Final Report of the 1983 Season at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alberta

Summary

This is the final report of archaeological activities during the 1983 field season by staff of Alberta Culture at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. The site has been identified by the Provincial Government for the development of an on-site public interpretive program which will include a 2400 square meter interpretive building. One of the primary purposes in fielding a crew at the site was to conduct archaeological studies of the site areas where development would cause surface disturbance. Such areas included parking lots, access roads, the building site and smaller related facilities. A second purpose in initiating a multi -year archaeological project at the site was to begin acquiring information about the site which is not available from previous studies and which is necessary for the interpretive program planned for the site.

A three month field season with a crew of ten addressed both of these objectives . Excavations determined that no conflict existed with the placement of the proposed building site. However, the originally proposed access road was found to traverse areas rich in archaeological materials. Revised road alignments were proposed and subsequently examined. This resulted in an acceptable alignment eventually being identified. Several alternate parking areas were also examined and conservation excavations designed to recover a sample of the cultural materials were undertaken. The cultural assemblage recovered from the parking areas below the cliff consisted primarily of a thin scatter of debitage and stone tools, fire-broken-rock, and bison bone. Several sub-surface pit features were encountered. These are believed to be cooking, boiling or roasting pits. The nature of the assemblage was such that continued excavation was not recommended, but the recovery of additional features was considered worthwhile and we recommend control led surface stripping to expose other features in the parking and access road areas. This would be conducted in 1984. Additional mitigation-related studies will be required in 1984 due to changes in some of the development plans.

Other excavations conducted in 1983, not associated with the site development program included testing the camp/processing portion of the Head-Smashed-In site complex located on the rolling prairie below the kill site. Tests here were widespread, consisting of single excavation units placed over a wide area in order to determine the nature and extent of the processing deposits. Recognizing the paucity of archaeological information on bison processing - as opposed to killing and initial butchering - it is anticipated that additional studies of the processing site will be conducted for years to come. The 1983 excavations were designed as fact-finding in nature. Results of these excavations indicated a dense, pavement-like deposit of cultural materials relating to secondary butchering and processing spread over an area of, at least, 0.5 square kilometer. Butchered bison bone, fire-broken-rock and lithic debitage and tools dominated the assemblage. Nearly all of our results indicate heavy use of the site in the Late Prehistoric Period, with only minimal evidence of earlier use. The pavement of cultural material lacked any stratigraphy and was contained entirely within the upper 25 cm of soil.

This report presents descriptions of all excavations conducted and analysis and interpretations of the results. Analysis is necessarily hampered by the nature of the 1983 field season. It combined mitigation-related excavations over a very large area, often in places lacking cultural remains, and research excavations also widely spaced and placed in areas of enormous richness but lacking stratigraphy. This report also attempts some preliminary statements about the nature of the data base pertaining to bison processing at the site. It also reports on the status of the archaeological deposits situated in areas slated for site development.

This tDAR resource originally was a citation record migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. In 2015 it was updated and further enhanced as part of the Center for Digital Antiquity's efforts to improve the content of tDAR.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• National Archeological Database (NADB)

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Record Identifiers

NADB document id number(s): 475417

NADB citation id number(s): 000000064933

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