Emergency excavations this past summer along the Legacy Trail near the Norquay turnoff in Banff National Park revealed that a 1,500-year-old campsite discovered in the 1980s has a longer history than previously understood.
Groups of hunter-gatherers have camped along the shores of Vermilion Lakes for thousands of years. The oldest site to date is a roughly 10,800-year-old site located at the western edge of the lake. With its preserved postholes, fire pit and faint circular outline that could indicate the edge of a tent, it’s Canada’s oldest human dwelling.
The site along the Legacy Trail in Banff National Park, known as the Echo Creek site, is much younger than its more-westerly counterpart. It is, however, still a significant site that, until August, had presented archeologists with five layers of occupation.
The first layer provided artifacts from the 1890s when the site was used as a dairy. From there, the layers descended in depth and time, taking the history of the site through an unassigned Late Prehistoric occupation, followed by Old Woman’s and Avonlea cultural groups. The fifth and deepest layer provided evidence that a group of people known as the Besant camped at Echo Creek 1,500 years ago.
Parks Canada archaeologist Bill Perry said recently construction work along the Legacy Trail inadvertently uncovered a portion of the Echo Creek site, forcing the emergency excavation.
However, inadvertent damage to the Echo Creek site led Perry to find a sixth layer pushing the timeline back.
“What we found this past summer is one extra cultural layer, so we have six; lots of fire hearths, a couple of stone tools, a bone tool and a lot of campsite cooking feature, as well as some early stuff near the surface related to early Banff, a dairy operation,” Perry said.
He added that the age of this new layer is not yet known as he’s waiting for results of carbon-dating tests. However, materials discovered in this layer, specifically a finely-made dart point a few inches long, a bone awl-like tool and stone cutting tools suggest the Besant, but an earlier use. Skilled bison hunters, the Besant are known for their distinctive side-notched projectile points. The Besant cultural complex is known to have inhabited a wide swath of the northern prairies and the Rocky Mountains from 1,500 to 2,100 years ago. Their cultural material has been found in archaeological sites throughout the Banff region.
At the time when it was used, the Echo Creek site would have been on the shore of Vermilion Lake. Perry said the lake would have been much bigger then and likely one body of water.
“A couple of thousand years ago it would have been a much bigger lake, it probably wouldn’t have been individual lakes and the banks would have been higher so it would have been closer (to the camps),” Perry said.
“I wouldn’t have been surprised if these people had been camping on the beach so that the people at the Vermilion Lakes site further west would have been on the beach. All of the sites would have followed that shrinking beach line or water line as time progressed. The sites followed it down the valley.”
Along with new work at the Echo Creek site, Parks Canada archaeologists also revisited three other known sites in Banff National Park; the Big Bend Bison Find, Whiskey Creek and Five-Mile Creek.
At a location along the Bow River known as the Big Bend Bison Find, Perry and fellow Parks archaeologist Brad Himour excavated a bison leg bone.
“(The site) was known to us for the last few years, because what happened is every spring and summer boaters come by and they see bison bones eroding into the river. A couple of times we had bison skulls dumped on our doorstep with a note saying it’s at the Big Bend come and have a look.
“I went in 2010, but didn’t see much, Brad Himour and I went back in 2012 to examine the bank, but all we ever found was an unmodified bison long bone. I’m not sure if the site is archeological at this point, but we excavated quite a few test pits. It may well be a point in the river that just gradually washes up animal carcasses over the years. It’s a big, lazy bend and all of the high energy of the water just dissipates at that point. So currently, that’s what we think,” he said.
Until evidence is found that tells them otherwise, Perry said they are treating the Big Bend Bison Find as a natural occurrence over the past couple of thousand years.
“The presence of bison in the mountains is pretty well documented. We’ve been finding evidence of bison in the Bow and Red Deer drainages. For 20 to 30 years these skeletons have been popping up,” he said, adding bison were one of the dominant animals in the region and as such played a significant role in the lives of Aboriginal people.
“Not just a good food source, but for the plains groups for sure it is a sacred animal and they derived a lot of power and significance from that and with the interior plateau people coming over seasonally to hunt them, it was a good meat resource for them, as well,” Perry said.
The Plateau Plains people of B.C. were regular visitors in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains and they are connected to the pit houses found at Banff and in the Red Deer River valley. They would cross the Great Divide to hunt bison.
Along with the Echo Creek and Big Bend Bison sites, Parks archaeologists re-investigated known sites at Whiskey Creek and Five Mile Creek.
The Five Mile Creek site dates back 3,000 years. It is connected to a group known as the Pelican Lake people. Creek erosion at this location is being monitored regularly.
“It’s a matter of erosion. Erosion can be a steady force or catastrophic. There was a catastrophic flood and we had to take another hard look at the site. We try to test it and understand the area and the cultural extant of it,” Perry said.
“Essentially, what we know of it, is it was occupied over the past 3,000 years or so and the focus is on stone tool manufacture and of course campsite activities. It can help us understand how the lithic technologies have changed over time and give us a window into trade networks into exotic raw materials.
“Catastrophic events can destroy sites, but can also open them up as well; it’s a double-edged sword. Every time I think I’m going to find all kinds of neat stuff, but you get there and half the site is gone. The creek undermines the slope and it starts slumping. That hasn’t happened in a big way yet, but I’m anticipating that it will so that’s why I keep getting back in there.”
The Whiskey Creek site, meanwhile, required a site visit as Alta Link is installing new power line towers. No work was undertaken at the site, Perry said, but in the past it has provided evidence that people camped there some 6,500 years ago.
“It speaks to the early peopling of the townsite area. You’ve got this string of early sites in the Banff townsite area. There is Lake Minnewanka on one end and out towards Canmore on the other end and the Vermilion Lakes area on the west end, it’s a real cluster here.”
Perry said they’ve asked Alta Link to avoid the site.
Each of these sites reminds Perry that the mountains were never truly a wilderness, as people have been living, travelling and hunting in these valleys for nearly 11,000 years, perhaps longer. All of the sites taken together create a story of use, occupation and settlement.
“What has struck me over the years is we always think of wilderness as this untouched, untrammeled vastness, but I haven’t found many places that I haven’t found some evidence of people being involved in some way and I’ve been all over the place and some really remote places and sure enough, there’s sites all over the place,” he said.
“Man’s struggle and ingenuity dealing with a changing environment: it’s about adapting and thriving.”
