Prehistory of the Canadian Maritimes

While Camp Debert was the major find, archaeologists subsequently found fluted pointed at Kingsclear and Quaco Head in New Brunswick, at Souris, Prince Edward Island and Cape Blomidon on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.

George MacDonald, director of the Debert Archaeological Project in 1968 interpreted hearths and shallow pits as simple wooden structures, used as part of a winter encampment, and likely covered in hides.

Caribou herds in central Nova Scotia may have migrated inland for the winter from Cobequid Bay, to higher altitudes where high winds reduced snow cover.

[2] Paleo-Indian presence is limited in the archaeological record for several thousand years, although archaeologist David Keenlyside found triangular spear tips in Prince Edward Island dated to the period.

The Laurentian culture, identified from the St. Lawrence River valley, New York, Ontario and Vermont also extended into inland New Brunswick, the area near Chaleur Bay and possibly parts of coastal Nova Scotia.

Laurentian peoples seem to have adapted to a coniferous forest and hunted white-tailed deer and moose, supplemented by rabbit, beaver, fox, martin, pike and sucker fish.

[4] Sea level rise as a result of isostatic uplift has hidden much of the evidence of Maritime Archaic peoples who may have spanned and traded from Maine to Newfoundland and occupied much of coastal Nova Scotia.

[6] The Susquehanna peoples used slate and argillite tools, similar to those used on the Piedmont plateau further south in the eastern US and left artifacts along the Bay of Fundy coast in New Brunswick.

Pre-Ceramic technology faded out of the area, with some of the last remains at Teacher's Cove and St. Croix Island, proposed as staging grounds for marine mammal hunts by researcher David Sanger.

Sanger discovered oval pit houses in Bocabec on the New Brunswick coast, with tunnel-like entrance, a sunken hearth and layers of gravel laid down internally probably for sanitation.

In 1972, Joseph Augustine, a resident of the Red Bank First Nations Reserve in New Brunswick directed archaeologists to a burial mound that contained four skeletons, more than a thousand copper beads, a slate gorget and preserved fabric.