Artifact discovery leads to special dig at Anderson Farm Museum

A week of scientific discovery has come to an end at Anderson Farm Museum after the discovery of some artifacts on the property.

Greater Sudbury museum staff say the discovery was made during the pandemic while they were trying to put in new stairs on one of the buildings on the property.

"In doing an excavation for a footing for a new set of stairs, artifacts were discovered in the dirt from the hole," said Samantha Morel, the site curator.

"Under the Ontario Heritage Act, certain criteria trigger a requirement for an archaeological assessment."

Morel says, what constitutes an archaeological site here is they know the previous inhabitants were the Anderson family who settled the area. It also is close to water which leads them to wonder if it was previously settled by the lands Indigenous inhabitants.

"There are a number of things, I guess it's more of like a history nerds excitement, but in terms of things that were discovered in the initial hole, there was a bracket and something that looked like nails that were probably made by a blacksmith here on site, fragments of milk bottles that probably would have been used on site, ceramics, what may be an ink bottle and what might be a bottle from an old pharmacy and something that's more of a dome shape with rivets which may have been part of a system that might have been involved with sterilization with the dairy part of the farm but there's more research to be done to figure out what it is," Morel explained.

"It's rare that we have the opportunity to do this in-depth of an investigation so to me it's a huge deal," she added.

"We're hoping with what we find, we'll learn more about what the site was used for in the past, clues to how things were done by the Andersons, clues to where structures were located that are no longer."

A team of four from Archaeological Research Associates (ARA), has been scouring the site, mapping it out and digging to investigate further.

"We've been covering this whole property and a couple of things have come up that we would normally expect on a farm so we just flag those for further investigation, so we know where things might be on the site, how much and that kind of thing," said Hailey Buckton, ARA’s field director.

"It's really cool to work on a site like this where you already know there's history, historic structures," Buckton said.

"You kind of already know there's something here and it's really exciting to take a deeper look to see if there's more detail you can bring out of the people who used to live here."

Researchers are collecting the artifacts for further study and dating to see how long they've been there.

"It is significant because it's a really important place to the community. People love this place and thing it's an important connect to their past so we're happy to be here to help out," she said.

"I'm super, super jazzed to see what they find. I see the little orange flags indicating where things may have been found and I'm like what is it, I want to know," added Morel.

The site remains closed while the museums work on the city's revitalization plan.

There are however walking tours set up involving some of the museums. More information can be found on the city's Facebook page.