What We Are Working On: Report from the Field:
Archaeology, 2001
Archaeology Report 1 (Stanley Mission, 2001)
Margaret Hanna, archaeologistThroughout July and August, I will file periodic reports from two sites that I am excavating in northern Saskatchewan: the Old Village at Stanley Mission on the Churchill River (July), and an ancient fishing site on the east side of Lac la Ronge (August). Read on and decide for yourself if archaeological field work really is an exciting, romantic, and exotic adventure.
Monday, June 25:
I'm finally on my way. The van is loaded with equipment both high-tech (digital camera, computer, GPS) and low-tech (trowels, screens, and waterproof notebooks), personal gear, books, maps, and groceries. On top: an aluminum canoe that will be our daily transportation across the Churchill River at Stanley Mission.
This day has been a long time coming. It began last winter, making plans, consulting with the Elders and councillors at Stanley Mission, preparing budgets, and writing grant applications. As field season approached, activities switched to buying supplies and equipment, arranging accommodation, fixing screens, and trying to finish last year’s permit report. In the midst of all this, I still had my other curatorial duties – arrange loans of artifacts, identify artifacts, go to meetings, and help with the opening of a new gallery at the Museum.
Packing day arrives. The temperature goes screaming up to a humid 35 degrees C! Try wrestling a canoe onto the top of a 3/4 ton van on a day like that!
That's all behind me now. I'm on the road. On a good day, it's a 6-1/2 hour drive to La Ronge, but today is not a good day. Strong west winds threaten to rip the canoe off the top of the van, but everything reaches La Ronge, intact if slightly battered. I meet up with Bev Wright, an undergraduate student at the University of Saskatchewan, who is one of my crew members.
Wednesday, June 26:
This is it! I'm finally “in the field”!
First order of business: meet the rest of the crew – Annie McKenzie and Cora Ballantyne, both students at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College and members of the Stanley Mission band. Bev has previous archaeological experience, and she assisted me last summer in mapping the site. Annie and Cora have no experience with or knowledge of archaeology, but they are very interested in their history.
Curtis Charles, Annie McKenzie, Cora Ballantyne, and Bev Wright loading equipment into the boat.
Second order of business: get the equipment across the Churchill River to the Old Village. Cora and Annie size up the carrying capacity of our canoe relative to the amount of equipment, and go find a friend with a “real” boat and motor to take them and the equipment across. Bev and I paddle the canoe over.
The Old Village as it is today.
Third order of business: familiarize the crew with the site. We walk through the Old Village with the 1920 Dominion Lands Survey map and archival photographs, trying to pick out house depressions in waist-high grass. We go over to the potato garden and collect artifacts from the surface so that everyone will become familiar with the sorts of artifacts they will be finding in the excavations. Now this is exciting, although Annie and Cora look askance when I say that, yes, they must pick up even scraps of rusty metal and bits of broken bone.
Thursday, June 28:
The Farmer's Almanac promised that this would be a hot, dry summer. So what is this wet stuff falling out of the sky? What begins as broken cloud becomes heavy leaden overcast and eventually intermittent showers. We persist until about 11:00 am, establishing a baseline for the excavation units, but now the rain is coming down hard and steady so we abandon the site.
Bev Wright and Annie McKenzie cataloguing artifacts.
What do archaeologists do when it is raining? We clean and catalogue artifacts. We set up in the Science Lab in the Adult Learning Centre. Cora and Annie decide cataloguing isn’t nearly as much fun as collecting. I agree: yes, it is tedious, but it’s also essential. We discover that the range hood light in the old Home Ec room is perfect for highlighting embossed lettering, so we have fun reading manufacturer’s marks and messages on tin cans and boot heels. Some days it doesn’t take much to keep us amused.
Friday, June 29:
It's a one-hour drive from La Ronge (where I'm staying) to Stanley Mission, and most of that is over gravel roads. Northern gravel roads have to be traveled to be believed.
1. “Gravel” is any piece of rock small enough to fit into the back of a dump truck
2. The roads continually curve around lakes, marshes, and rocky outcrops. The sharper the curve, the bigger the truck you meet.
3. Some stretches are so badly pot-holed that it is nothing short of a miracle that the van doesn’t rattle apart into a million pieces. Then, just when you get to know where all the pot-holes are, somebody moves them.
The people who maintain the road into Stanley are out today, grading it to eliminate some of the pot-holes and washboard. Wish the people who maintained the highway would do the same.
Saturday, June 30:
Warm and sunny. We’re back at the site and finish laying out the excavation grid around “Feature 11”, a rectangular depression about 8 m by 10 m. It might be an old garden; it might be a house depression. We hope the excavations will provide the evidence that will help us confirm its identify, when it was created, how it changed through time, and when it was abandoned or demolished.
Bev has a pet deer fly that follows her wherever she goes; she is not amused. We are all a bit red by the end of the day.
Sunday, July 1:
Tripod construction at site.
We start the day by constructing a tripod from which to hang the screen. This should be simple – cut down three trees, tie them together, put them up, hang the screen. Right? Wrong! Somehow, we turn it into a Four Stooges’ routine, but after an hour or so we finally get tripod and screen up, and it works. Now, at last, we can begin to excavate.
Jergens cologne bottle
Turns out that excavating isn't so much fun, either. Troweling through a dense mat of grass roots is hard work. Finding artifacts is fun, but the paper work that goes along with each find isn’t. Shaking the soil through the screen is dirty work. It isn’t all hard tedious work, though. Bev finds a gunflint, Cora finds a Jergens cologne bottle, and Annie finds some seed beads. I get fish scales.
Monday, July 2:
Excavation pit showing long wooden stake.
As Cora begins to excavate this morning, she complains that there is a large root just under the surface. Don't cut it, I say, it might be an artifact. Turns out it is a long wooden stake, with a nail in it, that extends into my unit. I find a second one, badly rotted, about 50 cm away. Maybe this is a garden: the old photographs show all the gardens surrounded by picket fences.
Thunderstorms hit in the afternoon (more of that “hot, dry summer” the Farmers' Almanac promised). The second one leaves us soaked in seconds, just as we are closing up the site.
We've been at the site for 6 days; time for a break. For me that means paperwork, reports, starting another grant application, and laundry.
For further information contact the Curator of Aboriginal History
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