What We Are Working On: Report from the Field:
Archaeology, 2006
Archaeology Report 1 (Stanley Mission, Old Village 2006 Excavations)
Margaret Hanna, archaeologistAfter a five-year hiatus, we have returned to the Old Village of Stanley Mission to excavate more of Murdoch McKenzie's house. My crew consists of Dr. Evelyn Siegfried of the RSM, Karmen Vanderzwan, a graduate student from the Department of Archaeology, University of Saskatchewan, and Keifer Roberts, a high school student at Stanley Mission.
Karmen will be using the data from the 2001 and this year's excavations to examine questions about the use of space both inside and outside of the house. Archival photographs and Elders' accounts tell us that furniture was arranged along the walls of the house. Some houses had stone chimneys, others had stoves. Many items were hung on or stored against the outside walls. In front of and around the houses, there were cooking fires, smoking frames, tents, and other structures. Will we be able to find evidence of these patterns in what is left behind in the ground?
Exterior of two log houses, Stanley Mission, 1916.
Photograph courtesy of Saskatchewan Archives Board.
We had originally planned to begin field work on July 24. However, in early July, all the settlements (including Stanley Mission) between Lac la Ronge and the Churchill River were evacuated because of several forest fires. Both the village of Stanley Mission and the famous Holy Trinity Anglican Church were directly in the path of one of the largest fires. Fortunately, the fires were stopped before they reached any of the settlements, and life began to return to normal in late July.
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Today's objective is to relocate our site datum (the primary reference point for our excavation grid) and the 2001 excavation units. First, we must contend with the luxurious grass which, here, grows to at least waist height, if not chest height. The 5-year accumulation of grass has well and truly hidden the 2001 units where there should be plastic (which we put on top of the logs and flooring) sticking out of the edges of the unit. Eventually, as we whack grass down in the general area, we find something that looks like the edge of a unit.
Now it is time to find datum. In 2001, I marked the datum with a large spike and washer so that they can be relocated using a metal detector. I know the southernmost excavation is 35 m north of datum. We measure 35 m south of the southwest corner of the found unit. We cut grass. We sweep back and forth with the metal detector. We find chunks of metal, we find high iron-content rocks, we find everything except the datum.
It is now 3:30 pm.
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Our first objective is to determine the dimensions of Mr. McKenzie's house by excavating along the west (back), north, and east walls. Our second objective is to determine the location of the door, and whether or not his house has a stone chimney. Archival photographs show doorways located in the centre of the front (east) wall of houses; some houses also have stone chimneys situated in the centre of the back wall.
We already know the location of the southwest corner of the house; we also know that the south wall disappears prematurely about 3m (about 9') from the southwest corner–either it had been cut away or it had rotted away. We are going to excavate northward, following the west wall of the house until we find the north west corner, then we will follow the north wall until we find the northeast corner. At least, that is the plan for now.
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Sunday, August 6:
It's still showering when we wake up, but by mid-morning the sky is clearing. We go back to the site in the afternoon and continue digging. This time, we cover the units with plastic to keep the ground dry the next time it rains.
Monday, August 7:
It’s dig, dig, dig. We are digging through overburden that was either tossed or washed in on top of the house, but we’re finding some interesting artifacts–Fizzies foil wrappers, tiny seed beads, plastic and metal "charms," a tin whistle, pieces of a coal oil lamp chimney, a push-in lid from a large can, and small springs wrapped in a rectangular shape. By the end of the day, both Kiefer and Karmen have uncovered the upper surface of some large, flat rocks.
 plastic charm |
 tin whistle |
 plastic comb |
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Tuesday, August 8:
The rocks in the east side of Kiefer's and Karmen's units are multiplying, and they appear to be situated on the inside of the house. This is getting interesting. Have we found a stone chimney?
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Thursday, August 10:
Karmen finds the upper surface of the west wall, just outside the base of the stone chimney. The soil layers in the south wall of her unit dip down above the log, which is exactly what we observed in the 2001 excavations. The dip is visible in the north wall of Kiefer's unit but not in either the south or north wall of my unit. That suggests to me that the west wall extends through Kiefer’s unit but not into mine. Kiefer and I spend the afternoon shovel shaving the unit between our two units. Three hours and 25 cm of digging later, we still have not found the wall. All we are now finding is heavy clay. Where is that wall?
I go back to Kiefer's unit and excavate along the top of the west wall. At about 5 cm short of his north wall, the log ends abruptly, cut obliquely. However, careful examination of the log shows the remnants of a notch in the log. I clean off the profile in Kiefer's east wall and see what we are looking for–the dip in the soil layer. However, it is now 4:45 and too late to clear away the overburden. Confirmation of the presence of the north wall will have to wait until tomorrow.
Friday, August 11:
This morning, the van will not start. We try cleaning the battery posts; it still will not start. We finally get it boosted, and I decide to go into La Ronge to have it checked out. Of course, once I get there, everything seems to be working fine! I check e-mail and phone messages, run some errands, and head back to Stanley Mission.
Meanwhile, Evelyn and Karmen go to the site–Evelyn to finish excavating her unit, and Karmen to excavate where we think (hope) the north wall is. And yes, there it is–a lapped joint, just like the southwest corner. We now know that the west wall of the house is approximately 5 m (15') long with the chimney in the centre of the wall.
West wall and northwest corner of house.
Saturday, August 12:
More rain today, so we spend the day cleaning and rebagging artifacts, getting them ready for cataloguing.
Sunday, August 13:
Sunshine today, so we’re back at the site. Now we have to follow the north wall until we find the northeast corner. We open a new unit 1 m east of the northwest corner. By late afternoon, we have found what might have once been a log at about 20 cm below surface, but it has been burned and is visible only as a dark, greasy charcoal stain in the soil along the north wall of the unit. We excavate a small test hole in the northwest corner of the unit to see if floor boards still exist. We find them, at 30 cm below surface, but they end abruptly about 10 cm from the burned stain. Even though we have not yet found the wall itself, we now know that the floor exists. The foundation beam under the wall may still exist, but if it does, it is much deeper than we have excavated.
Monday, August 14:
We have the notes of the Dominion Land Surveyor who surveyed the reserve boundaries in 1920. He noted that the Cree houses were 12' x 14' feet. Since “our” west well is slightly more than 15', we assume that the north wall of this house will be approximately 12' long. We use this information to decide which unit to begin excavating next–1 m away from the one we excavated yesterday. By the end of the day, we have dug far enough to reveal the continuation of the dark, greasy stain in the soil which, so far, appears above the log itself. As usual, it is too late in the day to excavate any lower to reveal the log. That will have to wait for tomorrow.
Dark stain above north wall.
Tuesday, August 15:
We arrive back at the site, ready to excavate the logs of the northeast corner and turn our excavations southward. The site, however, as a surprise in store for us. Instead of the northeast corner lying under the dark stain, we find only floorboards. The north wall continues eastward. Now we are really confused.
If the dark stain is not related to the buried house, what does it represent? Could it be the sole remaining trace of a more recent house–Mr. McKenzie's–built on top of an older house? Would that explain the presence of all that clay (what we called the “clay lump” layer in 2001) on top of the old house? Perhaps, the clay was shovelled on top of the old house floor in order to level the area before building the newer house. But why would someone do that rather than remove the old floor?
However, we still need to find the northeast corner of the house, so we open up the next unit. By 4:00 pm, we have found it, or rather, we have found part of it. Sometime after the house was abandoned and then covered with clay, someone dug a small hole for a fire, right smack on top of the corner of the house, destroying the end of the log and the floorboards. However, the footer under the house still exists. The remaining portion of the log that forms the east wall has definitely been squared, so we know it is one of the old houses that appear in the photos of the 1920s.
For further information contact the Curator of Aboriginal History
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