The Prehistory of Charlie Lake Cave

Article Summary by Jonathan C. Driver, May 2015               This paper and The Significance of the Fauna from the Charlie Lake Cave Site by Jonathan C. Driver, are excerpts from Early Human Occupation in British Columbia, an archaeological book published in 1996. In 1988 the annual meeting of the Canadian Archaeological Association was held in Whistler, B.C. As part of the meeting, Roy Carlson, a professor at SFU, organized a symposium on the early human presence in British Columbia. Knut Fladmark and I each gave a paper on our work at Tse’K’wa, based on the 1983 excavation season.             Although it was intended to publish the book quickly, there were various delays, and Fladmark and I went back to Tse’K’wa in 1990 and 1991 before the proceedings of the Whistler symposium were finally published in 1996. We updated our papers slightly based on the later excavations, but both of these papers really reflect our thinking prior to the full analysis of the material from 1990 and 1991.             Fladmark’s paper is a good introduction to the location and geology of the site, and it provides an account of the cultural materials recovered in 1983.             Driver’s paper summarizes the animal bones from the 1983 excavations, and devotes more time to considering how the wide variety of animals were brought to the site. I noted that the bison bone was found in locations with lower amounts of small mammals and birds and suggested that most of the smaller animals were brought to the site by non-human predators, such as owls

The Paleoindian Component at Charlie Lake Cave (HbRf39), British Columbia

Charlie Lake Cave (HbRf 39) is a stratified site in northeastern British Columbia, Canada, containing a flutedpoint component at the base of the excavated deposits. The small artifact assemblage includes a fluted point, stone bead, core tool, and retouched flake. A diverse associated fauna includes fish, birds, and mammals, indicating a more open environment than exists today. Radiocarbon dates suggest that the artifact assemblage was deposited about 10,500 years ago.   Article Summary by Jonathan C. Driver, May 2015             This was the first major publication about Tse’K’wa and it focuses on what for many people was the most exciting find at the site – a very early occupation of so-called “Paleoindian” people.             There continues to be considerable debate about when the first people came to the Americas. In the 1980’s (and continuing today), the weight of evidence supports a long-held belief that the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of the Americas made their initial migration from somewhere in northeast Asia.  However, the timing of this movement, the context in which it occurred, and the date are still contentious. (It is, of course, a simplification to describe this as a single event. There is plenty of evidence for a number of major migrations across the Bering Strait, and it is likely that there was a flow of people and ideas in both directions over thousands of years).             In the 1980’s, as today, virtually all archaeologists agree that “Paleoindian” cultures dating to the end of the last glacial period (about 12,000 BC) indicate a well-established population throughout the Americas by that time, although there is still considerable debate about when the first ancestors of Paleoindians arrived in the Americas.             While the way of life of these peoples must have varied across different environments found in North and South America, the most distinctive Paleoindian artifacts in North America are a kind of stone spear point, known as “fluted points”.  Fluted points were chipped from fine-grained rocks, such as chert, jasper and obsidian, and generally had a long, lanceolate outline. In order to fit the base of the point into the shaft of the spear, it was thinned by striking off some flakes that ran from the base towards the sharp tip, creating a shallow channel or “flute” on one or both surfaces of the stone spearpoint.             Fluted points have been found in association with extinct animals, most commonly woolly mammoth and extinct forms of bison, but also with horse and camel, primarily  in the central and western half of the USA. Due to different geological and soil conditions in eastern USA, most fluted point sites there do not preserve animal bone. In 1983 when a fluted point was found at Tse’K’wa, there was only one site in all of Canada where fluted points had been found in association with organic material that could be radiocarbon dated – at Debert, in Nova Scotia where charcoal in the soil provided some dates. Tse’K’wa was the first site in Canada that produced a fluted point in association with animal bones that had clearly been butchered by people – in this case an extinct form of bison – and the first site in Canada in which a fluted point was found at the bottom of a long sequence of later cultural periods. The unique soil conditions at the Tse\u27K\u27wa site have enabled archaeologists to use radio carbon dating on fluted points and animal remains to gain further insight into the lifestyles and timeline of early human occupation of Canada.             Also of significance was the location of Tse’K’wa just to the east of the Rockies. Archaeologists had proposed that one route into the Americas during the late ice age was between the Rocky Mountain glaciers to the west and the massive ice sheets that covered Canada to the east – this so-called “ice-free corridor” might have allowed early hunters to move from unglaciated areas of Siberia and Alaska into the vast uninhabited continents to the south of the ice. Although fluted points had been picked up from ploughed fields in BC and Alberta, before the excavations at Tse’K’wa none of them had been radiocarbon dated, and so it was difficult to relate them to known dates of glaciers and post-glacial landscapes

Stratigraphy, Radiocarbon Dating and Culture History of Charlie Lake Cave, British Columbia

Three seasons of fieldwork at Charlie Lake Cave, British Columbia, have revealed a sequence of stratified deposits that spans the Late Pleistocene and entire Holocene. Analyses of sediments, radiocarbon dates, faunal remains, and artifacts show that the site was first occupied by people at about 10 500 B.P., when local environments were more open than today. By 9500 B.P., boreal forest had moved into the area, and human use of the site was minimal until about 7000 B.P., when a brief occupation of the site probably included a human burial. Use of the site intensified after about 4500 B.P., possibly because the cave became more accessible. The site was used both as a residential base camp and as a more temporary hunting station or lookout.   Article Summary by Jonathan C. Driver, May 2015   After we had completed our excavations in 1991 we decided that we should focus on writing up what we had excavated, and not undertake further excavations at the site. This paper was written to summarize our state of knowledge about the archaeological remains at the site, and focused on describing the stone tools, the overall stratigraphy, and the dating. The stratigraphic summary replaced earlier work based on the 1983 excavations, and we were able to refine our dating of the site as a result of more radiocarbon dates. The different cultural periods were based mainly on the work done by Martin Handly for his M.A. thesis at Trent University. The long list of authors reflects the need for a team approach to archaeological work, and include the project directors (Knut Fladmark and Jon Driver), stone tool analysis and development of the cultural sequence (Martin Handly), animal bone analysis (Randall Preston and Jon Driver), sediment analysis (Greg Sullivan and Knut Fladmark), and radiocarbon dating (Erle Nelson). The most important aspect of the site is that it preserves a very rare record of humanly made artifacts dating from the end of the last ice age (at least 10,500 BC) to very recent times. The many layers at the site allow us to separate the different cultural periods. Good preservation of bone allowed us to submit radiocarbon dates that provide approximate ages for the various cultures that used the site. The artifacts that exhibit the most change through time are projectile points – the sharp stone tips for spears, darts and arrows. In much of western Canada it is difficult to date archaeological sites, because many of them are found in shallow soils where radiocarbon dating is difficult for two reasons. First, animal bone is often not preserved due to the acidic nature of the soils. Second, although charcoal is often found, it cannot be reliably associated with human activity, because natural forest fires also produce charcoal. As a result, archaeologists look at the style of the projectile points to assign approximate ages. Tse’K’wa provides an opportunity to link artifacts of different styles to radiocarbon dates in a site with many distinct layers. So Tse’K’wa is a foundation for understanding the sequence of different cultures in the region. The article also discusses the possible early presence of microblade technology. Microblades are the most efficient way of producing a cutting edge when the base technology is chipped stone. A small piece of high-quality raw material (known as the core) is shaped in such a way that numerous parallel-sided slivers of stone can be removed. These “microblades” can then be hafted in wood or antler to form knives or arrow barbs. The concept is rather like our utility knives that have replaceable blades. This technology allows people to carry small quantities of high quality stone with them, ensuring that they always have a sharp blade available. Not all archaeologists agree that the early microblade core from Tse’K’wa is part of this technology, because it doesn’t conform to the classic methods of core manufacture. However, we argue that evidence for the removal of microblades is very obvious, and the lack of classic core preparation is because of the tabular nature of the raw material. The paper also introduces some information about animal bones, including the raven burials, evidence for environmental change, and the presence of collared lemming. These topics were subsequently explored in more detail in other papers

A Paleoecological model for northwest coast prehistory

Bibliography: p. 299-319.The evolution of the Northwest Coast cultural pattern is discussed in terms of changing energy availability through periods of environmental instability and quasi-stability. Evidence is presented for the simultaneous occurrenc e of two different archaeolo gica l traditions along the Northwest Coast between about 10,000 and 5,000 B.P. The first is characterized by a blade-andcore technology and de-emphasis of bifacial flaking. Site areas are associated with raised beaches and distributed along the whole coast north of central Queen Charlotte Sound . To the south, particularly on the lower Fraser and Columbia Rivers there occurs contemporaneously an entirely different tradition characterized by large leaf-shaped bifaces and a lack of a true blade-and-core technology. The distributional break between the two traditions corresponds precisely with the zero-isobar separating sea-level s significantly higher than present north of central Queen Charlotte Sound, and sea-levels significantly lower to the south. It is suggested that this correlation reflects the divergent effects of higher and lower sea-levels on the coastal environment and corresponding divergence of cultural adaptive strategies. The blade-and-core tradition probably represents a long-standing cultural adaptation to the inter-tidal and general marine resources of the sub-arctic Pacific region, with the southern tradition more heavily based on riverine and terrestrial resources. The rapid efflorescence of large semi-permanent settlements, art and wealth objects, and other features typical of ethnographic coastal cultures, 5,000 B.P. correlates with the stabilization of sea-level at about the present position along most of the coast at this time. It is suggested that gradient maturation of the river systems following coastline stabilization allowed the establishment of the massive and dependable salmon runs on which the dense and semi-sedentary populations of the ethnographic Northwest Coast were based

Historical Archaeology in Northwestern North America

Proceedings of the 4th Annual Chacmool Archaeology Conference