New archaeological find
People mining the oil sands in Alberta stumbled across a major archaeological find. From
The Hamilton Spectator:
Eureka! Quarry near oil-sands full of ancient artifacts
Oil-sands activity has uncovered vast wealth of a different kind -- a 10,000-year-old quarry rich with tools and weapons from some of the first Albertans, including a pristine spearpoint still smeared with the blood of a woolly mammoth.
"It's got this echo of the Ice Age world," said Jack Ives, Alberta's provincial archaeologist, who described the find in a hearing before the province's energy regulator yesterday.
"There's quite a rich concentration of artifacts."
The so-called Quarry of the Ancestors, which scientists suspect may be one of the first places where humans put down roots in northern Alberta after the retreat of the glaciers, is found on an outcrop of hard, fine-grained sandstone adjacent to the Albian Sands oil-sands lease about 75 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.
A bit more:
The quarry was discovered in 2003 when Birch Mountain Resources, which quarries limestone in the area to make chemicals used in oil-sands mining, conducted a routine archaeological survey prior to its own proposed expansion.
The site's importance was evident almost immediately, said Nancy Saxberg, who conducted the field work.
"We went into the woods and dug a couple of holes, and everywhere we dug a hole we found archaeological material," she said.
Spearpoints, knives, scrapers, stone flakes and tiny micro-blades that would have been fastened to a wood or bone handle all began to emerge from the boreal loam.
"People were prying this stuff out of the ground in chunks," Saxberg said.
One investigator turned up a spearpoint still sharp enough to penetrate flesh. When tested, it contained traces of proteins that matched elephant blood. The only possible source would have been a mammoth, an animal thought to have died out more than 10,000 years ago.
"It was pretty thrilling," Saxberg said.
The site, spread out over a square kilometre, was so large that Saxberg said the normal archaeological practice of establishing the boundaries of a site had to be modified.
"We couldn't define the sector because the sector was so freaking huge."
And of course, the first nation peoples are going to be shafted again and the area will be developed:
The depth of that history has thrilled members of the Fort MacKay First Nation, on whose traditional land the quarry sits.
"The community, especially the elders, found it to be very important to them," said Lisa Schaldemose of the Fort MacKay band.
Although band members are cautious about claiming the quarry's ancient toolmakers as ancestors, artifacts are on display at the band office and community gatherings have been held on the site.
In an area where land access is increasingly complicated by oil-sands leases, Schaldemose said Fort MacKay wants the quarry to be permanently available to its community for use as a gathering place.
Everyone agrees the quarry, which is surrounded by oil-sands leases, should be preserved.
Birch Hills Resources, which owns the quarry rights, will expand elsewhere, said owner Don Dabbs. "We recognized the importance right off the top. This area has had a very long history of being important to people."
TransCanada PipeLines has rerouted a line to avoid the site. Shell Canada has altered plans in the area. And Ives's department is asking Community Development Minister Denis Ducharme to declare the site a provincial historic resource, which would preserve it.
Very cool -- not only is the oil development company shifting their explorations, the pipeline company is re-routing.
I would not mind going up there in a few years when they get some of these artifacts into a museum. Seeing the oil sand development would also be fascinating.
Posted by DaveH at September 15, 2006 11:12 AM