Dig Near Ft. St. James Successful

Thursday, August 14, 2008 03:57 PM

Students Theo Ericksen and Jessica Oystryk ( photo courtesy UNBC)

Prince George, B.C. –Indiana Jones would be envious. For the past three weeks,

First Nations and UNBC students hacve been taking part in an archaeological dig west of Fort St. James. The dig has been very successful.

More than 200 artifacts have been found, and they may have discovered an “earth oven” used for curing a kind of rock useful for making tools and weapons. This kind of earth oven is believed to be the first ever found in the Northern Interior.

The archaeological excavation had been occurring on the south shore of Stuart Lake, near the Paarens Beach provincial park. The site was selected by the Nak’azdli Band based on oral histories that indicate the area was the site of an ancient village. In fact, a key component of the field course has been to integrate oral histories with archaeological science and half of the 13 students participating in the course are members of the Nak’azdli Band.

"It's important to actually get involved with our past and for the young people to understand where we came from and what we're all about. In digging, we learn a little bit about our past," says Carrier student Walter Tylee. "Even finding something as small as a flake is exciting. It might be just a little flake of rock but to think that someone was here maybe thousands of years ago and chipped that flake out to make an arrowhead or something like that is really exciting."

Students unearthed dozens of stone tools and more than one hundred stone flakes that indicate the manufacture of tools on site.
Pieces of charcoal were found at various locations, providing an opportunity to use radiocarbon dating to precisely determine when the site was being used. The type of artifacts found indicates that the site was used from a few hundred to several thousand years ago.
A number of cultural depressions dot the site. These may have been used for cooking, food storage, or heating rock. The largest earth oven was excavated to a depth of more than four feet. Soil samples will be analyzed for the microscopic remains of plants/animals.

“This excavation has been a remarkable success, both from the perspective of what we found as well as how we used this course to train local members of the Nak’azdli Band and UNBC students. This kind of experience is very unusual in North America for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students alike,” says UNBC Anthropology professor Farid Rahemtulla, who led the excavation. “The northern and interior regions of BC have largely been ignored by archaeologists and the last excavation on Nak’azdli land took place in the 1950s. These students have become immersed in history and have gained great personal knowledge, but their work is also making a major contribution to our collective knowledge about the people who lived here thousands of years ago.”

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Posted on Thursday, August 14, 2008 03:57 PM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: Lamb on August 14 2008 4:58 PM

I hope this is a beginning of an appreciation of the land that we live on. It is rich in historical data.

Posted by: HD on August 14 2008 6:27 PM

Very interesting and well done.

Posted by: YamaDooPolCat on August 14 2008 7:47 PM

But.. I've been to Paarens Beach and it is a great place to surf and party. We also roasted a some rocks and dug a toilet or two.

So to validate Paarens as being the village, will they do another dig in another likely area? How does the Paarens site compare to the Simon Fraser Bridge dig which was on top of a high river bank in the middle of nowhere?

What do these digs tell us about the life of these early settlers?

Is it OK to ask these questions, or am I being politically incorrect, again?

Posted by: Lamb on August 14 2008 9:03 PM

You are doing great Yama! The digs will tell us a lot. Just hope there is a follow up so we can all share in the learnings.

Posted by: meinbcbud on August 15 2008 5:38 AM

I grew up in FSJ and I remember as a youth wandering the beaches and picking up all sorts of items like stone arrowheads and other primitive looking items. It was an exciting place to grow up where a youth had plenty to fire his imagination. Paarens Beach was (as stated above) a great place to kick back, unwind and explore. I imagined the ancient cultures in the area felt the same way.

Ft St James was, in her history, the political center of the land we called "New Caledonia" that was later to become British Columbia. A few archaeological mysteries have developed since europeans arrived in the late 1700's.

In 1828, Chief Quaw of the Carriers (as he was known at the time) had a disagreement with James Douglas, future governor of British Columbia.

It seems that Douglas, a hot headed clerk of the Hudson�s Bay Company took it upon himself to invade the chief�s lodge and arrest the suspect in a double murder of 2 company employees near Fort George.

Quaw held Douglas, ready to slice his throat with an Iron dagger that apparently predated the European arrival. Quaw�s wife (who was of Cree descent) intervened and saved history as we know it now.

Very few first nation nation cultures had any knowledge of iron until the europeans moved east and introduced it to them. There was also no written history west of the great mountain range that divided the continent into the pacific shelf (Rocky Mountains)

The carrier nation was using iron tools for agriculture. Iron weapons could have been a major reason they were historically the ruling nation in this part of the land. The territory actually went all the way to around Oregon.

The dagger, which now resides in the Ft St James National Historic Park, predated the arrival of the europeans by over 100 years. Oral history placed it to a historical chief of the carriers around 100 years before eastern influence arrival

It is theorized that the dagger came through the ancient trade routes from the west coast, perhaps coming up from the conquistadors that invaded the south west shores of the continent. The tools would have been a natural development after the knowledge of Iron arrived with the dagger.

Like I said, Ft St James was a wonderful place to grow up and stimulate an imagination. Having no life back then set the pattern for the rest of my semi professional life of "no life" not totally based in reality. Have a great day.