ANNAPOLIS ROYAL, N.S. -- Researchers using ground-penetrating radar have found what they believe is one of the oldest European graveyards in Canada.
Archeologist Sara Beanlands says there is compelling evidence to suggest the unmarked site in western Nova Scotia is the final resting place for Acadian settlers buried near a fort in the late 1600s.
The radar images show neat rows of ghostly green and red shapes, fitting the pattern of a typical cemetery.
Beanlands says church records and maps from the early 1700s indicate an Acadian cemetery was located just outside the walls of Fort Anne, which is now a reconstructed national historic site in the town of Annapolis Royal.
She says the images could be showing an extension of a nearby British graveyard, which has headstones that date back to 1720.
Originally fortified by the Scots as early as 1629, the fort was later taken over by the French, before it fell to British troops in 1710.
