August 23, 2011

Quebec Archaeology

Quebec had a few neat archaeological surprises for us. First off there was a display in Montreal which alternated between Indiana Jones props and actual artifacts, juxtaposing the films against the real science. We couldn't take pictures inside because of copyright and nonsense like that, but suffice to say that movie props only look good on film and look a bit chitzy in real life, while artifacts still look impressive under closer scrutiny. Luckily enough this display was only in Montreal for a few months and that was its only North American stop before going to Europe and Japan, so we really timed it well given that it opened the week before we arrived.
On the more traditional approach, the Archeo Topo near Tadoussac was a very nice and modern museum with a collection of first nations and early settlement artifacts along with a large selection of taxidermied animals. As we were there in the middle of the week and had the courtesy to bring our own archaeologist, the fellow running the place was very helpful and let Kathryn poke through some of the cabinets. The displays themselves were quite good and he was eager to provide us with booklets of English translations.
We also had a poke around the area itself as the chap in the Archeo Topo had mentioned a few spots nearby that he had found stone tools. The mosquitoes were quite bad and I'm not much help from telling stone tools from stones, so we didn't turn up anything in our quick search, but it was a fun attempt all the same.

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