A student excavating a fire pit.

Archaeological digs have been going on at Wanuskewin Heritage Park for the last 31 years, lead by the University of Saskatchewan’s Ernie Walker and his students.

Walker, an archaeology and anthropology professor at the U of S, first started digging out at Wanuskewin in 1982 after he received his PhD from the University of Texas. He discovered that Wanuskewin was, and still is, an archaeological marvel. His digs lead to the start of several excavations.

The dig at Wanuskewin is one of the biggest and longest lasting archaeological digs in Canada and draws a lot of international attention, Walker said.

During the summer months, Walker leads a seven-week field course at Wanuskewin. Students excavate, survey the site and analyse their finds in the archaeology lab. All artifacts are taken to the U of S for examining and are then returned to the Wanuskewin cultural interpretive centre.

His students are working at the Wolf Willow site that is located on a large sand deposit on the west side of Opimihaw Creek. The presence of 16 stone piles suggests that a bison kill may be associated with the site. A number of occupational levels — indications of different cultural groups using the land at varying depths — have also been found and have been given approximate dates.

In 2012, a student participating in the field course unearthed an amulet pendant carved out of bone. It would have been worn by an Aboriginal woman. Walker said that personal items, especially ones like the amulet, would have had special meaning and are rare finds. Artifacts that are commonly found are everyday items like tools and pottery. Being of little significance to their owners, these items were left behind like trash, especially if heavily used or broken.

This summer’s big find is a collection of hearths, or fire pits, some dating back 4,200 years. Although they may appear uninteresting to the naked eye, the real treasure is what can be seen with a microscope, Walker said.

Charcoal found in the hearths can give clues as to what kind of vegetation was present in the area and is indicative of past climate patterns.

Walker’s current focus is collecting climatological data within the Wolf Willow site about how it has changed. Walker hopes to create a larger understanding of how humans have adapted to changing environments. For this reason, pollen, charcoal and seeds are just as valuable to Walker as traditional artifacts.

“If climate changes,” Walker said. “How does that affect human adaptation? How does that affect human culture groups?”

In order to gather the environmental information, sediment soil is sent back to the archaeology lab on campus where students extract the microscopic pollen to identify the plant species. Another way of identifying flora is by using isotope chemistry on bison teeth.

Since Walker first started digging at Wanuskewin, he has noticed a huge change in archaeology.

He said the practice has become much more scientific, adding that 30 years ago they didn’t consider DNA or isotope chemistry.

While there has been a definite shift to the natural science side of archaeology, Walker said that students are still interested in the social science aspect. Although the vast majority of undergraduate students working on the dig are archaeology majors, students working on their master’s or doctoral theses often come from a broader range of disciplines including soil sciences, biology, geology and anthropology.

“It’s a good mix of students, they have to be masters of a lot of different types of subject matter,” Walker said.

“That’s the quirky thing about archaeology, it’s all of these [disciplines] mixed together.”

In addition to the practical skills that students learn from the dig, they gain valuable work experience that is favorable to many types of archaeology.

Walker said that many graduate students receive job offers because of their familiarity with plains archaeology, which is attractive to local development firms.

As a result of the large interest in the dig garnered by the public, Walker assigns one student to public relations duty each day. Students are able to hone their archaeological expertise by greeting the site’s visitors and explaining the significance of the excavation.

“At first they’re a little bit shy,” Walker said. “But boy, by the end of the six weeks they’re just right in to it. And what better way of being able to talk about your science, talk about why you’re interested in this… to people from the general public. I think it’s great.”

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Photo: Christine Warner