Archeologists believe they’ve found evidence of unmarked Acadian graves, potentially 2,000 of them, at Canada’s first national historic site at Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal, N.S.
They explored the site in early December, using ground-penetrating radar that can collect data from depths of up to three metres.
“We actually found a series of anomalies in a regular pattern that are approximately a metre below the surface that are all facing in an east-west orientation. And we believe those to be evidence of unmarked burials,” archeologist Sara Beanlands told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday.
There are 234 gravestones on the site, including one from 1720, the oldest known cemetery marker with a British inscription in Canada. But historians and local volunteers have long believed as many as 2,000 Acadian people are also buried there, in graves that were either unmarked or with markers that have been washed away.
That belief is based on records from St. Jean-Baptiste church, which existed on the grounds in the 1700s. The next step will be to overlay the data collected last month with the information in the church records.
Fort Anne is believed to be the birthplace of Acadian culture and was a place of frequent skirmishes for control between the Scottish, English and French.
Parks Canada gave permission to explore the area to volunteer historical group Map Annapolis, which contracted Boreas Heritage Consulting to undertake the search.
“The people that we believe may be in this area, again due to parish records, go back to pre-1755. So this is the culture of Acadians,” said Heather LeBlanc of Map Annapolis. “This is an area where the British, the Scots, and the Acadians all lived at one point and fought over this area of land.”
