Abstract

The Bezya site (HhOv-73) is a wedge-shaped core, microblade and burin producing site located approximately 70 km north of Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta. The site was discovered in 1980 during an archaeological inventory of the former Alsands tar sands lease, an area characterized by a patchwork of muskeg, interspersed with various combinations of aspen, spruce and pine. An assemblage which includes microcores, microblades, a notched transverse burin, burin spalls, fluted and platform element preparation and rejuvenation ridge flakes, core tablets and edge modified and unmodified debitage was concentrated in a 16 square metre area at 10 to 60 cm below surface. Cross fitting suggests a high degree of assemblage coherence, despite the vertical and horizontal dispersion. A composite sample of charcoal from the main microblade producing zone yielded a date of 3900 B.P. Within Alberta, the assemblage exhibits technological and morphological similarities with surface finds of microcores from the Calgary area in southern Alberta. However, the collection has the most intriguing parallels in terms of methods of core production and core morphology with Campus = Denali microblade assemblages extending on a northwest axis through the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Alaska.