Archaeological sites are plentiful at Lakehead’s Thunder Bay campus. Here’s what students are finding | 24CA News

Walking alongside the McIntyre River on Lakehead University’s Thunder Bay campus, it is easy to overlook the hundreds of years of historical past beneath one’s ft.

Students have been digging up the Thunder Bay, Ont., campus for treasure for years, the place there are greater than a dozen archaeological websites situated on the normal territory of Fort William First Nation.

Thousands of artifacts have been extracted which present proof of individuals quarrying and utilizing native stone, referred to as taconite, to make instruments.

“Stone tools were important for survival because they provided people with equipment to hunt, prepare hide clothing and shelter, and other necessities,” mentioned Matthew Boyd, chair of Lakehead University’s anthropology division, in a news launch.

And the younger archaeologists have not needed to dig very deep to seek out them. 

“Everything in the boreal forest, for the most part, is within the first 30 centimetres,” Clarence Surette, bio-archaeology technician for Lakehead’s anthropology division, informed 24CA News. “You have 10,000 years of history in 30 centimetres.”

While the precise dates of the websites are at the moment unknown, they have been estimated at between 4,000 and seven,000 years previous, at a time when the shore of Lake Superior was believed to be a lot increased than at present, overlaying a lot of the town.

First subject faculty in 8 years

This spring marked the anthropology division’s first subject faculty since 2015, giving college students the possibility to discover one of many campus’s archaeological websites from the center interval to unearth extra artifacts.

They begin with 50-by-50 centimetre check squares earlier than committing to metre-block excavations, which provide “a small snapshot of the picture of how life would have been,” mentioned Surette.

The subject faculty was supported by:

• Lakehead University’s Department of Anthropology.
• The Niijii Indigenous Mentorship Program.
• Woodland Heritage Northwest.
• Ontario Archaeological Society.
• Parks Canada.

These websites reveal a number of actions alongside each side of the river, the place individuals made stone instruments, camped, hunted, and broke open animal bones, mentioned Lakehead analysis affiliate Jill Taylor-Hollings, president of the Ontario Archaeological Society.

“It provides students a learning experience that they can take into their future and it enables them to then become hired on as archaeological technicians with companies across Ontario, and also just furthering their experience for graduate school,” Taylor-Hollings mentioned.

From copper spear factors to hammerstones, seeing college students maintain items of historical past is at all times an thrilling feeling, added Surette.

“They’re the first person to actually see and touch the object that somebody would have touched many years ago, and I think that for a lot of people, it kind of gives them a little bit of a connection to that time period and those people that were here before,” he mentioned.

For graduate pupil Steph Skelton, who helped with this yr’s subject faculty, their favorite discover from the positioning was the chopper.

“People flaked off pieces of it and then used it to get into bone marrow,” they defined. “It’s a very elegant tool, it’s easy to make … and it does a really good job.” 

New Indigenous coaching program

This yr additionally noticed a brand new Indigenous archaeological technician coaching program, which ran from May 15 to 19. The program was developed by Woodland Heritage Northwest and the Ontario Archaeological Society, for the Waasigan Transmission Line Project.

The Hydro One challenge proposes a brand new double-circuit transmission line between Lakehead Transformer Station in Shuniah and Mackenzie transformer station in Atikokan, and a brand new single-circuit transmission line between the Mackenzie transformer station and Dryden transformer station.

Part of the proposal has been partaking with Indigenous and Métis communities that shall be affected by the strains. 

Indigenous individuals representing eight communities participated within the week-long archaeological dig at Lakehead. They have been taught among the fundamentals, like mapping, web site surveying and excavation, and materials tradition identification, “so that they can monitor the situations for their own communities and what’s happening in archaeological projects in their communities,” mentioned Taylor-Hollings.

“They can say OK, this is the archaeology in our land, it’s very important. We need to preserve that, make sure that it gets looked after for future generations,” she mentioned.

Archaeology is a key a part of environmental assessments for developments. Land preservation and cultural useful resource administration are on the coronary heart of that course of, which is why websites are not often absolutely excavated, mentioned Taylor-Hollings.

But at Lakehead’s websites, the aim of the digs is analysis and schooling, and searching ahead, it can be crucial for at present’s archaeologists to depart room for when tomorrow’s specialists have extra superior methods.

“The work we did this year kind of begets future work and future opportunities, and that’s really exciting,” Skelton mentioned.