Abstract

Grasslands National Park lies along the U.S. border in south western Saskatchewan. In keeping with federal policy on national parks, the park was surveyed to provide an inventory of the park's cultural resources. As a result, over 3000 sites were located and recorded. Patterns of archaeological site location were analyzed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and the results will be presented in this paper.GIS was used to compare the location of archaeological sites with various themes in the environment, such as site distance from water, and site location on different classes of slope, aspect, and elevation. Models of important food plant areas, as well as preferred bison and antelope habitats were developed; and these were added to the themes compared to site locations. GIS was also used to look at the geological processes in the park, and how these have potentially affected site visibility.