Karst Mismanagement in British Columbia

Posted on September 9, 2009 | 1 comment
Karst destroyed with approval of karst consultant.

Karst destroyed with approval of karst consultant.

The protection of BC karst landscapes falls into a sort of legal limbo.  There is only weak protection afforded through regulation, and only in some contexts.  If a cave can be shown to have archaeological deposits, it can be afforded very strong protection under the Heritage Conservation Act.  In theory, the HCA can also protect the cave if it has spiritual values to First Nations.  Nonetheless, the practice of karst assessment is controlled by a small cabal of self-appointed experts.  These folks make a living by doing impact assessments, mainly for forestry companies.  The picture at the left shows the results, a magnificent karst bluff destroyed after the karst consultant wrote the area off – from an office 500 miles distant, based on notes provided by a forest company employee.  In the report, archaeological values are dismissed from afar, doubly ridiculous since the karst consultant is notably ignorant about archaeology.  Continue reading →

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Posted in Archaeology, Cultural Resource Management, Karst, Northwest Coast

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Dan Leen’s Petroglyph Page

Posted on September 8, 2009 | 3 comments
Heiltsuk Petroglyphs including 2-headed Salmon Spirit

Heiltsuk Petroglyphs including 2-headed "Salmon Spirit"

I was just looking for a picture of a labret and instead found that Dan Leen has a nice page on NW petroglyphs, with lots of superb pictures and action shots of him recording rock art.  I haven’t seen Dan for quite a while, but we spent 10 weeks together on his 30 foot Trimaran “Teredo n.” back in the early 1980s, recording rock art in the Douglas Channel area.  A great trip all around.  I remember spotting this fantastic pictograph near Kemano, before breakfast one day, boat-made bread in one hand, hot coffee in another – I am pretty sure I took the picture since it was just Dan and me on Das Boot for quite some time. Dan is not the most silent guy in the world, and I heard a lot of great stories about his cabin in the Brook’s range of Alaska, his Hobo days, and so forth — so it is extra fun to see pictures of these places and times.  Dan is the most meticulous rock art researcher I have ever worked with, and it is great to see him putting some of his files, and insight online.

Oh yeah, I found the picture of the labret – one of these, almost identical, came out of my unit this afternoon.

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Posted in Archaeology, Northwest Coast, pics, Uncategorized

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Camas and Cairns

Posted on September 7, 2009 | 1 comment
Lekwungen women harvesting camas bulbs on Beacon Hill. Illustration by Victoria graphic artist Gordon Friesen.

Lekwungen women harvesting camas bulbs on Beacon Hill. Illustration by Victoria graphic artist Gordon Friesen. (Edit: a bunch of their pictures are down, even on their site. Click to go to story)

Two small articles look at the archaeology of Beacon Hill Park in central Victoria.   Camas country includes charming illustrations and a knowledgeable write-up by Janis Ringuette, who also summarizes the remarkable story of how Beacon Hill Park workers consolidated a series of burial cairns (in the 1980s, no less), in order to facilitate mowing.  As she aptly notes:

Parks and Recreation Committee Chairman Geoff Young promised an interpretative sign. He said the Committee had been planning a marker well before the stones were “accidently disturbed.” He agreed a sign was needed because “They just look like ordinary rocks on the surface. It’s not a spectacular site. You have to know them.” Parks Director Al Smith said, “It’s going to be one of the more interesting features of the park, especially when we get the marker in place. We should have something showing the Indians were the original owners of the land.”

Continue reading →

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Posted in Archaeology, Cultural Resource Management, Vancouver Island

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Hoko River pictures

Posted on September 6, 2009 | 1 comment
Hoko barbed wooden point.

Hoko barbed wooden point.

Edited Feb 17/2010: Fixed the broken links.

October 2018: Hoko pictures are now here.

So, a new school year beckons.  Erk.  As a distraction, treat yourself to the huge photo library of the Hoko River site which was put online by Dale Croes.  A few dead links in there, but some pictures of fantastic artifacts, plus a sense of the project unfolding – slug fest included, as well as a visit from Hoko Site patron and “Clan of the Cave Bear Author” Jean Auel. The pictures are dusty, scanned-in transparencies (I think) which retain sense of nostalgia and the quiet punchiness of colour us old farts remember as fondly as we do the occasional upside-down slide at conferences.   I’ll probably occasionally use the Hoko site as the basis for future posts here.  On the left, a substantial barbed wooden(!!) point from the 2400 year old wet site deposits.

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Posted in Archaeology, Northwest Coast, pics, Washington State

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Fieldwork Picture of the Day 7

Posted on May 7, 2009 | Leave a comment
Excavations at Collison Bay, 2006

Excavations at Collison Bay, 2006

This is another intertidal dig – the Collison Bay site, which shares a lot of similarities with Kilgii Gwaay.  Both sites date to about 9450 C14 years ago and contain buried deposits in primary context below the modern beach.  While Kilgii Gwaay contains a rich organic assemblage, Collison Bay does not, though there is evidence for a brown palaeosol at varyiong depths.  In and around that palaeosol are numerous pristine lithics: stones tools and flakes that are sharp and clearly have not een rolled on a beach.  One of the striking things about these two sites is they show how a major event like a marine transgression can nonetheless leave intact cultural deposits.  We suspect that much of this has to do with the local topography.  Ideally, a bedrock rock rim allows for a small lagoon to form, creating an interlude of very low wave energy between when sea level rises over the site and when the full weight of waves can start to act on the surrounding shore.  By the time the waves are able to penetrate, the archaeological materials are already several metres below low tide which affords quite a lot of protection.

As with Kilgii Gwaay, working in the intertidal zone poses certain challenges, such as having only a six hour window to work.  In the case of Collison Bay, we compounded the issue by timing the project for when the best tides were in the middle of the night, which meant getting up at midnight and working to dawn in some cases (though we did have some good daytime digging as well).  In this picture you can see we are using electric lights run off a generator while Cynthia does the hard work down on the beach; this is probably around 2.00 in the morning.

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Posted in Archaeology, fieldwork, Haida Gwaii, Northwest Coast, pics

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Fieldwork Picture of the Day 6

Posted on May 5, 2009 | Leave a comment
Parks Canada Underwater Archaeologist at Section Cove, 2006

Parks Canada Underwater Archaeologist at Section Cove, 2006

Parks Canada has a great underwater archaeology unit.  They have been coming out to dive on targets we’ve identified on the drowned terrestrial landscape of Haida Gwaii.  This picture shows an archaeologist with a suction hose on the bottom near (though, sadly, not on) the target we identified at the outlet of the lake that formerly sat in Section Cove, near Huxley Island. This target is at about 33 metres below the surface, while the diver here is at about 27 metres down, so on a small bump above ancient landform of interest – not a place with zero potential, but not a huge amount either, we don’t think. The hose sucked out the bottom sediments into a mesh bag which could then be lifted by crane onboard the mother ship, and screened on deck.  Therefore, it was not really a lift hose, but the system worked pretty well though as I say, it was not applied to the precise location of the high potential.  In future years once this dive team perfects their procedures for working in this difficult location and at challenging depths we hope to find some very cool archaeological stuff dating to the terminal Pleistocene / end of the last ice age.

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Posted in Archaeology, fieldwork, Haida Gwaii, pics, underwater archaeology

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High Resolution Pictures from the Smithsonian

Posted on May 2, 2009 | Leave a comment
Cowichan Spindle Whorl, ©National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (15/8959)

Cowichan Spindle Whorl, ©National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (15/8959)

These seem to be squirreled away on the website in the “media releases” section at the Smithsonian! It is well worth getting the high-resolution images.  There is one solid, NWC art page here (from where the lovely Cowichan spindle whorl to the left is from)  but additionally here are high resolution pictures of:

an Alutiiq (Koniag) hunter’s hat, ca. 1950  Kodiak Island, Alaska (Spruce root, paint, glass beads, dentalium shells, wool cloth, sea lion whiskers National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution Image: 6/9253)

Quinalt woman’s dentalia breastplate ca. 1880 Washington state (Hide, dentalium shells, glass beads, cordage National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution Image: 2/7703)

Tlingit Rattle, ca. 1880 Alaska  (Alder or maple wood, hide National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution Image: 8/1650AQ)

Raven Steals the Sun (in blown glass! by Preston Singletary (Tlingit) Seattle, Washington, 2003)

Continue reading →

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Posted in anthropology, Northwest Coast, pics

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Last glaciation of Puget Sound (Quicktime Movie)

Posted on May 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

This is a nice little animated demonstration of the massive glacial changes in Puget Sound, found via the Burke Museum’s nice Waterlines online exhibit, which is a history of the geo-engineering of Seattle.

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Posted in Archaeology, Lower Mainland, Northwest Coast

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Chilliwack Museum and Archives

Posted on April 28, 2009 | Leave a comment
Chilliwack Museum Accession number 1957.019.084

Chilliwack Museum Accession number 1957.019.084

The Chilliwack Museum (map) has a large, searchable collection of photos online, which they ruin with a huge watermark in the middle.  Seriously, guys, these are ancient artifacts that you are lucky to be curating.  And, your pictures aren’t very good in the first place – many out of focus, or with extensive shadowing.  In any case, for archaeologists, you can click for artifacts made of, or records containing the word,   “stone” (they have a huge number of celts, mauls and abrader stones, as you might imagine since the Fraser Valley is known for these, perhaps because of extensive plowing of former woodlands).  Oddly they don’t seem to have any aboriginal artifacts made of bone, shell, or antler.  Search term “Sto:lo” returns one empty field.  Further they make it almost impossible to link to a specific record or picture. I am putting in a picture I downloaded from their site of an unusual artifact – a ground stone point with a very unusual morphology and material.  They list it made out of serpentine, but from what I can tell, it shows signs of being readily worked, and so may be a softer verson of serpentine, perhaps soapstone.  The shape is like a bronze age arrowhead or something — highly unusual.   Too bad there isn’t a better picture available.  So, all in all, Chilliwack Museum people: you put a lot of time and energy into a resource that is not particularly useful nor does it readily promote the heritage of the Fraser Valley.  I suggest you rework your URL system, remove the watermarks, and update your keywords by adding Sto:lo to appropriate records.  Double-check your raw material “horn” as well.  You have a fantastic collection, share it!

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Posted in Archaeology, archives, Cultural Resource Management, Lower Mainland, pics

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Fieldwork Picture of the Day 5

Posted on April 27, 2009 | Leave a comment
Submersible at Section Cove

Submersible at Section Cove

A few years back I fulfilled a lifetime ambition by going down in a submersible.  This shows the Nuytten craft “Aquarius” on the surface in front of the warden’s cabin on SW Huxley Island in Gwaii Haanas (map).  We tried diving onto the ancient lake that now lies drowned at 33 metres below sea level,  more or less in front of the cabin.  This lake would have been last exposed to air about 10,000 14C years ago.  We started at about 110 metres down and then worked our way up a palaeo-river channel towards the lake, but unfortunately got off course and ended up a lot closer to the beach than we had anticipated.  These things are flown by a pilot, but the basic navigation is by transponders on the bow and stern of the mother ship which allow triangulation from a known point.  Apparently, not foolproof!  The lake we were diving onto shows huge potential for an archaeological site.  We are thinking there may have been a base camp for bear hunting at Gaadu Din 1 or 2, which are less than a kilometre away.   Possibly, too, there was a sockeye salmon fishing camp here, since the nearby caves contain numerous salmon bones from the late Pleistocene.  Anyway, it was pretty cool to go down in the submersible!

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Posted in Archaeology, fieldwork, pics, underwater archaeology

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