This paper reports on the success of three seasons of excavation at the Junction Site, where anomalies identified through the use of a magnetometer became focal points for the mitigative excavations completed.  Here we assess the utility of this technique (and other remote sensing techniques tested) in identifying buried features and further describe the many different features exposed.   Our discussion concludes with an analysis of results and identification of the salient characteristics which distinguish the different functions of the features identified.

Key words: roasting pit feature, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, plaster jacketing

Abstract: More than a hundred pre-contact pit features have been recorded during the excavations of the processing area at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. In 1990 a largely intact 1,600 year old roasting pit feature was located and left in situ as it was considered a good candidate for potential future display. In 2016 the feature was recovered to exhibit in the new Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton. Using a technique commonly used by paleontologists for fossil recovery the feature was excavated, and enclosed in a plaster jacket. After transport, the final excavation of the feature was accomplished in the museum, allowing optimal excavation conditions that produced some startling results. This methodology allows the preservation and long term interpretation of archaeological material, and provides an alternative to dismantling these features as a consequence of standard archaeological research investigation.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is one of the best-known archaeological sites in Canada and a UNESCO World Heritage site. A great deal has been written about it, including by Jack Brink, and the site’s excavations and remains have contributed greatly to our understanding of bison hunting on the Great Plains. This paper examines phytoliths, charcoal, lithic tool residues and usewear to cast new cultural and paleoenvironmental light on this remarkable site.

You step away to follow other career interests, reconnect with old friends 25 years later and ... boom ... things really changed.  Over this discontinuity, the profession truly busted out of universities and museums for opportunities in consultancies, government, and NGOs.  Prospective practitioners don’t see archaeology as “the gateway drug” to the hard sciences anymore.  A new generation is leaning into societal relevance and agency, focusing on partnerships, progressive reforms, decolonization, advancing indigenization and responding to the heavy responsibilities of helping investigate the missing children.  More subjectively constructed, humanistic narratives are populating the archaeological record.  Challenges to the trope of humanity’s ineluctable march to inequity and constraint, along with case studies with lessons for the Anthropocene, are having their moment.  All to the good.  But there’s been scant progress on some vital legacy problems.   Peak archaeology has surely passed.   Resource loss far exceeds meaningful conservation, and no oversight or governance exists to measure, much less mitigate this.  And where are the communicators effectively amplifying archaeology’s value in the public square?  Like Jack Brink.  The discipline needs to level up or risk reverting to a small, precarious enterprise, ill-equipped to face climate change, relentless development, fierce competition for funding, and indifference.

When it comes to exploring how new technologies can be used to document, protect, and preserve rock art sites in Alberta, Jack Brink has been a true innovator. He was one of the first researchers to use terrestrial laser scanning to digitally capture rock art panels at Writing on Stone Provincial Park, and in 2013 he helped organize the scanning of the Okotoks Big Rock. With Jack’s help and encouragement, we demonstrate how 3D laser scanning can be used to detect and monitor changes at this highly significant Provincial Historic Site using scanning data acquired over a period of 7 years. Point clouds of the erratic captured in 2013, 2016, and 2020 were compared using change detection analysis, revealing the movement/repositioning of rocks and emergence of "unofficial" paths around the base of the erratic, along with changes to fencing and interpretive trails. These results are encouraging and suggest this method may be an effective way to monitor heritage sites over time.

After a nomination process lasting 15 years, Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi was designated a World Heritage Site in 2019. From inception to inscription, Jack Brink was instrumental in making this designation happen, inspiring and encouraging a dedicated team of Blackfoot advisors and Alberta Parks employees. Although this inscription recognizes the international significance of this Blackfoot cultural landscape, the nomination process also exposed dissonance between local, global, and Indigenous values. Blackfoot perspectives emphasize the ancient and sacred connection to the broader landscape, while remaining inclusive of settler society’s recent historical relationship to the place. Conversely, the historical Euro-Canadian presence highlighted weaknesses in the nomination, while local community concerns impacted the effectiveness of the proposed boundary and buffer zone. In consequence, international experts struggled to reconcile globalized universalism with local perspectives and Indigenous values. Throughout the nomination, Jack helped the team navigate this contested landscape and politicized history, ultimately leading to a successful but imperfect inscription – one that still circumscribes the contemporary Indigenous relationship to this site. Although the World Heritage nomination process accrued many tangible benefits for Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi, the potential of this inscription for advancing reconciliation with Indigenous peoples has yet to be fully realized.

When Jack Brink and I were MA students at the University of Alberta in 1975, I applied spatial analytical methods to disentangle artifact distributions at an important site type in Alberta: those with rich lithic records, but highly compressed stratigraphy.  Archaeologists working at these sites run the risk of associating artifacts merely because they occur near each other. Natural disturbances in thinly stratified deposits mean artifacts found near each other can easily come from different time periods. In our 2010-2012 research at Ahai Mneh in central Alberta, we returned to these issues and were able to identify a deeper Paleo-Indigenous period component, also present in surface collections from an adjacent cultivated field. Enigmatic and initially unprepossessing artifacts from Ahai Mneh actually have fascinating stories to tell if we are willing to delve into the microcosm of human decisions for which they still preserve traces. Examples include a failed effort at making a fluted point, an unusual Hell Gap-like point, a Scottsbluff point, and a fractured Alberta point base. While the results of such analyses involve inferences, they are much better than casual assumptions about associations, and point to the need for serious regulatory reform in requiring 3-D piece-plotting of artifacts.

In recent years, there have been several finds of Queen Conch (Strombus gigas) shells in central Alberta. Queen Conch is a marine gastropod mollusc that is widespread in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, so these shells are clearly not of local origin. Their taxonomic identification is confirmed by the large size, thickness, ornamentation and morphology of the shells, and comparison with modern specimens. One specimen lacks its distinctive flange. Two were found in buried context – one shallow, one deep - that suggests probable archaeological significance, rather than chance modern discards. Their exact point of origin is unknown. However, one yielded a radiocarbon date of around 1000 RCYBP, with a marine reservoir correction assuming an origin near the mouth of the Mississippi. Conch meat was, and is, a valuable food resource in the Caribbean and Gulf region, as attested by shell mounds. Robust conch shell has been used as a tool material, with flange removal being a common form of tool production. Various marine shells are found in archaeological sites throughout the Mississippi watershed and beyond in interior North America. Pending confirmation, our hypothesis is that these specimens were traded or brought inland from the Gulf coast.