Description of Historic Place

Jemseg Archaeological Site is a 37779 square meter piece of land, consisting of three pieces of property, facing west onto the Jemseg River adjacent Route 2 in Queens County. Cultural material was recovered from each of the three terraces at the site, and in the shallows of the Jemseg River immediately in front of the site.

Heritage Value

Jemseg Archaeological Site is designated a Protected Provincial Historic Site for its vital role as part of a strategically located "stepping stone" for travel and "stop over place" that linked together routes to other significant places in the cultural landscape of the Wolastoq.

The cultural heritage importance was and continues to be bestowed on Jemseg by past and present Wolastoqiyik whose ancestors lived at the site for many thousands of years.

The Jemseg Archaeological Site represents the largest excavation at a First Nations archaeological site in the Maritimes to date. It produced archaeological information which added invaluable information regarding the early Maritime Woodland period which is a poorly understood time period in the Maritimes. Further, the excavation provided evidence of Middle Archaic, Terminal Archaic, Early to Late Maritime Woodland period and early Historic period occupations.

The excavations produced 56 undisturbed cultural features representing cooking hearths, storage pits and living floors. Noteworthy is a suspected semi-subterranean dwelling complex that could represent the first inland recovery of this type of structure in the Maritimes. Twelve radiocarbon dates were recovered from these intact features, ranging between 3000 and 1600 years ago.

Source: Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport - Heritage Branch, Site File: Vol.IX-121

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements that describe Jemseg Archaeological Site include:
- river edge location and its context in a distinctive ecological and cultural landscape;
- series of temporally distinctive terraces, each higher and generally older than the next as you move east from the water's edge;
- archaeological resources and the related potential for future knowledge of Middle Archaic, Terminal Archaic, Early to Late Maritime Woodland period and early Historic period occupation;
- importance of the place bestowed on it by Wolastoqiyik and preserved in the archaeological record dating back thousands of years.