Why do we survey gravel pits?

Aggregate pit applications, even renewals, are regularly triggered for Historic Resources Impact Assessments in Alberta.  This is mostly due to two factors: their location, and their impact levels.  Good sand and gravel deposits are often located near watercourses, especially major rivers, and the presence of coarse parent sediment usually gives them better drainage than surrounding terrain. High, dry ground next to water is exactly the kind of place people have been camping for thousands of years.

Reid taking notes after testing a high potential landform in a planned gravel pit.

The second factor is the expected impact.  Other development types, like forestry or seismic, may disturb sites, but will leave some or most of them intact.  By their nature, aggregate pits will result in complete destruction of any archaeological sites that may be in their footprint.  Once an archaeological site is destroyed, it’s gone forever.  This means the province only gets one chance to find, understand and protect sites if they’re in a planned gravel pit.  The survey intensity and mitigation standards are therefore more stringent.
Gravel pits also have a high potential to contain quaternary (ice age) mammal fossils.  Bones and tusks from ice age animals like mammoths, extinct bison and sabre toothed cats were often deposited in gravel bars along ice-age rivers.  These gravel bars are the gravel seams that the modern aggregate industry targets.
Alberta Culture released new guidelines for gravel pit Historical Resources Act compliance two years ago.  In short, pits under 5 ha require an HRIA if there’s a known site in the immediate area.  Pits over 5 ha require an HRIA if there’s a known site, or if the land is deemed to have high archaeological or palaeontological potential.
The 2004 Code of Practice for sand and gravel pits says that gravel pits “may be required to shut down if artefacts are discovered during operation of the pit” (section 8.3.6).  This is very rare. Usually if an archaeological site is found during the HRIA, it can be avoided or archaeological digs (mitigative excavation) can be done to salvage a sample of the site before development.  If archaeological or palaeontological resources (for example arrowheads, stone tools, ice age mammal or dinosaur bone) are found during operation, the pit operator is required to report it (this post explains how), and some salvage may be done, but it’s unlikely the pit will be shut down.  Alberta Culture and historic resource management professionals like us work to balance economic development for Alberta’s future with preservation of it’s past.

To keep up to date on Historic Resource regulations and processes, you can subscribe to our quarterly Regulatory Update email.

 

Fire Extinguisher Training

Safety is key! Every spring we spend a full day preparing for the upcoming season. In 2015 we decided to review some of our safety training. Brittany is using an expired fire extinguisher to get a feel for how to use it in an emergency situation.

What is a Borden Number?

The Borden System is used to provide each archaeological site in Canada with a unique identifier, called a Borden Number. These identifiers consist of two parts – four letters (formatted AaBb) and a number separated by a dash. The letters represent the Borden block which is the geographical location of the site and the number indicates the sequence when it was identified.

The Borden System was invented by Charles E. Borden with the help of Wilson Duff in 1952 at the University of British Columbia. Charles E. Borden is sometimes referred to as the “grandfather of British Columbia archaeology” despite not having a background in archaeology. He was born in New York City in 1905 and then moved to Germany as an infant where he lived until at 22 he discovered that he was an American citizen. He returned to the United States and went to university in California to study German literature.

Why is Archaeology Important?

Archaeology provides us with the opportunity to learn about past cultures through the study of artifacts, animal bones and sometimes human bones. Studying these artifacts helps to provide us with some insight about what life was like for people who left behind no written record. In the case of historical archaeology the artifacts can help us to recognize that historic documents often don’t speak for all the people and can provide us with a picture of what life was like for people who are seldom responsible for the written record such as illiterate peasants in medieval Europe and pre-civil war era slave populations in the southern States of the USA.

In Canada and around the world archaeology has been used as evidence in court in the cases of Aboriginal land title claims to corroborate oral histories and to document land and resource use over time. Archaeology can be used to learn about the successes and failures of past cultures and societies. Knowing what has been tried in the past can help us to make better decisions about the future. Learning about archaeology and past lifeways can help to give us perspective about how life was compared to how it is today; this helps us to remember the hardships of people of the past and to recognize and respect that the technologies we take for granted today have been hard won by our ancestors.