Buy Your Piece of BC Archaeological History

Sisiutl for Sale

I was browsing to price out some used skiffs, and look what I found – a custom built archaeological research vessel — only $99,000.  (I wonder what she cost to build?) The listing is here, with a PDF backup for posterity here.

I don’t have any memories of the Sisiutl —  never stepped on board — but I know she is close to the hearts of many SFU faculty and former students.

Namu Reburials

SFU Archaeology instructor Rudy Reimer holds a small replica of the handmade bentwood boxes that will be used to store ancestral Aboriginal remains. Source: SFU flickr stream.

There have been several newspaper stories recently noting the impending repatriation and reburial of human remains excavated from the famous Namu village site of the Heiltsuk Nation, on the central coast of B.C.   For example, here is one from the Vancouver Sun (PDF), another from the Globe and Mail (PDF) and a media release from Simon Fraser University itself, whose archaeology department conducted most of the excavations at this large site in the 1970s and 1980s, mainly under the direction of Roy Carlson. As ever, each newspaper source contains slightly different information.

The Bill Reid Centre For Northwest Coast Art Studies

Gwayasdums house under construction 1899. Source: SFU.

The Bill Reid Centre for Northwest Coast Art Studies is part of the Department of Archaeology and First Nation Studies at Simon Fraser University, although it is physically located in downtown Vancouver. It  currently shares space with the Bill Reid Gallery on Hornby St., near SFU’s Harbour Centre Campus. They have a website that looks to be growing fast with some good content – and despite the name of the centre, it is not only about Haida Art, or even just about Art:

A major activity of the Centre is to visually document through photographs, drawings and other works, the depth and richness of Northwest Coast Art in the hundreds of communities in which monumental architecture and sculpture were recorded.

I’ll point out a few highlights and make some comments “after the jump”

Lasqueti Island Archaeology

Projectile points and other artifacts from Lasqueti Island.

So many of the Gulf Island of the BC Coast are essentially unknown to archaeologists.  This goes for the larger ones as well as the small: I’d count Lasqueti, Hornby, Texada, Saturna, and Prevost Islands among those, while even major islands like Mayne Island and Quadra Island are often known only from one site, dug long ago.

This doesn’t mean there hasn’t been any work, or that there aren’t interesting and revealing collections of archaeological material already in existence.  So it is great to see that Dana Lepofsky of SFU has put together a small web site on the archaeology of Lasqueti Island.  She deftly combines some ethnographic and traditional practice information with a series of photographs of private collections of artifacts.  Among these are projectile points apparently assignable to the Charles Phase, which dates around 5400 to 3600 years ago.  Also note the beautiful ground stone adze or chisel in this picture: the luminous green nephrite (B.C. “jade”) would have been imported from the Central Fraser River, probably no closer than the Hope area.  This flaked and ground sandstone club is an unusual find, probably used in hunting or fishing, but perhaps also in warfare.

If you click the photographs, then a window will open; if you click the “image details” link on the pop-up window then you will be taken to more information about that photo, if available.  There are also two PDFs linked, one to the role of herring in traditional subsistence, and another on mapping a fishtrap.  These stem from Lepofsky’s ongoing work (and excellent website) in Tla’amin territory on the Sunshine Coast (previously), where she will be running an archaeological fieldschool again this summer.  While this only scratches the surface of Lasqueti Archaeology, it does point to the usefulness of looking at what citizens have picked up over the years as a guide to some of the time depth and activities of an area.

Sadly, of course, some of the artifacts picked up may have resulted from, or even caused, unnecessary disturbances to the archaeological record.  Lepofsky provides a helpful “call before you dig” article as well – specific to Lasqueti yet applicable elsewhere.  In typical Dana fashion, as a Lasquetian herself, the number to call is her own!

Lasqueti Island intertidal fishtrap. Photo: Dana Lepofsky.

1973 Aboriginal Perspective on UBC-MOA and SFU archaeology

Excerpt of 1973 Nesika newsletter criticizing MOA and SFU Archaeology. Click to view full page. Scroll down this page for link to plain text.

This is interesting, from the newsletter Nesika: Voice of B.C. Indians Vol. 2 No. 1 (February 1973), Page 6:

MONEY FOR BOAT: There is money to fund a boat to take archaeology students up and down our coastline to dig up the bones of our grandfathers and sift, sort, and label sacred objects from our burial grounds, but no money for us to treat our heritage with the dignity it. deserves?

This can only refer to the former pride and joy of the SFU department of Archaeology, the motor vessel Sisiutl.

That page from Nesika has two interesting articles.  One argues for the creation of a Cultural Centre at Hesquiat, while the other passionately objects to the millions spent on the UBC Museum of Anthropology and the above-mentioned Sisiutl.  Click on the image above for a legible image of the entire text, or click here for a transcript.  It is chastening to see the eloquence and power of these arguments from almost 40 years ago.  Hesquiat still has no Cultural Centre so far as I know while the Museum of Anthropology just wrapped up a 60+ million dollar renovation and SFU Archaeology has what amounts to their own, brand-new building as well, at what I hear was a cost of about 5 million dollars.

HESQUIAT BAND CULTURAL CENTRE

Lack of funds hit by Chief Rocky Amos

VANCOUVER (Staff) — After Indian Affairs had denied a request for funds for the Hesquiat Cultural Centre due to lack of funds, Band Chief Rocky Amos told the department that “we cannot accept the limitation of funds as valid.” Pointing to the $10 million available to a museum to house Indian artifacts at UBC and to other reports of funds granted for more white people to study Indians, Chief Amos wrote DIA: “It is difficult to follow the line of thinking that makes money available to exhibit our inheritance to city based people and when the rightful heirs to these very artifacts ask for assistance to house their history in an area where it will be meaningful to them, they are denied. “We of the Hesquiat Band are not unique and we have proven we can do it. Now we are made to crawl on our stomachs begging for funds to house our heritage. My pride is aching from begging but my pride also screams in agony when our people are forced into whitemen’s museums to see their inheritance.”

As the second article concludes in terms it is hard to argue with:

If there is money available for museums to store stolen work, then there is money available for museums to be built where that work belongs. With the children and grandchildren of the artists who represented a culture and society which has not, despite all efforts, conveniently died.

First custom built archaeology research vessel in North America: The Sisiutl. Recently scrapped by SFU. Source: American Antiquity.

PS: kudos to the Union of BC Indian Chiefs for putting so much archival information online.  In related news, I previously linked to the archives of the Native Voice, which is another great resource for understanding First Nations politics and which also contains intriguing aboriginal perspectives on the practice of BC Archaeology.

Vapourware: Journal of Northwest Archaeology

Looks like someone at SFU is about to launch a new archaeology journal focusing on archaeology of the Northwest.  (Presumably NW North America, but you never know when it comes to SFU).  The pages are formatted, but blank, except for the instructions to authors.  I hope this journal template turns into something real.

Speaking of dSpace

The Globe and Mail has a story on the (in progress) digitization and internet posting of UBC’s complete run of over 35,500 theses and dissertations – with an arch response by SFU’s Dean of Libraries (or whatever).  As I’ve been noting, numerous other universities have these schemes as well, usually some flavour of the dSpace software package. Typically, University of Toronto calls it T-Space.  Dissertations there do not seem to be online unless you are a library card holder, though strictly speaking they are not in T-Space either I don’t think.  Nonetheless, they obviously have a digital copy mounted on a server.

Tla’amin Archaeology

Toggling Composite Harpoon head, articulated in situ.

The Tla’amin (Sliammon)  First Nation on the Sunshine Coast (map) have been engaged in a wonderful community-based archaeology project with Dana Lepofsky at SFU and her team.  It’s not surprising when you think of what a great person Dana is – brilliant, yet nice, warm, generous. (Hi Dana!)

The website for this project is well worth browsing to see what meaningful partnerships with First Nations looks like.  I think it is a model for the future of BC Archaeology to work together – for then the project becomes not all about the past, but all about the present.  As they say – the past is over; it only exists in the present. Old things exist, but they exist now.   So how can we, as archaeologists, use our particular skills to help communities and the public appreciate the past as a meaningful part of the present, and hence of the future?  This impressive web site shows many great ways how.

Check out this page on Kleh Kwa Num – Scuttle Bay, for example, whih deftly points to the parallel stories of oral history, ethnohistory, and archaeology.  Or, this video of “what happens when an archaeological site is logged?”  As Elsie Paul, a Tl’amin elder says, their ancestral land was hammered for a century and what did aboriginal people get from it?  “Nothing”.  And as Dana says, it became very difficult to find intact archaeological sites around Powell River and the industrial areas, in particular.

These downloadable posters are also really well done, as is their prospectus/report (PDF) – very accessible stuff.   I do wish they didn’t use the silly flash interface for their pictures, though they do allow access to them otherwise – this project is really turning archaeology on its head!

Upside Down Archaeology in Tla'amin Territory.