Assessing Canadian history and past human life in archaeological sites using paleomicrobiology

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Archaeological data is always incomplete, often generating new hypotheses rather than revealing indisputable facts. The study of ancient microbial community diversity in historical sites is a way to solve this issue, as environment-sensitive microbes are a directly linked to human activities and landscape types surrounding them. Thus, the proposed research project integrates two major science disciplines: paleontological microbial ecology and archaeology, involving a microbial ecologist from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and archaeologists from the Pointe-à-Callière museum. The objective of this unusual partnership is to use fossil microbial DNA as a marker for past activities in archaeological sites. This research project will benefit from and focus on highly preserved urban soils going back to the foundation of the city of Montreal and before, filling crucial knowledge gaps of Canada's past history. It will thus be beneficial for Canadians from Montreal to understand their origins, but also to increase spreading of new knowledge allowing a deeper cultural attachment. We expect this highly innovative partnership to yield unprecedented results in the understanding of past human activities and landscapes, using modern and state-of-the art techniques. Through this original approach, we expect that the analyses of ancient microbial communities will become a standard source of data used in archaeological practice, supporting and complementing hypotheses generated by archaeological and historical data in Canada and worldwide. A collaboration with the Coeur des Sciences at UQAM will allow widespread dissemination of our results, reaching out to the general public and high-school students through a series of talks and seminars, taking advantage of the vast Coeur des Sciences network and social media followers. The results generated through this project will offer a paradigm change in the way archaeological sites can be interpreted, in support to historical knowledge.