The Grant Lake site, located on the Dubawnt River in west-central Keewatin District, consists of a number of horizontally discrete living floors that pertain to the Agate Basin complex of the Palaeo-Indian period. It is proposed that the environment during the occupation between 6000 and 7000 B.C. was similar to present conditions.
Covering the history of First Peoples in Canada from 10,000 to 1000 BC, this volume explores a period which includes the original settlement of the Americas, cultural diversification, technological advances, expanding trade networks, and the development of complex belief systems. A useful reference work for scholars and laypersons alike.
This study summarizes archaeological excavations in the DeBlicquy site, Bathurst Island, Northwest Territories and the resulting data gathered in July 1961 of a typical Thule culture winter village of the Canadian High Arctic. Stylistic analysis suggests that the site was occupied during middle Thule times and can probably be dated between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries A.D.
Over the past two decades, the oil sands region of northeastern Alberta has been the site of unprecedented levels of development. Alberta's Lower Athabasca Basin tells a fascinating story of how a catastrophic ice age flood left behind a unique landscape in the Lower Athabasca Basin, one that made deposits of bitumen available for surface mining. Less well known is the discovery that this flood also produced an environment that supported perhaps the most intensive use of boreal forest resources by prehistoric Native people yet recognized in Canada. Studies undertaken to meet the conservation requirements of the Alberta Historical Resources Act have yielded a rich and varied record of prehistoric habitation and activity in the oil sands area. Evidence from between 9,500 and 5,000 years ago—the result of several major excavations—has confirmed extensive human use of the region’s resources, while important contextual information provided by key geological and palaeoenvironmental studies has deepened our understanding of how the region’s early inhabitants interacted with the landscape. Touching on various elements of this rich environmental and archaeological record, the contributors to this volume use the evidence gained through research and compliance studies to offer new insights into human and natural history. They also examine the challenges of managing this irreplaceable heritage resource in the face of ongoing development. Contributors: Alwynne Beaudoin, Angela Younie, Brian O.K. Reeves, Duane Froese, Elizabeth Roberston, Eugene Gryba, Gloria Fedirchuk, Grant Clarke, John W. Ives, Janet Blakey, Jennifer Tischer, Jim Burns, Laura Roskowski, Luc Bouchet, Murray Lobb, Nancy Saxberg, Raymond LeBlanc, Robert R. Young, Robin Woywitka, Thomas V. Lowell, and Timothy Fisher
The concept of taphonomy has been borrowed from paleontology and applied to the analysis of vertebrate fossils from the Old Crow region of the northern Yukon Territory. By means of this approach, archaeologically significant specimens have been isolated from the larger suite of materials which can be explained entirely in terms of natural processes. The analysis indicates that human occupation began in eastern Beringia more than 50,000 years ago and probably was continuous from that time onward, but primary archaeological deposits will be needed to clarify the historical and paleo-environmental significance of these finds.
This study of the effect of herd following on culture reflects over twenty years of field and laboratory research. The author analyzes and compares some 13,000 artifacts from 1,002 hunting camps of the Northern Plano, Shield Archaic, Pre-Dorset and Taltheilei traditions. Exploring reasons for seasonal tool variation and similarity, he considers geological, biological and historical influences on caribou hunters.
The Dene nation consists of twelve thousand people speaking five distinct languages spread over 1.8 million square kilometres in the Canadian subarctic. In the 1970s and 1980s, the campaign against the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, support for the leadership of Georges Erasmus in the Assembly of First Nations, and land claim negotiations put the Dene on the leading edge of Canada's native rights movement. Drum Songs reconstructs important moments in Dene history, offering a sympathetic treatment of their past, the impact of the fur trade, their interaction with Christian missionaries, and evolving relations with the Canadian federal government. Using a wide range of sources, including archival documents, oral testimony, archaeological findings, linguistic studies, and folk traditions, Kerry Abel shows that previous ethnocentric interpretations of Canadian history have been excessively narrow. She demonstrates that the Dene were able to maintain a sense of cultural distinctiveness in the face of overwhelming economic, political, and cultural pressures from European newcomers. Abel's classic text questions the standard perception that aboriginal peoples in Canada have been passive victims in the colonization process. A new introduction discusses Dene experience since the first edition of the book and suggests how the approach of scholars in this field is changing.
The discrete band/discrete herd association is used to explore 8,000 years of barrenland prehistory at the Migod site, west-central Keewatin District, Northwest Territories The association appears applicable in the four traditions represented ─ Agate Basin, Shield Archaic, Pre-Dorset and Taltheilei.
Excavations at the Washout site (NjVi-2), Herschel Island, Yukon Territory were conducted for two field seasons in order to obtain data on early Thule subsistence, and to determine the affinity of the site to later Mackenzie Inuit occupations.
