Canada technically only became a fully independent country in 1982, but its history stretches back far beyond the last 40 years. Archaeologists have painstakingly uncovered evidence of settlement dating back as far as 22,000 BC, while palaeontologists have gone back even further. From Indigenous sites that existed thousands of years ago to Canada’s recent colonial past, here we scrape the soil off some of the country’s most important and interesting archaeological discoveries.
Bad-tempered bison were dangerous prey for the hungry Blackfoot tribe, but its brave hunters had a clever technique for bringing them down. They used their knowledge of bison behaviour to drive the animals over a cliff edge at the colourfully named Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump – a practice in use for half a millennium or more. The carcasses were processed where they lay, leaving tools and countless skeletons as archaeological evidence. The cliff is not named after the buffalos, but an unfortunate Blackfoot who got too close to the falling animals.
Some five miles (8km) southwest of Montreal is a short-lived settlement populated by the Iroquoian tribe around 1450. The village of Droulers-Tsiionhiakwatha was discovered in 1994, and archaeologists have unearthed longhouses, storage pits and rubbish dumps that catered for approximately 600 inhabitants. Many of the buildings have since been reconstructed, creating an entertaining and informative archaeological park where visitors can learn about everyday life in pre-colonial Quebec.
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For nearly 500 years Christopher Columbus was thought to be the first European to set foot in the Americas, but he lost his place in the record books in 1960 when archaeologists dug up L’Anse aux Meadows, and discovered that 100 or so Vikings had beaten him across the Atlantic. Nobody knows how long the Vikings stayed in Canada, or whether their sturdy wooden huts on the Newfoundland coast were part of an abandoned colony or trading station. But excavators found evidence of shipbuilding, woodworking and iron production, and the reconstructed buildings and modern visitor centre give a strong sense of what the village must once have been like.
Like the tip of an iceberg, the large boulder overlooking Eagle Creek in southwest Saskatchewan is only partly exposed above the earth. But the small pits carved into its surface well below modern ground level suggest that the rock was once a much more prominent part of the landscape. Presumably that’s why local tribes left their mark on the boulder – although it’s still unclear whether the carvings were made during the 1st century AD or even earlier, perhaps as far back as 8,000 BC.
The first English settlers in Canada built a plantation beside Conception Bay in 1610. It was mostly abandoned by 1700 and forgotten for 250 years, until archaeologists rediscovered it near the picturesque modern-day village of Cupids. All visitors to Cupids Cove will find a small museum displaying artefacts found at the site, but some lucky guests might also see relics unearthed before their eyes at the ongoing excavations. The archaeologists are happy to chat with onlookers and explain what they’re working on.
A quirk of geology means that a particularly pure variety of rock rises to the surface in what is now a swampy forest in Alberta, and it didn’t take long for Indigenous tribes to realise that it was perfect for knapping into stone tools. They visited the site for thousands of years after its first use around 9,800 years ago, and modern-day archaeologists have also returned time and again to uncover ancient spear points, arrowheads and stone flakes left behind by skilled ancient toolmakers.
Also known as Charlie Lake Cave, this archaeological site is best known for its rubbish. Up to 12,000 years ago the inhabitants of the cave dug a waste pit just outside its entrance, wwhere they dumped debris from their bison hunts. They also buried two ravens, though the birds were deposited more than a thousand years apart. The archaeologists that excavated the cave in the 1970s and 1980s concluded that the birds could be the earliest known evidence of ritual behaviour on the entire continent.
British explorer Sir John Franklin embarked on his notorious expedition to map a route through the icy Northwest Passage in 1845 – but he, his crew and his ships were never seen again. Investigators determined that his crew had become icebound and starved to death, but his flagship HMS Erebus remained missing until 2014, when it was at last located west of the Adelaide Peninsula. Marine archaeologists have since examined the wreck and raised several artefacts for public display, but its exact location has been kept a secret.
Indigenous peoples first began living along Keatley Creek 7,000 years ago, and around 4,000 years ago a large community began to thrive here thanks to abundant fisheries and easy woodland hunting. The depressions left by more than 115 pit houses have since been found, some of which were as large as 70 feet (21m) in diameter. Archaeologists are unsure what caused the network of villages to be suddenly abandoned around a thousand years ago, but suggestions include a landslide on the Fraser River that blocked salmon runs, crippling the area's subsistence and trade economy.
This attractive lagoon between Toronto and Hamilton offers gorgeous panoramic views, but its real wonders lie beneath the surface. The lake is 'meromictic', which means its layers of water do not mix, therefore the layers of sediment on its bed are a goldmine for scientists and archaeologists. Sediment samples reveal precise details about human activity going back thousands of years, from the arrival of the corn-growing Iroquois all the way back to the prehistoric Anthropocene era, when humans first started impacting Earth's ecosystems.
The northwest coast of Newfoundland features the limestone barrens – a long stretch of unforested, rocky coastline. It may look bleak, but the section around Flower’s Cove contains a rare find: fossilised thrombolites, ancient stone structures formed millions of years ago by cyanobacteria and algae. It’s a top destination for geologists and palaeontologists looking to understand the coastal landscape of the distant past, when it was lapped by warm, salty sea.
North America’s first human inhabitants arrived from the far northwest, when the continent was still attached to Siberia by a land bridge known as Beringia. Archaeologists working in Bluefish Caves discovered evidence of these early residents, collecting stone tools, butchered bones and other relics that may date back as far as 23,000 BC. Although the Bluefish Caves are off-limits to visitors, a life-size diorama has been constructed at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse.
This burial mound on the coast of southern Labrador is the oldest known funerary monument in North America, marking the grave of an adolescent boy who belonged to the Maritime Archaic people and died around 5,500 BC. The body was covered with red ochre, wrapped in birch bark and placed in a large pit flanked by fires. Walrus tusks, harpoon heads, paint stones and a bone whistle were then interred with him, beneath a 26-foot-wide (8m) mound that probably took the local tribe at least a week to create. Archaeologists excavated the site in 1974 before restoring the mound’s original shape for modern-day visitors to admire.
This island park, spread across Mallik Island and Dorset Island, boasts archaeological sites from the area’s Indigenous inhabitants dating back 3,000 years. Stone house foundations have survived the icy centuries since, and some of the scattered whale, seal and walrus skeletons still bear the marks of ancient hunters. There are also tent rings, fireplaces and meat caches belonging to the Inuit who lived here when white explorers first started travelling through the region.
We’re lucky that a local married couple stumbled across these ancient remains when they went blueberry picking near the village of Debert in Nova Scotia in 1948, as the husband happened to be an amateur archaeologist. But even he had no idea that the artefacts he pulled up by the roots dated to 9,000 BC and represented the earliest known human activity on the Canadian Atlantic coast. Further investigation revealed 4,500 stone objects across five locations – probably seasonal camps used by Indigenous tribes as they followed the caribou migration.
Jacques Cartier was France’s Christopher Columbus – he led his country’s first expeditions to the so-called New World. Cartier’s third voyage of discovery ranged inland along the St Lawrence River and founded the first French colony on the riverside. Charlesbourg-Royal was abandoned after only two years thanks to starvation and hostile natives, and its exact location was lost until archaeologists rediscovered it in 2006 in present-day Cap-Rouge. The find is now preserved as a riverside park with historic trails.
For thousands of years Indigenous peoples traversed the lakes and rivers of Kejimkujik by canoe. Archaeologists have since scoured more than 150 square miles (400sq km) of lakeshore and riverbank, uncovering camps, hunting sites and burial grounds. They also unearthed more than 500 individual petroglyphs recording details of everyday Mi'kmaq life. Some depict men and women in traditional dress, some show sailors hunting porpoises from canoes rigged with small sails, and some even bear the signatures of the artists that created them. Follow in the Mi’kmaq wake by hiring a canoe, kayak or paddleboard to explore the ancestral waterways.
Like many early colonial settlements, the town of Ferryland in Avalon Colony was abandoned when its pioneers discovered better land. Now, the Colony of Avalon visitor attraction – still a working archaeological site – provides a snapshot of the early years of the English in Canada. Archaeologists have pulled more than a million individual objects from the rock-strewn soil, and the Colony of Avalon Foundation offers you the chance to add to the collection with hands-on excavation experiences.
Also known by its anglicised name 'Old Crow Flats', this wetland complex along the Old Crow River is inside the Arctic Circle and surrounded by mountains on all sides. But that didn’t stop the Vuntut Gwitchin people settling here more than 10,000 years ago. The Indigenous tribe, known as 'the people of the lakes', survived in the harsh north by hunting, and their arrival may have contributed to the local extinction of ground sloths, giant beavers and mammoths, all of which survive only in fossils.
Montreal’s biggest and most-visited museum is built on top of several buildings and structures dating back to the city’s founding in the mid-17th century. The museum was constructed atop piles and pillars to ensure the archaeology was disturbed as little as possible, and visitors can view a range of in-situ sites including the city's first marketplace, the Fort Ville-Marie fortress, the city's first Catholic cemetery and even an enormous old sewer. All are presented in an engaging way, making innovative use of modern technology.
The Indigenous peoples that lived near the modern town of Woodview regarded the forest as sacred – some thought that deep crevices in the rock led to the spirit world, and that the sound of water trickling underground was spirits talking. Around a thousand years ago, local tribes carved 1,200 petroglyphs into the rocks – the largest concentration of Indigenous carvings in Canada – including images of shamans, animals and spirits. Now, the carvings known as the Teaching Rocks are protected from the elements by a shelter at the heart of the provincial park.
Sproat Lake is best known as a summer getaway for Vancouverites, but the kayakers, hikers and paddleboarders that frequent its shores are unaware that the area was once home to Indigenous tribes as far back as 11,000 BC. Some of the early inhabitants must have been artists, because they carved the K'ak'awin petroglyph on lakeshore rocks – the wavy designs are thought to depict a mythological sea serpent.
Spanish and French pioneers on the Newfoundland coast discovered that its waters were thick with whales, and established a port at Red Bay to handle carcasses and process valuable whale oil. The gruesome trade has now been consigned to history, but the modern village has a whaling museum that includes a surprisingly small chalupa that's North America's oldest known whaling boat. The vessel spent 400 years at the bottom of Red Bay before it was recovered by maritime archaeologists, and is dwarfed by whale bones elsewhere in the museum.
The arid badlands of the Red Deer River valley in southern Alberta are perfect for the preservation of dinosaur fossils. At present, 350 or so specimens from the Dinosaur Provincial Park are spread across more than 30 major world museums, while many more are on display at the park's visitor centre. Here you’ll find an astonishing range of finds, from large herbivores, bird-like creatures and duck-billed dinosaurs to the ever-popular T-rex-esque hunters. The 30 square miles (78sq km) of parkland have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
Discover the most fascinating fossil finds from recent years
This 18th-century French fortress is now a well-known living history museum that entertains and informs visitors with reconstructions and reenactments from Canada’s colonial past. But only a quarter of the original fort and town has been restored; the rest is still under investigation by archaeologists, who are working against the clock to record buildings at risk of destruction by coastal erosion and rising sea levels. They’ve also excavated graves from a burial ground to stop Canada’s colonial inhabitants being washed into the Atlantic.
The Indigenous peoples along the Kitwanga River had a habit of raiding each other’s territory. When the village belonging to the Gitwangak tribe came under attack, its tribespeople would retreat to a hillfort, now known as Gitwangak Battle Hill, and use its steep sides to protect themselves. During the 1970s, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a palisade and defensive works. The mound can still be climbed, and a collection of totem poles stand nearby.
The Inuit inhabited Igloolik Island – between the Canadian mainland and Baffin Island, north of the Arctic Circle – from 2000 BC, and founded a number of settlements. Now only one small village remains, but archaeologists know about the others after discovering qarmaq (grass sod houses) and inukshuk (humanoid stone sculptures). Fishing and seal-hunting opportunities also made Igloolik Island a handy stopover for 19th-century explorer Edward Parry, who left behind evidence of his winter camp.
When French colonists wanted a defendable seat of government for the colony of Quebec, they chose a prominent hill overlooking modern-day Quebec City. Even so, the British managed to capture the governor’s chateau in 1759. They gradually rebuilt the house but it was promptly destroyed by fire in 1834, after which it was replaced by a series of terraces. The remains of the French and British buildings, four forts and several outbuildings are now open to the public.
Lake Huron might be entirely inland, but the extraordinary number of shipwrecks at Fathom Five suggest it was just as treacherous for skippers as anywhere on the high seas. Maritime archaeologists have swept away the silt to uncover 24 sunken vessels, from the Avalon Voyager II – in water so shallow it can be viewed by snorkellers – to the 217-foot (66m) steamer Forest City. The area is famous for its scuba diving, but you can stay dry and see the wrecks too, since glass-bottom boat tours pass over the 19th-century ships Arabia and Sweepstakes.
Almost in touching distance of Canada’s southern border, this 1,100-hectare prairie contains the greatest concentration of Indigenous rock art in the Great Plains. Thousands of individual works dating back more than 3,000 years are spread across 50+ sites, with hiking trails linking some of the best areas to explore. The Blackfoot created most of the carvings, although other nomadic tribes may also have left their own artworks on the towering cliffs and spires.
Now learn about America's most important archaeological discoveries