Toronto's Taber Hill, mound dated to 1250-1400 CE with 500-plus burials

October 17, 2026EnglandExcavationShare

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Key facts

• Taber Hill,, in Taber Hill, Park in Toronto: is an ancient burial mound about 70 ft tall, located at 525 Bellamy Road North.
• The presenter states that at 70 ft it is the third tallest pyramid north of Mexico; this ranking is the video's claim rather than an established measurement.
• In 1956 a steam shovel cut into the mound during construction work and exposed human burials, initially mistaken for 19th-century cholera victims.
• Walter Kenyon ran the salvage excavation and determined the remains were Native American, buried between 1250 and 1400 CE.
• Kenyon noted a second, deeper burial pit below the level he excavated, and estimated Taber Hill, contains more than 500 burials.
• Removed bones were reburied in a new pit on the site, with representatives of the Five Nations attending a Feast of the Dead ceremony held at the Scarborough Golf Club.
• According to tradition, the Feast of the Dead cleaned and bundled bones and set them in a pit covered with wolf pelts, with feasts held annually for a decade.
• Five Nations and Huron burial practice staged bodies in a scaffolding structure, then every 12 to 15 years transferred the bones to a communal pit along with beads, pelts and art objects.
• The video proposes these communal secondary-interment pits are the kind found beneath Mississippian, Hopewell and Adena burial pyramids.
• The Adena, described as America's first burial-pyramid building culture, began around 1000 BCE in a heartland of modern Ohio across Lake Erie from southern Ontario.
• The city of Toronto protects Taber Hill, as a registered cemetery, and the mound is fenced off within the park; Iroquois and Wendat nations are recognised as descendants of those buried there.
• Other Toronto-area sites mentioned include an Iroquoian village found near Taber Hill, and the Alexandra site, a Wendat village of about 1,000 people around 1300 CE.

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