So…umm…hi! How have you been doing these last few months?
Good? Glad to hear it.
Life-wise, I’ve been doing well; blog-wise, I seem to have
fallen into a hole and disappeared. Falling into a hole usually means that
something (or several somethings) is taking up my time, energy, and thoughts
about interesting writing. In this case, it was actually a few holes in a row.
The first hole was, ironically enough, all about how to dig
a hole – or field school, as it’s properly known. This is either a compulsory
or highly recommended class (depending on which degree is being sought) for an
archaeology major, and is held at Wanuskewin Heritage Park. Today, Wanuskewin
is a National Historic Site and major tourist attraction, but the park’s
environs have been a special place for Aboriginal people for at least 6000
years.
The site is often referred to as a ‘terrestrial island’ - a
unique landscape that is different from everything surrounding it. You can
understand this a bit when you enter the park – you’ve been driving through
Saskatoon, then through a bit of typical central Saskatchewan prairie
landscape. After you park at the visitors’ centre and continue the journey on
foot, you descend into a valley with a curving stream running through it.
Grasslands and forest intersect in the valley, with vegetation common to each
environment existing side by side. Even today, there is great diversity in the
types and numbers of birds and small mammals found in the park; archaeological
evidence suggests that there were even more species in the past.
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| Opimihow Creek - our dig site is just beyond the bridge. |
Basically, the valley had everything that people needed.
Food, water, shelter from the unending wind – and they came back, year after
year, for thousands of years. In the particular site we were excavating, tools
dating to around 4500 years ago have been found; in other places, there are
even older artifacts. There are at least 19 individual sites in the park,
dating to before European contact, and at least two buffalo jumps. One of
which, the Queen of England almost slipped off. But that’s my professor’s
story, and one for another time.
In Old World archaeology, the terms sacred or ritual
landscapes are often used to refer to sites which appear to have had continued spiritual
significance to the people living nearby, perhaps lasting thousands of years
through cultural and religious changes. In the UK, one can see examples of this
in the sites of Avebury/Stonehenge, Maes Howe, Newgrange, and the circles and barrows of Bodmin Moor. Those are the
big, obvious ones, but there are also loads of examples of the Norman or
medieval cathedral being built close to or on top of a Saxon church, which was
built on an earlier Christian chapel, which was built on a Roman shrine, which
had been placed near an Iron Age sacred spring……
In Canada, the best examples of this type of thing seem to
be in the cairns and Medicine Wheels built by the ancestors of the Aboriginal
people. There is at least one of the latter features at Wanuskewin, leading
some to argue that the area may have had lasting spiritual significance, in
addition to its many advantages as a campsite.
The specific site we were at was a habitation site. People
lived there, built fires, knapped and repaired tools, processed meat, and
created a bit of jewelry. We found evidence of all of these activities during
our 6 week dig. As for my unit (1m x 1m square)…. how did I phrase it in my
report? The artifacts and fragments found in the unit provided further evidence
for activities that were known to have been taking place elsewhere in the site.
Something like that, anyway. What I really wanted to say was that when the
people living at the site decided to sweep the tents, my unit seemed to be where
they dumped out their dustpans.
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| They would have used the big dustpan for this. |
