‘Skeletons can tell you a lot’

The former residents of a massive 18th-century fort in Cape Breton have long since died, but David Ebert says they still have plenty to tell us.

Ebert, a strategic adviser with Parks Canada, is part of a team exhuming human remains from a large graveyard outside the gates of the Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site.

“We have uncovered five sets of skeletal remains already and we’ve found a number of artifacts to go with them,” Ebert said in an interview. “One of the skeletons had eight buttons that were lying on top of it. Clearly, somebody had been buried in a fancy coat ... When you see someone buried in a fine piece of clothing, it obviously shows some love and respect for that individual.”

Up to 1,100 residents of the French fort are buried at the site, which must be excavated because it is threatened by coastal erosion. Parks Canada has referred to the project as rescue archaeology.

“Skeletons can tell you a lot of things,” Ebert said, citing the fact that malnutrition as a child can leave permanent marks on one’s teeth. “They are marks you’ll see right until the day you die ... There’s lots of little hints that the skeleton gives you about what sort of life they led.”

A dozen students from the University of New Brunswick’s department of anthropology started digging last week. The five-year project will document and protect the burial grounds at Rochefort Point, where the shoreline has retreated about 90 metres over the past 300 years.

Ebert said the staff and students are well aware they are in a sacred space.

“Science isn’t our No. 1 priority,” he said. “It’s the respect and dignity that all people deserve in death ... I tell the (students), ‘Remember, this is somebody’s great-great-great-grandfather or grandmother.”

The fort, which is so big it is actually a fortified town, was built in 1713 and abandoned in 1760 after decades of fighting between the French and British. Even though only one quarter of the fortification has been rebuilt, it remains the largest of its kind in North America. Every year, about 82,000 people visit this site, a half-hour drive south of Sydney.

The students will stay in the field until Aug. 20, when the recovered remains and artifacts will be taken to Scott’s laboratory for further analysis.