Archaeology Talks!

The Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre is pleased to host Todd Kristensen, archaeologist from Alberta Culture, on October 15th, 2015 between 4pm & 5pm and again from 6:30pm to 7:30pm. Todd is inviting everyone to bring in stone tool and other specimens found in the area.

Todd will talk about four recent projects he has been involved with: ancient fishing research, Alberta’s northern boating, ancient hunting, and sourcing the obsidian quarries from which pieces in the Peace have been found. Todd is also very interested in viewing stone tools found in this area so if you have items, please consider  bringing them in to be photographed by Todd.

Obsidian tools found in Alberta from quarries in British Columbia and the US Pacific Northwest.

If you would like to read about some of his recent research, please visit Alberta Culture at https://albertashistoricplaces.wordpress.com/ 

First Nations Artifacts

With the arrival of Aboriginal Day on the 21^st of June, the Museum would like to shine a spotlight on the variety of early First Nations tools and artifacts that have been found in the Peace River area.

       The First Nations peoples did not work metal. Instead, they used rocks that they found already present in their natural environment to craft durable tools. Some examples include spear tips and arrowheads for hunting game, as well as scrapers for preparing hides to be used in clothing or the building of shelters.

White chert bifacial lanceolate

Banded grey chert lanceolate

        The rocks chosen for tool-making were not picked at random from the ground. The First Nations people would painstakingly gather special stones called chert (flint), quartzite and obsidian. These rocks do not contain planes of weakness in their crystal structure, so instead of fracturing randomly when struck, their shape could be carefully controlled. This is, of course, provided the striker possessed sufficient patience and skill. Chert and quartzite were the most common materials used, and come in a wide range of colours and hues. Considerably rarer, obsidian is a volcanic glass, and one of the sharpest known materials. It is usually quite dark and highly reflective. The obsidian scraper pictured below was likely traded from a distant region, as volcanism and its products are not typically found in the Peace River area.

Quartzite bifacial scraper

Black obsidian scraper

           More First Nations artifacts can be found in the Archeology Case in the Peace River Gallery.

Artifact of the Week- Clovis Point

This projectile point was found, along with several others, in the Nampa area by early homesteader, Logan Sherris. The point was likely hafted or attached to a short spear called a dart, which was mid-sized: between the length of an arrow and a spear. It is crafted from Peace River Chert which is a high quality stone material with outcrops along the Peace River. The craftsman made the piece by removing small flakes of stone from a core or nucleus using another rock or a softer material such as antler or bone until the desired shape was attained. What is of particular interest is the age of the piece. Considering the shape of the dart point, we can tell that it comes from the Clovis Culture meaning that it is likely around 11,000 years old. Near the base of the point, the craftsman removed a few extra flakes to thin it out towards the middle of the piece. This is known as fluting which may have aided in hafting the point and is the most telling characteristic of a Clovis Point.

Although some argue that the Clovis Culture may be older than 11,000 years, at around 13,200 years, it is the earliest known stone tool culture to have appeared in the Americas. The fact that this early Paleo-Indian artifact was found in the Peace Region suggests that the area may have been inhabited for many thousands of years! Be sure to stop by the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre to see this ancient piece of history and the oldest man-made artifact in our collection!

Clovis Point- 89.35.4

Dr. David Welch speaking at the Museum on Wednesday, June 4th

This Wednesday, June 4, 2014, Dr. David Welch will be joining us in the Museum to speak about his stone and bone tool collection. Since finding his first arrowhead at the age of seven, Dr. Welch has spent a lifetime collecting worked stones and bones.

A large part of Dr. Welch's collection of Plains and Northwest Coast First Nations objects are currently on display in the exhibit "A Sense of the Land and its People: A Personal Collection". This exhibit includes a selection of stone and bone tools, including the first arrowhead Dr. Welch ever found.

For this Wednesday's presentation, Dr. Welch will be bringing in even more of his stone and bone tools. These items will be going on exhibit in July along with those already on display.

Join us tomorrow, June 4th, at 7 pm to hear Dr. Welch's stories and see a large selection of his stone and bone tool collection.

This event is free. All are welcome.

Label R (bottom middle) corresponds to the first arrowhead collected by Dr. Welch. 

 

Stone tools presentation by Dr. David Welch - June 4th at 7 pm

On Wednesday, June 4, 2014, at 7 pm, Dr. David Welch will be joining us at the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre, to talk about his pre-historic stone and bone tools. After a lifetime's worth of collecting, researching and examining stone tools, he is a great source of information and stories.

This presentation complements our current exhibit "A Sense of the Land and its People: A Personal Collection" which showcases a variety of Northwest Coast and Plains First Nations Artifacts from Dr. Welch's collection.

The artifacts in the exhibit are representative of the environments that the Northwest Coast and Plains First Nations lived within and how those environments influenced their food, clothing, lodgings, hunting practices, artistic expression and ceremonies.

Please join us for this free event as we learn more about stone and bone tools, as well as hear Dr. Welch's stories and experiences collecting them.

For more information, please contact the Museum.

Artifact of the Week - Partial bison skull with horn sheaths

This week’s featured artifact is a partial bison skull with its horn sheaths still present. Bison, like other true horned animals, have two bone horn cores growing out of their skulls that are not shed yearly, instead their horns continue to grow every year, as does the keratinous sheath covering them. Keratin is a very tough fibrous substance found in many places. A short list includes the outer layer of human skin, hair and nails, as well as cat claws, bird beaks, tortoise shells, and porcupine quills.

This partial skull and others were donated by Dr. Frederick Henry Sutherland (1891-1963) who was an avid collector of fossils, arrowheads, coins and stamps. Dr. Sutherland first came to the Peace region in 1913 when he filed on a homestead, along with two of his brothers. He then returned to Ontario, where he was born and raised, to finish his medical training. After serving at a field hospital near the war front during the First World War, he returned to Peace River, in 1919, to establish a medical practice.

Dr. Sutherland and his wife, Clara Richards, made their life in Peace River, along with their 3 children. As a civic minded individual, Dr. Sutherland also served on the St. James’ Cathedral vestry and was mayor of Peace River for 16 years.  

This skull is on display in our rocks and fossils section of the Museum exhibits. Stop by to see this and many others palaeontology, geology and archaeology specimens.

PRMA 68.240 - Partial bison skull with horn sheaths 

 

Artifact of the Week - Projectile Point

The museum is starting a new weekly feature where we will be highlighting an artifact of the week. The museum has a collection of over 8,000 artifacts, each of which are historically significant and feature a story. Every exhibit that we create features some of these objects but we thought we would bring even more objects out for you to see, in a digital format. Enjoy this new feature and do let us know if there is a specific object you would like to see.  

This week’s featured artifact is a projectile point that would have been used either as a spear point or a dart point and is likely over 5,000 years old. It was found by collector Hans Huber near his farm, between Peace River and the airport. This is an atypical piece simply due to the colors of the material that was used. Most chert or flint found in the area is black in color, but this piece is filled with whites, greys, blues, and greens.

68.17.19 Projectile Point

This is only one of our many stone tools on display, and we encourage you to come down to the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre to see the rest of our excellent collection of stone tools. Feel free to ask about our stone tool collection and to visit our library for more information on archaeology in Alberta. 

A New Focus in our Natural History Display !

Over the summer we have been rearranging our natural history display to give both a more comprehensive overview of the regions natural history as well as giving more information about the artifacts. We rearranged our geology display, giving it better lighting and more identification, with an emphasis on the oil industry. Our osteology (bone) display now not only speaks to the bison and other ice age animals, but also several different animals that come from the north Peace Region with an emphasis on comparative craniology and dentition. We also identified more from our palaeontology display, which emphasizes ancient sea life in Alberta.  Finally, we improved our archaeology display, giving visitors the chance to see almost every angle of our stone tools.

Our Natural History display. 

The display features everything from dinosaur bones, to a meteorite, to a partial bison spine, to arrowheads, and even the tooth of a woolly mammoth.  We invite you down to the museum to get up close and personal with our artifacts and to learn from our new display.

The Osteology display case featuring bison bones and other animals.