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Archaeology students find rich education at Wanuskewin
— During credit ‘Field School’ class, they gain valuable skills for employment & life —
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| Third-year Archaeology student Marie Karner-Ashong spends time during her Field School course digging in one of the Cut Arm sites, where bits of pottery and bone have been found. Here she displays a “left petrous” — a 2,000-year-old inner ear bone of a bison — that she discovered in June. |
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| U of S Archaeology Prof. Ernie Walker, centre with cowboy hat, checks on the latest findings of students doing their summer Field School work in the Meewasin dig site at Wanuskewin. Senior undergrad student Scott Blythe, at left, has dug to a “fifth level” that he believes reveals items 4,000 years old. |
It’s no exaggeration to say U of S Archaeology students are having a field day.
With one of the richest finds of historic northern Plains archaeology sites right in their community, 16 third- and fourth-year BA and B.Sc. students spent six weeks in May and June digging around Wanuskewin Heritage Park for treasures of bone fragments, arrowhead points and pottery shards.
Archaeology Prof. Ernie Walker has been offering the credit-course “Field School” for many years to a lucky few out of the 85 undergraduate and 30 graduate students in the U of S Archaeology program.
And not only do the excavation sites at Wanuskewin give the students a fascinating hands-on learning adventure that helps them in their U of S studies — according to Walker the experience also gives them invaluable skills that are in great demand every summer by oil companies, hydro dam projects, and highways builders, to name a few.
All of the field-school students who want to can get work helping with sensitive environmental assessments as part of the advance work for pipelines, dams and highways.
That’s a nice spinoff for students, beyond the educational benefits that are their main goal at Wanuskewin.
Walker has been the driving force for two decades, not only behind the Archaeology field school, but behind the development of Wanuskewin itself.
While a bit of digging went on in the 1930s, it was left to Walker to do a thorough assessment of the area in 1982-83 — and he found no fewer than 19 potential archaeological dig sites, some dating back more than 6,000 years. Armed with that finding, Walker became a key player in making the Wanuskewin Heritage Park a reality, complete with a full U of S Archaeology lab in the main Park building.
Over the years, and with the summertime help of his field-school students and some graduate students, Walker has overseen the excavation of six sites.
This summer, two sites were under way — the Meewasin site and the two-pit Cut Arm site.
This is the third year students have carefully sifted through square-metre sections of earth out of the Meewasin site. While they originally thought it was a bison kill-site, the lack of bone fragments and the presence of a large post-hole suggests it may have been a buffalo pound and, 4,000 years ago, a campsite.
This is the first year of digging at the Cut Arm site. One pit there seems to be a bison “processing” spot, with bones as evidence, and the other may have been a living site, with bits of pottery and 2,000-year-old arrowhead points as evidence.
Walker is understandably proud of the experience the Wanuskewin sites give his students. They learn the careful excavation techniques of archaeology, using trowels and brushes to clear away the dirt. They then just as carefully map their square metre of land as they proceed straight down five or six or seven feet. And, they photograph their findings and their site. Beyond that, they perform analysis of the materials they’ve excavated, and prepare a formal academic report on their findings.
Walker notes they often have visiting elementary or high school groups and members of the public drop by, and his students learn to explain their activities.
Often, too, students and teachers from First Nations schools visit, “since this is part of their culture,” Walker notes.
“And for Wanuskewin,” he adds, “this is all part of the interpretive activity of the park.”
With its benefits for students’ education, employment, and understanding of culture and history, it would be hard to imagine a richer environment for a group of Archaeology students.
Perhaps that’s why, as Walker tours a visitor through the sites, he notes offhandedly, “We have more students applying (for Archaeology) than we can take.”
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