Archaeology

"Mary said that her grandfather used to have many objects made of bone (bone arrow points, awls, etc.). She said that when he died, they burned everything because that's what they used to do when someone died. They did not keep anything, which Mary felt very sorry about." From an oral history interview with Elder Mary Kassi of Old Crow (in Fafard 1997).

INTRODUCTION

There is obvious regret expressed in the above quotation from Elder Mary Kassi that so little of the people's material culture/heritage has been passed down to the current generation. The recovery of information about the past that is not available in any other form is where archaeological research can make an important contribution to the knowledge of a nation's past.

Archaeology may be defined as the study of the human past through material remains, with the aim of ordering and describing the events of the past and explaining their meaning. Of most interest to archaeologists are those objects made or modified by humans, called artifacts. Archaeology also includes any research or information that illuminates past times, from recorded history to oral history and traditional knowledge.

In the Old Crow Basin, the oral history of the Vuntut Gwitchin, which records the story of their past, is of great importance in relation to archaeological study as the Vuntut Gwitchin have been part of this land since time before memory.

"For thousands of years the tundra, forests, lakes, rivers, and mountains of the north Yukon sustained the ancestors of modern Gwitchin. These people maintained a seasonal round of activities - hunting, trapping, fishing, and gathering plants from the land. This maintained them economically, politically, spiritually, and socially. The land provided food, medicine, and materials.... Millennia of experience living off the land have endowed Gwitchin with an intimate knowledge of the geography and resources..." (Sherry and the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation 1999).

It is important to realize that oral history, recorded history, and archaeological research (especially excavations and analysis) can all contribute to our knowledge of a particular event, or period of time in the past. Thus there will be some overlap in this chapter with material presented in History, as these two subjects are complementary, and with the ongoing Vuntut Gwitchin Oral History Project which will provide the Vuntut Gwitchin perspective on the cultural resources of the Old Crow Flats Special Management Area.

Much of the archaeological work carried out in the northern Yukon may be considered historic archaeology, as it deals with sites for which there is some infromation from written (historical) sources. Morlan (1973) and others have used the terms "Historic Period" for the period from about 1870 to the present (i.e., after Euro-Canadian contact), although "post-contact" is now often used, and "Prehistoric Period" for the period from about 700 A.D. to 1870 (before Euro-Canadian contact), now called "precontact". The Parks Canada database uses "precontact" and "historic", terms which are used in this document (see Appendix I).

The geographical area of interest covered by this chapter is the Old Crow Flats Special Management Area, including Vuntut National Park, which covers a large part of the Old Crow Basin ( Plate I, Plate II, Plate III, Plate IV). The Old Crow Basin is a huge bowl-shaped structural depression between the eastern and interior mountain systems of the northern Cordillera. The Old Crow Basin consists of the Old Crow Flats, which form the floor of the basin, and the British, Richardson, and Old Crow Mountains which form the upper rim, and the slopes and pediments between the mountains and the Flats which form the sides of the Basin. Each of these areas has a unique environment and specific resources, and thus has a variety of archaeological sites.

Archaeological sites mentioned in this chapter are identified using two different systems, the national inventory system called the Borden System and the Parks Canada site designation system, used only for sites within a national park (see Appendix I for a listing of sites in Vuntut National Park by number).

The Borden System (National Museum of Man 1975) uses a combination of letters and numbers, for example "NcVi-3". This system uses a grid based on the National Topographical Series of maps where each map is identified by a pair of capital letters. In the northern Yukon the designation NV applies to map 117 (north of latitude 68^o N, the middle of the Old Crow Flats) and MV to map 116, south of 68^o N. Lower case letters indicate relative latitude and longitude within a small block, allowing archaeologists to locate the site. The number "3" identifies this site as the third archaeological site recorded in the block NcVi. All sites within Vuntut National Park would have the NV designation and sites within the Old Crow Flats Special Management Area could have either NV or MV.

Every known archaeological site located in a national park is registered within a Parks Canada specific numbering or "Provenience Number" system as well as by Borden Number. This system was designed for control of archaeological resources within a site as well as between sites. Every site in Vuntut National Park is initially identified as an entity within the park survey - 38Y (where Vuntut Park is the 38th entity in the "Y" territory of the Yukon). If that site later becomes subject to investigation such as was the case with the Dog Creek Site (38Y58), it is given a separate site number (77Y). With that number, every feature, structure, or excavation unit can be separately tracked with a hierarchy of numbers (such as 77Y2C12). Within the Parks Canada archaeological recording system, all information is processed, inventoried, catalogued, filed, and cited by the Provenience Number. In that way, a staff person or researcher can rapidly pull together all of the artifacts, photographs, field notes, drawings, or analytical data for any site, part of a site, or collection of sites with ease. Researchers and staff use the Provenience Number in all citations of archaeological material to ensure that the reference can be tracked back.

The geologic time period in which we live is called the Quaternary Period. It has been subdivided into two epochs; the Pleistocene Epoch (Pleistocene means "most recent") which extends from about 1.7 million to 10,000 years ago, and the Holocene Epoch (Holocene means "wholly recent"), which extends from about 10,000 years ago, the time of the retreat of the last glaciation, to the present. For a deeper understanding of the environment of these former times, the reader is referred to Palaeontology.

Archaeological research in the Old Crow Basin takes us as far back as the Pleistocene Epoch, and up to the time of the contact between the Vuntut Gwitchin and the arriving Euro-Canadians.

In the following sections, the evidence of the people who have occupied what is now the northern Yukon is presented, starting with the oldest material first. Sections on the archaeology of the Pleistocene, including the story of Beringia, are followed by sections on the stone tools and lithic sites of the Holocene, the late precontact sites, and historic Gwitchin and Inuvialuit archaeological sites of the Old Crow Basin.