Beginning approximately 8,000 years ago, people began to occupy the area which is now Eastern Ontario. Before, the land had been largely covered by the late glacial Champlain Sea and, before this, by the ice-sheets of the Wisconsin Glaciation, the last of the great glacial periods.

The people who first saw this new land were nomadic hunters, whose existence depended on the large herds of caribou and other animals that could be trapped or hunted by small cooperative bands. They lived during what we call the late Palaeo-Iindian Period.

With the continuing retreat of the glaciers to the north and the draining of the Champlain Sea, the landscape came to resemble the hills, streams and river systems that we know today.

The big-game hunters of earliest times were eventually replaced by or changed into peoples whose subsistence base had shifted to a dependence on deer, elk, bear and beaver, supplemented by small game, fish and wild plants.

During these times, elaborate burial customs were develop. These are characterized by the sprinkling of red ochre in the graves of the deceased, and the inclusion of grave goods manufactured of stone, bone and native copper. This period is generally referred to as the Laurentian Archaic.

The Woodland period is differentiated from the preceding Archaic by the introduction of pottery. This division is more of an archeological convenience than a reflection of a real change in the lifeways of aboriginal bands during the early stage of the Woodland period (the Initial Woodland). The earliest cultural manifestation at this time is called the Meadowood culture. It is typified by more elaborate artifact forms and grave offerings.

The Meadowood culture is succeeded by the Point Peninsula culture in our region of Ontario. Point Peninsula peoples continued the trend towards more elaborate grave offerings, as well as increasingly elaborate pottery decoration which combined Hopewell culture influences from the south (its heartland was in the Ohio and Illinois Valleys of the Central US) with pottery designs that were uniquely their own. This period also saw the introduction of pipe-smoking as an integral part of ritual and everyday practice.

The final period in Ontario's prehistory is known as the Terminal Woodland. It ends with the first historical accounts of the region, which commence about the beginning of the 17th century with the arrival of fur-traders and explorers. At this time, a number of Algonquin bands occupied the Ottawa River Valley. Although these nomadic bands essentially continued the hunter-gatherer subsistence patterns of preceding periods, their culture shows influences from the semi-sedentary horticulturalist peoples to the south and west. These influences included pottery styles and the introduction of corn, beans, and squash to supplement the diet.

The depredations of European disease and the growing conflict caused by the competition for territories rich in fur-bearing animals led to the abandonment of much of the Ottawa Valley by aboriginal peoples. When European settlers began to arrive and clear the land for cultivation in the early 19th century, few Native people remained in the immediate vicinity of Carleton County. Almost immediately, however, the settlers began to uncover evidence of what had gone before in the form of burials and artifact findspots.

By the mid-1800s, antiquarians like Dr. Edward Van Cortlandt of Ottawa were collecting and documenting these finds. The Ottawa Literary and Scientific Society was formed at this time, focussing at least part of its effort, on gaining an understanding of the region's prehistoric past. By the early 1900s, W.J. Wintemberg of the Geological Survey of Canada, later the Archaeological Survey of Canada, had taken up the task. His efforts were continued in the forties by Douglas Leechman, and in the fifties, sixties and seventies by J.F. Pendergast and C.C. Kennedy. Most recently, research has been undertaken by Gordon Watson, with his study of a cluster of prehistoric sites at Constance Bay.

• Ancient Ottawa's Opening Page
• A Site Inventory
• An Illustrated Time-Line
• A List of Suggested Readings
• Acknowledgements