Archeological mystery at The Hawk Beach
Questions surround structure that protrudes out of the sand
For years it’s been a mystery — the remains of some sort of man-made wooden structure protruding out the sand at The Hawk Beach in Shelburne County — near the drowned forest, which holds its own secrets.
By the end of August, archeologist and Memorial University graduate student John Campbell hopes to have solved the puzzle.
Campbell, who is involved with the archaeological dig at nearby Fort Saint Louis, was first told about the structure on Cape Sable Island last year by local residents.
“It was too much of a mystery to pass up,” he said in an interview during a break from digging at the Fort Saint Louis site. “It’s certainly something that needs to be explored and I think it’s something the community wants to know.”
Campbell will be conducting an archaeological dig at The Hawk Beach on Cape Sable Island from Aug. 12-25.
“It’s quite a mystery. It’s a very interesting structure,” said the St. John’s, N.L. university student.
Besides the “obviously manmade structure in the beach,” Campbell says there is “an associated hill that seems to be part of an entire area of activity, some sort of marine-focused or marine-oriented practice.”
Campbell said he was alerted to the “interesting little hill structure behind the cobble beach in a marsh area” by one of the local people on Cape Sable Island.
Campbell has done some analysis using UAV photogrammetry and it “seems to be related” to the structure on the beach.
“It seems to be one full area of activity.”
Since the structure is located below the high-water mark, Campbell said the intertidal excavation part of the dig will be a very brief excavation.
“What we’ll do is set a onemetre-wide trench and do metal detection and surface survey and mapping in the feature itself and we’ll excavate high potential areas that are determined by metal detection or just knowledge of the area and the structure itself,” he said.
“Those will be done at low tide in a very quick and precise methodological manner, but the majority of the excavation will be focused on the hill just behind the intertidal structure itself.”
Besides a metal detector, Campbell will be using real time kinematic, which he describes as “a very fancy GPS system that can mark out and map the entire site within an hour so. It just makes the process very expedient.”
This is the third time The Hawk Beach structure has been examined, archeologically speaking, said Campbell, with surveys done in 1996 and 2013. This will be first time it has been excavated.
Speculation has ranged over the years as to the structure’s origins — with some saying it was a French fort while others believe it may be the remains of a sheep pen.
“Personally, I would like it to be from the late 16th century to the early 18th century. I’m thinking that timeframe,” said Campbell, predicting within the first week they’ll be able to figure out its history.
Campbell will be joined by volunteers from the Nova Scotia Museum as well as archeolo- gists from the private sector and academic world during the twoweek dig.
Campbell is also hoping to set up an exhibit of The Hawk Beach in a similar fashion as the Fort Saint Louis exhibit, which is located for the summer at the Cape Sable Historical Society’s Old Court House museum and genealogy research centre.
As for the Fort Saint Louis dig, things are going well, said Campbell. In its second year, the dig is being led by Dr. Katie Cottreau-Robins, curator of archaeology for the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage.
People can track the progress of that dig at https://museum. novascotia.ca/blog/fort-saintlouis-archaeological-excavation.