Episode list

Wild Archaeology

People of the Longhouse
Rudy preps Jen and Jacob on their first mission of Wild Archaeology's Second Season: The team is heading to Southern Ontario to excavate a 16th century palisaded Iroquois village at the Lawson site, the longest continuously investigated archaeological site in North America. While Jen and Jacob dig, Dr. Rudy explores the Sustainable Archaeology Lab and their high resolution micro-CT scanner. Later the team travels to the Kayanase longhouse for dancing lessons and to learn more about the Six Nations of the Grand River.
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Mystery of the Mounds
Rudy, Jen and Jacob journey to the Serpent Mounds, an ancient and sacred burial site on the north shore of Rice Lake in central ON. Dr. Rudy sends Jen and Jacob out on the lake to core for clues. Chief Laurie Carr welcomes the team and shares knowledge about past excavations and the Hiawatha Nation's fight for repatriation of the ancestors and their sacred artifacts. Back at the lab, the team helps Tynan Pringle analyse the lakebed sediment with cutting edge XRF technology to help unravel the mystery of how and when the mounds were built.
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Digging in at Snake Bay
Back in beautiful BC, the team boards a ferry for the Sunshine Coast and Snake Bay. The only defensive site in shíshálh territory, Snake Bay tells a story of war and peace along the Salish Sea. Jen and Jacob dig through shell middens to uncover evidence of a village under siege. Then the team gets messy for a different kind of dig - harvesting fresh clams with elder Jamie Dixon beneath the mudflats on Snake Beach.
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War and Peace: Sechelt B.C.
Through hazy smoke blowing in from forest fires in the interior, the team digs deeper into the past at Snake Bay. Rudy, Jen and Jacob head out on the water to view shíshálh pictographs and share a song with the ancestors. Back on dry land, the team makes their way to the tems swiya museum to learn more about the 4000 year old ancestors buried at kwenten mac'wali and the advanced forensic techniques used to reconstruct their facial features.
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Smokehouse Island Pt 2
Rudy, Jen and Jacob visit the Fort Babine community and learn more about the significance of salmon for the Lake Babine Nation. Chief Wilfred Adam shows the team the site of their original fish weir, outlawed in 1906. The recently revived fishery at Babine is thriving, and the team has a chance to catch and prepare salmon for a feast. Rudy and Francesco examine thin sections of the island's micro-morphology under a digital microscope to determine whether Smokehouse Island was in fact created by the ancestors.
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Métis of Chimney Coulee Pt 1
The team heads to plains country to meet Métis archaeologist Kisha Supernant at Chimney Coulee in southern Saskatchewan. Straddling the continental divide, the site is home to diverse occupations stretching back at least 10,000 years. Kisha puts Jen and Jacob to work excavating the inside of a Métis cabin while Dr. Rudy uses ground penetrating radar (GPR) to map underground features as a digital 3D model.
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Métis of Chimney Coulee Pt 2
Kisha introduces the team to Dr. Natasha Lyons, a paleoethnobotanist investigating the plants used for food and medicine at Chimney Coulee long ago. Jen helps Natasha collect samples for analysis while Jacob learns a few words in Michif, the endangered language of the Métis people. Jen and Jacob face off in a bead finding competition to see who has the best eye for artifacts.
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In Honour of Sitting Bull
Overlooking the valley atop Jones' Peak, Jacob and his aunt offer a prayer to honour Sitting Bull and their ancestors who sought refuge here after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Palaeontologist Emily Bamforth introduces the team to Scotty the T.Rex and invites them to help excavate a brontothere, or Thunder Beast. Rudy, Jen and Jacob borrow horses at Reesor Ranch and ride through the scenic Cypress Hills surveying for evidence of the ancestors.
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Ile Saint Bernard Pt 1
Rudy, Jen and Jacob travel east to Mohawk territory and Ile Saint Bernard, a small island on the Saint Lawrence near Kahnawà:ke and Montreal. Ile Saint Bernard is home to a range of diverse occupations stretching back 4,000 years. After digging in and exploring the island, the team journeys to a reconstructed Mohawk village in Saint Anicet to learn how to make traditional black ash baskets with elder Richard Nolan.
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Ile Saint Bernard Pt 2
The team tours Kahnawà:ke with Survival School teacher Dwayne Stacy, who explains the significance of the rapids for the Kanien'keha:ka, or Mohawk people. Rudy, Jen and Jacob board a whitewater raft and brave the Lachine Rapids. Back at Ile Saint Bernard, Jen and Jacob dig deeper into precontact archaeology. Jacob prepares to dance the Echoes of a Proud Nation Pow Wow.
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Qaummaarviit Pt 1
The team heads north to Iqaluit, and onwards from there to the remote, rocky island of Qaummaarviit to excavate the traditional whalebone winter house that would have been home to the ancestors of Inookie Adamie, Iqaluit's oldest elder and the traditional steward of Qaummaarviit. Inuit led, this is indigenous archaeology in action. It's also Wild Archaeology at its wildest - the team will be completely off the grid and stranded by the tides in the far north.
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Qaummaarviit Pt 2
Digging deeper into arctic archaeology, Rudy finds something unexpected. The team works hard to finish excavating the qammaq. Radio chatter in Inuktitut alerts them to action out on the water: the hunters have spotted a whale. The first bowhead hunt in decades, this is cultural revitalization in practice, and if the hunt is successful its bones will be used to rebuild the whalebone winter house.
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Edit Focus

Baskavígin

Baskavígin

June, 1615. After several months at sea, ploughing through the turbulent waters of the North Atlantic, three whaling vessels from San Sebastian land on the far north of frozen Iceland. There the scholar Jón Guðmundsson, Jón the Wise, has been expectantly awaiting the arrival of the Basques. Eighty-three weather-beaten sailors, captained by Martín de Villafranca, Pedro de Aguirre and Esteban de Tellería. Autumn arrives, and the Nordic cold brings with it famine and want, leading a young Icelandic man to rob a large piece of whale blubber from the whaling station. The act leads to a confrontation. Furthermore, just before the Basque crew sets out to return to San Sebastian, a huge storm sinks three of its ships, leaving the Basque men trapped on the island. Faced with the impossible task of surviving the frozen winter without suitable facilities, as well as local legislation that prevents them from staying on the island over winter, the 83 whalers spread out in vain to search for vessels in which to travel home. In the meantime, protected by King Christian IV's legislation, Ari Magnússon sees a chance to assert his authority and gain reputation, by leading the peasantry to capture and murder the Basques The time is now right to explore this intrepid adventure of extreme survival, through the eyes of the erudite Jón Guðmundsson; the scholar who publicly denounced the death of his Basque friends and the biggest massacre in Iceland's history through his writings. An accusation he would pay for dearly, by being condemned to exile until his death.

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