Three Keys to Successful Heritage Conservation

Understanding our client’s project needs, government requirements, and the expectations of Indigenous representatives were all critical to WSP’s successful archaeology project for the Region of Waterloo, southern Ontario, Canada. The project was part of widening a vital commuter route, carrying about 20,000 vehicles each day through the Region of Waterloo, a fast-growing area of cities, towns, and rural areas covering 1,400 square kilometers and with a population of about 600,000.

When previous archaeological investigations suggested that the remains of an Indigenous village lay near or under the roadway, the archaeology team took steps to ensure the site was protected until it could be fully mitigated, that Indigenous perspectives were heard and guided the investigations, and that solutions balancing heritage conservation and new development were implemented.

The steps our archaeologists took to protect the site and its resources met three main priorities.

Location

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Client

Region of Waterloo, Ontario

1. Meeting and exceeding provincial requirements

Like many jurisdictions around the world, Ontario has legislated that evidence of past life, such as archaeological sites, features and artifacts be protected and conserved.

In Ontario, the primary instrument for this protection is the Ontario Heritage Act, administered by the Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism (MCM).

The MCM’s archaeological regulations Standards and Guidelines for Consultant Archaeologists sets a four-stage process to investigate and mitigate archaeological resources. That process starts with a Stage 1 investigation, which is a study using historic maps, aerial images and documents to identify areas of archaeological potential. When appropriate, the investigation moves on to other Stages, using progressively detailed levels of field investigation. Stage 2 uses survey methods to locate archaeological sites on the ground. Stage 3 involves the excavation to determine the boundaries of an archaeological site and Stage 4 includes all the actions to “mitigate” a site. Site mitigation is achieved by conserving archaeological features in place, or fully documenting and removing the archaeological features and artifacts for further study and long-term preservation in a storage facility.

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In 2018, the Region asked WSP to conduct Stage 2 and Stage 3 assessments of the Late Woodland (1400-1600 CE) Indigenous village site that extended under the roadway. Subsequent Stage 4 mitigation from 2020 to 2023 involved excavating over 1,690 square metres and recovering 128,600 cultural materials. Through meticulous fieldwork and extensive consultation with government representatives, the team met the MCM’s archaeological standards and received MCM clearance on behalf of the client for the road construction to begin.

2. Meeting concerns of Indigenous people

Indigenous communities (which in Canada includes First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) took a keen interest in the 15th-century village site that was slowly being revealed by our archaeological investigations.

In keeping with the Region’s Indigenous engagement policies, the representatives of four Nations whose ancestors have inhabited what is now southern Ontario were invited to participate in the archaeological fieldwork and review the team's interpretations and reports.

A big part of the investigation involved exposing a former “longhouse” – a building that would have been made of poles and tree bark, used as a communal residence for several families.

The cultural material recovered from the archaeological mitigation include Indigenous ceramic vessels and smoking pipes, chipped stone projectile points, darts, drills, knives, and scrapers, ground stone beads, bone and copper jewelry, as well as the remains of butchered deer, beaver, turtle, and fish. The exceptional preservation of the site helped the team to reconstruct in some detail what life may have been like in the longhouse 600 years ago and compare it to archaeological findings from elsewhere in the village and those of nearby village sites.

For the Indigenous participants – and the archaeological team – one of the most exciting discoveries was a subfloor feature that some have interpreted to be a “sweat lodge” used for ritual spiritual purification. Meticulous and respectful documentation of this feature was completed by our archaeologists and Indigenous representatives throughout the Stage 4 mitigation process.

Cultural materials recovered

128,600

Square meters excavated

1,690

To obtain developmental approvals

6 months

With the buildings in the village long since decayed, much of what is known about the settlement pattern comes from the rows of house post moulds, with darker-coloured soil showing where the supports for the outer walls had been, and other sub-surface features such as refuse pits, hearths and the above-mentioned subfloor feature. Archaeological standards in Ontario require archaeological features such as post moulds and pits to be excavated on site and fully documented.

Over the course of the project, the team worked closely with the Indigenous representatives to meet their priorities for the investigation and, in many instances, enhanced the methods that are required by the MCM. One example is the screens used to separate objects from the soil; although the regulations call for using 6 mm mesh, at the Indigenous observers’ request, the team switched to finer 3 mm mesh to further ensure that small items were recovered.

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The site was also excavated more deeply than is required by the regulations to meet Indigenous concerns.

Additionally, WSP provided cultural awareness training for all personnel working on the site. This included the many field technicians recruited from the area’s universities, which formed part of the Region’s outreach and community engagement program.

3. Meeting road construction requirements

A third priority for the project was to meet the needs of the road-widening project that had triggered the archaeological investigation.

To do this, the team worked with the Region and its contractors to determine which parts of the site would be mitigated first, to meet the construction logistics and schedule. One of the priorities was to lay a temporary road to minimize traffic disruption. By working closely with the Region of Waterloo, MCM, Indigenous Nations, and the project engineers, initial Stage 4 mitigation focused on the temporary road footprint. From this approach, we were able to obtain developmental approvals within 6 months of the project's initiation, enabling the temporary roadway to be constructed in December 2020.

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With the temporary roadway in place, the remainder of archaeological mitigation could occur without further disruption to traffic.

To meet the schedule and simultaneously address all parts of the the extensive site, we at times engaged three supervisors to direct over 20 field technicians.

Three preliminary reports were completed by 2023, which provided the Region and engineers with the approvals required to commence the construction of the final roadways and pathways.

As of this writing in early 2024, the construction project is complete, and the team is preparing the more detailed final report with all the required analysis. The cultural material collected from the site is securely stored in an MCM-approved manner, for possible presentation to an area museum.

Lessons learned

Some of the lessons learned from this project are:

On construction projects that may involve heritage conservation, be sure to allocate sufficient schedule and budget for an investigation by a qualified archaeological team who understand the regulations in your jurisdiction.
Organize construction projects that involve heritage conservation in such a way that the archaeology team can work closely with the project engineers, Indigenous and regulatory authorities to design an archaeological program that best meets the needs of all participants.
Engage archaeologists early in the planning process so they can identify requirements and determine if there are areas that may need to be investigated through fieldwork.
For projects that may involve mitigating Indigenous sites, build relations with local Indigenous communities early in the process, to ensure their concerns are met.
Stay up to date on archaeological processes – regulations and best practices often change. For example, GPS and other technologies allowed us to do our surveying work down to one-centimeter accuracy. Computerized record-keeping allowed us to demonstrate to all stakeholders that the work was being done in a way that was respectful towards Indigenous culture and met the Ministry’s regulations.