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The 1996 field report is now complete. It's been constructed for your viewing pleasure in .pdf (portable document format) format. What? Don't have your browser configured to view .pdf files. Get your sorry-surfing-self over to Adobe Systems and download Acrobat Reader 3.0 . Need Acrobat Reader for your Macintosh, click here. Need Acrobat Reader for Windows, click here. Don't know what you need, then click here.
View the 1996 Field Report (900k)
June 13 I thought it would be interesting to create a page that keeps you all updated on the summer fieldwork activities occuring with the archaeological predictive modelling project. I will add new information to this page regularly and if I can scan any fieldnotes and/or artifacts then I will. So let me introduce you to the fieldcrew for the summer. Luke Dalla Bona: That's me. I am an archaeological research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources in charge of the archaeological predictive modelling program. I've been leading archaeological predictive modelling projects in western Canada since 1988 and in the boreal forest of northern Ontario since 1991, and have spent every summer locked in mortal combat with mosquitos, black flies and walleye.
The summer field program will consist of three components. July will be spent carrying out new surveys in the Caribou Forest Management Unit, located in northwestern Ontario. In the 1.3 million hectares of land within the boundaries of that unit, only 14 archaeological sites are known to exist and those were found last year by surveys conducted under this project. These new surveys will serve to return new information regarding the density and distribution of archaeological resources in this unit. August will be spent conducting extensive test excavations at the Allen Site (EcJs-1). This site was discovered during the course of last year's surveys. The artifacts and site context suggest an Early Archaic occupation (ca. 7000 years BP). We will conduct our excavations to determine the site's boundaries, depth of deposits, and to better establish date of occupation. September will be spent conducting surveys in areas proposed for timber harvesting activities. The information returned will serve to inform us about the quality of the predictions generated by the predictive model. We will also attempt to determine the co-incidence of field-verified sites, areas of high potential, and areas of timber harvesting activites?
Shift One
July 22-31, 1996 Perhaps the most interesting things that occurred on the lake during our surveys included spotting a woodland caribou swimming across the lake to an island, and also the amazing ability of fish to magically find our hooks during our extremely scientific attempts to gauge precontact aquatic resource potential. We surveyed for 10 days in the area and found two new sites. No previously known sites are recorded for this area.
July 24: Site #96-1This site is located along the portage trail between this lake and Poshkokogan Lake (the next one down the line). A small falls drains this lake. We excavated a number of test pits and found material some 25-30m from the shoreline, just off the portage trail. The majority of items found are Hudson Bay Lowland (HBL) chert flakes with one of them looking looking suspiciously tool-like, exhibiting retouching along one edge. In a different test pit, 4 pieces of ceramics, probably neck sherds with cord impressions, were recovered. A number of other flakes including, including quartz and some flakes exhibiting heat spalling, were excavated.
July 27: Meadowfield Point Site, #96-2This site is located behind a rocky point in a small bay, in the southern arm of the lake. Of twelve test pits excavated, only one had any artifacts, and it was the one closest to the lake. A total of 5 black chert flakes were recovered.Sketch map of Meadowfield Point Site
Shift Two - Allen Site Test Excavations (EcJs-1)
August 13 to August 25, 1996 I drove to Sioux Lookout on August 13, picking up Ted on the way in Thunder Bay. The distance between Sioux Lookout and Sault Ste. Marie is 1200 kilometers, so it makes for a long day's drive. The next morning we went to pick up the boat from the MNR fire base and we were ready to head out to the field. We drove up the highway and then headed in using 12 kilometers of logging road as the path to get us in as close to the lake as possible. We were able to get in about 400 meters from the lake where a small 4-wheeler track heads off towards the lake. We were able to wedge the truck down that path another 100 meters and the rest of the way, we had to haul everything! The boat turned out to be heavier than it looked (it felt like cast iron) and we worked up quite a sweat trying to drag the thing downhill!!! Anyhooo, we got everything loaded in the boat and then with about a 20 minute boat ride up river, we landed at our camping location, some 200 meters west of the site. We spent the next day laying out a grid on the site and were able to set up a grid over the area I expected to excavate. We also divided the beach into 5 meter segments so that artifacts that we collected from the beach could be placed into some organizational/spatial framework. ResultsThe test excavations were a great success. We confirmed that there is an intact single component dating to the late PaleoIndian/Early Archaic Period capped by at least 50cm of sterile sand (filled with roots). The deposit extends at least 3 units (9 meters) from the beach face and at least 30 meters along the beach itself. What I suspect to be a feature, perhaps a tent ring/living floor was uncovered in the excavation units. This feature is defined by an alignment of "softball-sized" cobbles trending from southeast to northwest through the units. On the northeastern side of the alignment is a pavement of "golf ball-sized" pebbles. On the southwestern side of the alignment is nothing. No pebbles, no gravel, only a continuation of the sterile sand that caps the site. An incredible number of artifacts (for the boreal forest at least) were excavated and surface collected from the beach. A partial list is found below with some pictures as well. When I complete analysis of the artifacts, I will provide more description.
Artifacts Surface Collected or ExcavatedSurface Collection Area "F" - 2 complete trihedral adzesSurface Collection Area "F" - 3 broken trihedral adzes Surface Collection Area "F" - 3 end scrapers Surface Collection Area "E" - point tip Surface Collection Area "C" - biface - 90% complete Surface Collection Area "C" - biface base Surface Collection Area "C" - end scrapers Excavated - biface base Excavated - copper awl tip Excavated - clear (crystal) quartz point Excavated - endscraper Excavated - 3 endscrapers Excavated - preform, endscraper, point tip |
Ted Binguis: Ted is an honour's BA student in Anthropology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. Ted has been doing archaeology in northern Ontario since 1992. Most recently, he participated in a survey of Pukaskwa National Park on the north shore of Lake Superior.
