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Lake Minnewanka Underwater Archaeology - Banff National Park

Title: Sheep Point
Archaeological Site
Lake Minnewanka
Banff National Park

People Identified:

left side: Gwyn Langeman
Archaeological Service
Banff National Park

right side: Charles Dagneau
Parks Canada
Marine Archaeology

Images of archaeologists digging into the earth

Narration

So it's just a short period each spring when the land part of this archaeological site is exposed and we've done some work there over the years, it's been sort of a punctuated project ‘cause we come in and dig like mad for three weeks and then the water level rises and its covered over again until the next spring.

Images of people scuba diving

[Gwyn] We're trying something a bit different this year. We have the Parks Canada Marine Archaeology unit out and they are doing some underwater testing just off shore because if that works out and they are able to successfully find the deposits that have the archaeology materials in them, then we can set up a longer term underwater excavation, and then we won't be so limited by time constraints.

Researchers examining deposits

Narration

We have just found the tell-tale layers that mark the cultural deposits so we are setting up a larger excavation unit.

Parks are supposed to protect the natural resources, but they also have an obligation to protect the cultural resources, and to that end we have a team of archaeologists and historians that work in this park and other mountain parks.

Diver near underwater aluminum pipes

Narration

The excavations units are marked by squares of aluminum pipe.

The site at Lake Minnewanka is one of the really premier sites in the park. It had a campsite on the shores of it here that was a travel route. It was for people coming into the mountains past the Ghost Rivers. People would camp here and they left behind remains that built up a site with several meters deep of deposits.

We use a suction dredge to suck up the sediments from the lake bottom.

There were people living here from the Clovis period leaving a spear point behind right up to historic times. There is a submerged historic townsite here from the early days of the park, so when people come to dive on these historic resources they are really just visiting the very last of a long series of human occupations in this area.

The sediment goes through a mesh bag, the fine mud flows out through the filter.

Close up of artefacts in hands

Narration

Larger objects including any cultural artifacts are caught in the filter bag and can be brought to the surface for inspection.

The cultural landscape here contains thousands of years of occupation with people coming back and visiting this area year after year to do very similar things.

These are cultural -- these are flakes that are made when they are making stone tools.

These are two of the Clovis spearpoints that we found on the shore at the Sheep Point Sites . . . these are broken. Archaeologists always found the broken bits that are left behind. You can imagine the whole point would have been like this . . . its just snapped off.

These are about as early as it gets anywhere in Banff Park, these would be from the 12 to 13 thousand year old occupational layer at the site.

And from the opposite extreme these are some of the more recent points you find in the park, small arrow heads and these are from up closer to Healy Pass.

Archaeologist digging into the earth

Narration

Why is archaeology the coolest job on the planet?
Because you never know from time to time what you are going to find, or what you're going to uncover with the next scrape of the trowel, and because you get to look at the whole story of human use of a place. Where else do you get to look at the 13 thousand year story of people and a place?