Archaeological study held locally

The Sault Ste. Marie Planning Advisory Committee held an open house on Wednesday evening at City Hall.

The open house was recommended by Archaeological Services Inc. Of Toronto, the largest company of its kind in Canada.

The report determined that roughly 51% of the city would require an archaeological assessment prior to any sort of development on the land.

The company prepared a report for city council after a provincial policy was put in place that requires municipalities complete archaeological site-potential assessments.

The reason for the assessments is to ensure that any non-renewable resources are preserved before any sort of development advances.

The study performed was broken down into three phases:

Phase one detailed the known archaeological sites in the city and provided an overview of the settlement history.

The 36 archaeological sites within the city, which could not be named, date back as far as the early 20th Century and were noted for their potential archaeological resources.

The second phase focused on archaeological potential of the site.

The site potential was based on the location, how the land has been used as well as it’s environmental, cultural and historical data.

The third phase took all of the data collected over the first two phases and current legislation and reviewed it to develop a land-use management strategy for dealing with land that is known or potentially archaeological.