Introduction:
Head-Smashed-In buffalo jump (DkPj-1) is a cliff located at where the foothills of the Rocky Mountains meet the Great Plains, and northwest of Fort Macleod, Alberta. The jump is the one of the oldest and best preserved buffalo jumps in the world. Head-Smashed-In buffalo jump has been a well-known archaeological site and a UNESCO heritage site where native people in Alberta used for hunting bison for approximately 6,000 years.
The site played a significant role for the study of the strategic hunting method practiced by Native American. The native people hunted herds of bison by stampeding them over a 10- 18 metre high cliff. This hunting method required a superior knowledge of regional topography and bison behaviour. The carcasses of the bison killed were carved up by the native people and butchered in the butchering camp set up on the flats.
The firs settlement of the site was in 1874. Over the years, it received significant attention from the arrow head collectors. According to XXX, from then until 1964, collecting activity increased, and 3-5 ft. of surface deposits had been stripped over an area of some 5,000 ft2. Research by the University of Calgary at the site began in 1965, the tests demonstrated that the site was in excess of 3,000 years old. The artifacts found in the site from the past excavations including tipi rings, buried camps rock alignments, cairns, eagle-trapping pits, vision-quest structures, pictographs, and burials.
Head-Smashed-In (HSI) was designated as a cultural World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1981. This site is governed by the Alberta tourism, Parks and Recreation and Culture, which is a ministry of the executive council...
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...ts were labelled with the upper case letters which represented the material types and a numeric letter. The artifacts were placed in different boxes. The artifact analysis was then conducted and the characteristics such as tool type and material type of each artifact were recorded on the artifact catalog forms. The material samples of lithic tools, faunal remains, and ceramics remains were compare with existing artifacts to identify their material type. The Vernier scale was used for the measurements of each lithic tools.
To identify the specific type, functions and time period of the artifacts, various archaeology books, reports, and journal were referred. The interpretation was then conducted by dividing the artifacts into different area on the map and investigating their relationships.
The laboratory results indicates the time period of the following artifacts..
The paper talked about the new mud glyph cave art site the was discovered in northern Alabama. It is believe that the artifacts and the images that is located in the cave linked back to the Early and Middle Woodland periods. The cave was named “19th Unnamed Cave” by a naming system that was used be University of Tennessee. Other main points in this paper include the 19th Unnamed Cave, the mud glyph art that it contains, and how the mud glyph contributes to the understanding of mud glyph assemblage preservation, and it helps illuminates the chronological placement of the art form. The cave is located in northern Alabama with a cave mouth of 25 m in diameter and with more than 5 km of underground passageways. The article hypothesized that since the entrance of the cave had some fluvial action, there would no archaeological material that would have been preserved.
According to Kamp 1997, Sinagua is described as archaeological culture that originated from parts of Northern and central Arizona. The book covers extensively process on the archaeological investigation. This is where Kamp take the reader through selection process of research area and site. She also shows importance of complying with archaeological excavation laws and regulations. The book also offers a good insight on the excavation strategies, site mapping as well as artifact analysis and dating methods (Kamp, 1997). She explains in details and relate successfully archaeological dating methods that include stratigraphy, seriation and absolute dating methods with Lizard Man Case (Kamp, 1997). The information offered is well explained and of great importance even to
When the Europeans first migrated to America, they didn’t know much about the ancestral background of the different types of the Indian tribes that were settled in Virginia and along the East Coast. Many of the Indian tribes became hostile towards the colonist because the colonists were interfering with their way of life. This lead the natives to attempt to destroy the frontier settlements. Many forts in this area were erected to protect the settlers and their families. One the historical land...
There are three parts in West’s book; the first part focuses on the sociological, ecological and economic relationships of the plains Indians, starting with the first establish culture of North America, the Clovis peoples. Going into extensive detail pertaining to early geology and ecology, West gives us a glimpse into what life on the early plains must have looked to early peoples. With vastly differing flora and fauna to what we know today, the early plains at the end of the first ice age, were a different place and lent itself to a diverse way of life. The Clovis peoples were accomplished hunters, focusing on the abundance of Pleistocene megafauna such as earlier, larger forms of bison. Though, little human remains were found, evidence of their s...
“The Barbeau archives at the Canadian Museum of Civilization: some current research problems” Anthropologica 43(2): 191. Accessed November 2004 on ProQuest http://proquest.umi.com/. ProQuest document ID: 357968991
Turfa, Jean Maclntosh. American Journal of Archaeology. N.p.: Archaeological Institute of America, 1977. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
The Cree lived in the Northern Plains, which was also home to the Sarsi, Blackfoot, Plains Ojibway, and Assiniboin. Many of the tribes were equestrian bands moving to pursue the buffalo. The buffalo was their resource for food, material for dwellings, clothing, cooking vessels, rawhide cases, and bone and horn implements. The introduction of the horse by the Spanish led to the plains Indians to become more able and skillful hunters. Each tribe had different methods of hunting, preservation, and preparation of meat (Cox, Jacobs 98).
The Native American Indians had no beasts of burden, no plows, no wagons, no means of transportation, and no way to move heavy objects other than by their own power. The Europeans brought over horses, oxen, donkeys, and camels. Horses became very valuable to the Native Americans. For the hunter-gatherers or nomads, the effect was beneficial because the horse enabled them to cover great distances, and hunters could locate and kill the bison more easily. H...
My story is about Indians that hunt buffalo. In the 1500's Indians ran on foot across the plains and they brought dogs to carry the hunters pack (load). They would travel a long ways to hunt buffalo. Once they saw buffalo, they would go back to their camp and tell the other warriors that they saw buffalo. They would leave to hunt in the morning and when they were able to see outside, the warriors went towards where they saw the buffalo. Then when they got to the buffalo, they would circle them and stab them so they die.
The area had been inhabited by the Makah who after the mudslide told stories about the civilization being buried. About four centuries later a storm occurred and the lost town was found. A hiker discovered the ancient town and decided to contacts the University of Washington to avoid the area from being looted. The area quickly began to be studied. The discovered consisted of over 50,000 artifacts and 11 years. A museum was opened to display the artifacts found. Amongst the artifacts were whale bones which showed how the Makahs hunted whales and used them to make tools and to eat. The discovered town of Ozette was even compared to Pompeii which was also discovered in near to perfect condition. Due to the low oxygen the items were exposed to items that would otherwise have quickly rot were kept in excellent condition. It is fascinating the things nature can do and thanks to that we have a village to explore and discover more about the ancient Makah
Reynolds, Peter J. “Experimental Archaeology. A Perspective for the Future” Occasional Papers 1. (1995): 25-28. Print.
One of the world oldest shipwrecks was found on the coast of Uluburun, near southwestern Turkey, which contained the wealthiest collection of Bronze Age items found in the Mediterranean (Holloway, April). Mehmed Cakir discovered the Ship in 1982 at depths of about 52 metres, when the ship had sunk it was carrying over 20 tons of cargo which included both raw materials and finished good (Holloway, April) (Image 12). The materials that were in the ship have been traced back to at least seven different civilizations, which are Mycenaean, Syro-Palestinian, Cypriot, Egyptian, Kassite, Assyrian and Nubian (Holloway, April). Some of the materials that were found were ten tons of copper, gold, silver, beads made out of glass, bronze tools and wooden writing boards and ceramics ( (Holloway, April) (Image 13). These items indicate that there was possibly an international trade network that was around the
Regardless of my lack of knowledge, I started to work on the geology collection by examining one small segment of the entire collection. The sample section of the collection contains several boxes of geological textbooks, maps, magazines, and several geological reports from the Department of Water and Power. One archaeological method I have learned from one of my previous archaeology classes is when archaeologists conduct their work in small areas or test pits in the archaeological site. I am applying this archaeological method to my geology collection sample because I can organize the geology collection into different categories and stacking the materials up into different piles. I stacked the geology textbooks and magazines into one pile, the DWP reports in another and continued organizing different geological materials in my small piles based on their similar physical attributes and written content. As I went through the small section of the geology collection, I realized that this collection belonged to an engineering geologist who worked for the DWP. I came up with that conclusion based on several geology textbooks and DWP memorandums I discovered while I was going through the sample
The first step used in excavation is surveying the remote area; it is the controlled exploration of what is to be found underneath the ground. Excavation is usually uses techniques such as making grids of the trenches and shovel testing. Shovel testing it is a standardized test that archeologists use to test their research in a real world setting. Shovel test pits or STPs are small holes dug on a grid that allow archeologists to pick up artifact samples and stratigraph data across large areas of land. Stratigraphy is results based on what geologists and archeologists get using a process where layers of soil and debris are laid down on top of one another over time. An STP survey is a great method for understanding and recognizing important shifts in the patterns of human activity. STP was used in instructive ways enslaved people were working and living throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Shovel test pits are a method used by archeologists that can cover an area quickly and are less invasive (shovel test pit methods pg.1). Culture-historical archeology will be a step used in analyzing artifacts and materials found in excavation and from doing shovel testing. Archaeological excavation aims to identify any evidence of past human activity that may be buried below ground at any given site. This evidence usually consists of features, such as buried soil layers, rubbish pits, ditches, graves or parts of former buildings such as postholes, wall foundations and floor surfaces and the finds material that has ended up within the features. Although some finds will have been deliberately buried, such as grave goods or treasure hoards, most of the finds material found by archaeologists is the discarded rubbish from the activities of everyday life and work in a settlement. Due to the small size of a Test Pit you might need a bit of luck to find a proper archaeological feature such as a pit or building
investigations will be determined by the geology of the site and the nature of the