her]

Interviewer: What was your favourite part of the day so far?

Gabrielle: My favourite part of the day was digging in the pit.

[Gabrielle leans into a pit and scoops up soil into a bucket]

Interviewer: What did you like about digging?

Gabrielle: That you got to find like, cool artefacts and see that these people actually lived like that and what they used and stuff.

[Janette leans into the pit with students still digging around her]

Janette: Now a lot of those little pieces are charcoal. What do we have charcoal, why does that come out?

Child: Because it got burnt!

Janette: Because it got burnt, that's right.

[Janette stands in front of trees]

Janette: We find a lot of building materials because a lot of the buildings that were on site were burnt down.

[Janette wipes away soil from a piece of pottery a child has found in the pit]

Janette: So those are things like a lot of wrought iron nails, window glass, and then the people at the time didn't have big garbage dumps as we do today so they used to throw their old plates and ceramics into the back yard so we find a lot of shards of those sorts of things out there as well.

[Janette walks 2 children over to a wooden sifter, and pours the dirt from the pit into it. Each child takes a side and vigorously shakes it back and forth to sift out the soil]

Janette: In 2008 we started a new program called the Young Archaeologists Program, so this is aimed at grade 6 students, so in the past we've had a Parks Canada interpreter go on site in the school to teach about archaeology, and the history of Port-La-Joye-Fort Amherst. And the school has taken a field trip to the site and spent a full day there learning about archaeology actually getting some time down in the dirt digging.

[Gabrielle cleans a piece of glass on a desk with a toothbrush]

And also spending some time in the lab cleaning artefacts and also analyzing them and identifying them while they're there as well.

[A child picks up an artefact from the sifter that Janette points out to her. She holds it in her hand and turns it carefully]

Child: Oh! It's glass!

Janette: A little piece of glass!

[Children sit in rows along a long table cleaning artefacts they have found outside in the pit]

Janette: Kids really enjoy themselves whenever they come to the site. They love getting down and getting dirty and finding a few things in the dirt, and also getting to play with artefacts, something that they're never allowed to do in museums and other places.

[Close up of cow teeth, ceramics and glass found in the pit]

Interviewer: What's your name?

[Jack sits at the table, brushing dirt off of a wrought iron nail with a paintbrush]
Jack: Jack.
Interviewer: Jack! What is your favourite part about the day?

Jack: Probably digging the artefacts outside.

[Jack and another child are looking through the sifted soil for other artefacts with Janette]

Interviewer: Why did you like to dig up the artefacts?

Jack: Well, mostly because when you find something it really makes you want to find more stuff.

[Close up of seashells, glass and wrought iron nails found in the pit]

Interviewer: Do you think you'd ever want to be an archaeologist?

[Jack sits at the table, brushing dirt off of a wrought iron nail with a paintbrush]

Jack: Maybe. . . if I could get knee pads. And something for my feet.

Text: For more information about Port-La-Joye-Fort Amherst, visit pc.gc.ca/pei
[Standard Parks Canada Outro]