In most cases, particularly in the Boreal forest, Historic Resource Act clearance in Alberta consists of submitting the required on-line form, often facilitated through a consultant, and waiting for the Historic Resource response granting clearance under Section 31 of the Act.  Even in instances when complex regulatory requirements are outlined in responses from Alberta Culture, including field assessment, cultural resource sites are rare; particularly those with research potential and scientific significance.  Infrequently, however, sites such as these do occur and it is upon the management of these non-renewable resources that the Act, and the regulatory framework it governs, is predicated.  One of these sites was identified as a result of a recent SemCAMS Midstream pipeline development near Grande Prairie, Alberta.  This Prehistoric period deposit included a rich assemblage of lithic debitage, tools and calcined bone.  The majority of these artefacts are small pieces of lithic debitage. Two pieces of obsidian were also recovered as a result of these excavations sourced to the Mt. Edziza locale.  As a result of this SemCAMS Midstream sponsored work this site was confirmed as a significant cultural resource, atypical for the boreal forest of Alberta.

Radiocarbon dating using charcoal or bone collagen is difficult in boreal forest ecosystems because of the acidic soil chemistry of conifer-dominant forests and persistent forest fire regimes. Collagen is quickly broken down and rendered useless, and charcoal concentrations can often be natural, rather than an anthropogenic feature. Radiocarbon dating is typically employed by consulting mitigation projects (or HRIM), or research projects, and not typically conducted on samples collected during consulting survey projects (HRIA) identified via shovel testing. However, a case can be made for opportunistic dating of viable samples identified through shovel testing, using various mediums if the context is acceptable. Calcined bone can be an acceptable medium for opportunistic dating when found in association with other artifacts. Advances in radiometric dating of calcined bone (via carbonates) has allowed for extremely low sample sizes, lower cost relative to other mediums (~$400 CDN). This poster will present the results of four years of radiocarbon dating for various consulting projects across northern Alberta and present a case for making opportunistic radiocarbon dating standard practice for HRIA projects.

This paper summarizes the origins of the forestry compliance archaeology program in Alberta and synthesizes some statistics since implementation in the early 2000s. In the past decade, 200-400 new archaeological sites are recorded per year during historical resources impact assessments of harvest blocks, forestry roads, and other forestry developments. Almost 5000 sites have been recorded in the province during forestry compliance programs. We summarize annual records of the number of sites discovered, the number of shovel tests excavated, and the number of developments subjected to archaeological fieldwork. Our goals are to document trends, contextualize anomalies, and explain the value of forestry compliance for heritage protection in Alberta.

Archaeology in advance of forestry development in Alberta has been based strongly on strategies adapted from previous investigations, whereby areas of highest archaeological potential will be found on well-defined and elevated landforms overlooking or adjacent to major drainages or waterbodies. This practice dates back to the earliest investigations in the 1970s and continues to be reflected in DEM dedicated targeting strategies. Conversely, areas typically considered to exhibit low archaeological potential are poorly drained and/or in flat and featureless terrain. However, the real world is not so black and white, and high archaeological potential needs to be assessed relative to the surrounding landscape; in many areas in the boreal forest, these ideal landforms are few and far between, and many archaeology sites are found on atypical landforms, in atypical locations. This presentation takes a statistical approach to survey strategy and site identification, relating known sites to the factors of landform and water bodies. By illustrating where we find sites relative to where we look for sites, we challenge theories of where typical sites can be found in the boreal forest. 

The introduction of LiDAR, as a tool for predicting areas of low, moderate and high archaeological potential resulted in marked changes in survey strategies in the boreal forest of Alberta.   Small landforms too low in elevation to be present on topographic maps, or seen across vast expanses of muskeg were now visible without the expense of aerial survey. Sampling a wide variety of these landforms resulted in the notable increase in the identification of small, lower density sites in the area between the Quarry of the Ancestors and the Birch Mountains. The artifacts recovered from these sites are both temporally and culturally significant, providing insight into the routes used by pre-contact peoples to travel across the landscape and the day-to-day activities conducted during their journeys.  This presentation focuses on the artifacts recovered from sites HhOu-113, HhOu-114 and HhOu-115 to illustrate how these smaller landforms can yield sites of high interpretative potential.