History is just kicking around in the dirt

Page 1

Ever wonder if that old bone your dog dug up from your back yard might be a fossil of a prehistoric animal? Well, the staff of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre invites you down to the museum to have arrowhead, fossil or rock dated and analyzed at their prehistoric version of Antiques Roadshow.

Archaeologists and other specialists will be on hand at the museum on Sept. 4 for Stones and Bones. They will be taking a look at any artifact brought in to them to attempt to determine its identity and the time period from whence it came.

"Visitors and everyone is invited to bring their artifacts on this day to have them identified and sometimes possibly dated. Some people have collections of arrowheads and stone tools and things like that and the archaeologists are there to answer questions and help you identify your artifact," said Travis Plaitedhair, special events co-ordinator. "It's an information session where they can identify what it is you have and what origin it is. We'll also have individuals who are familiar with the Native culture in this area."

Doctor Bob Dawe is an assistant archaeologist with the Provincial Museum of Alberta. Dawe said the event is a win-win situation: people get a chance to find out exactly what they have and archaeologists get the chance to see what kind of artifacts people are finding.

"There's been people living in Alberta for at least 11,000 years. There's a very rich history that has been left behind in the form of artifacts and material culture," said Dawe. "A lot of people find things in farmers' fields, for example, or eroding on a river bank. There are a lot of significant artifacts out there and people don't understand the significance of them. Some of the most significant artifacts in the province we know of have come out at events such as Stones and Bones."

Dawe said that some people are afraid to bring their artifacts to events such as this out of fear that the government will take the artifacts away. But Dawe said that if that happened, even once, people would never bring them anything again. He just hopes people will have a fun time at the event, just like he does.

"What we like to do is help educate the public and make them appreciate the value of the historic resources in the province and care for them perhaps better than they may have otherwise."

Dawe said that people in the area must have a lot of artifacts that they don't even know they have just because of the rich history of the area that Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is in.

Over the course of Dawe's involvement with Stones and Bones, many people have brought him some interesting things from the area.

"A lady brought us a mammoth bone that was found in the Old Man River right near Fort Macleod. A lady brought in a spearhead that her father had found up near Grand Prairie that turned out to be in the order of 10,500 years old and was one of the best examples of its kind known."

But Dawe has also seen his share of artifacts that turned out to be things less interesting in nature.

"We had one poor lady who brought in what she thought was a hammerhead. But it weighed about 20 kilograms or more and when I explained that there were probably not too many Native people that would want to wield a hammerhead that weighed that much, she realized it was probably just a natural rock, a boulder, which is what it was," said Dawe. "We're still using it today at Head-Smashed-In to hold open one of the doors in one of the back rooms. It's quite a bit of fun for everyone involved."