Artifacts

Upon excavation of the Jean-Baptiste Lainé Site, 150,000 artifacts, 60,000 individual palisade and house posts, and over 1,500 features were recorded.

This large collection of items is now housed permanently at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec.

Here are some examples from the collection:

Bone awl (Canadian Museum of History, F9)

An awl is a pointed tool (made from animal bone) used primarily for piercing holes in a hide. Awls could also be used to create decorative elements in ceramic pieces.

Antler pendant/comb (Canadian Museum of History, F724)

The three-pronged bone pendant/comb is a rare find. It is the only artifact found on the Site made of antler.

Vessel, Huron Incised (Canadian Museum of History, AlGt-334:12326)

Vessels were made for a variety of uses – including cooking, storage, and water containers. Of the ceramic pieces found at the Site, just under 2,000 were classified – either individually or together – as “identified separate vessels.” Others were fragments from the neck, shoulder or body of vessels. Many were too small to be analyzed.

Over 55% of the vessels found at the Site were classified as Huron Incised. The most common motif is a single band of oblique or vertical lines that may or not may be broken along with undecorated necks.

Red pigment was found on over 100 ceramic fragments from the Jean-Baptiste Lainé Site. The red colour is thought to have come from ochre which is ground from hematite, making it an orange, red, or brown colour.

Effigy with dotting that resembles tattoos
(Canadian Museum of History, A1GT-334: 12350)

An Effigy is defined as a sculpture or model made to represent humans (anthropomorphic) or animals (zoomorphic). At the Jean-Baptiste Lainé site, 15 three-dimensional face effigies were located, alongside approximately 21 other effigies that are connected, or were thought to have been connected, to pipe stems, bowls, or mouthpieces. The pipe effigies account for about 13% of the total number of pipes.