The S.A.S. has established a trust fund dedicated to furthering the good works of long-time Society supporter and Honourary Life Member, the late Dr. Zenon Pohorecky, who passed away in December, 1998. Click here for an article from the Saskatoon Star Phoenix discussing Zenon’s many accomplishments and talents.

Purpose of the Fund

The fund is intended to create a permanent public memorial in Zenon’s name, to honour his life and work, and to support the kind of work he initiated during his career as an academic, researcher, artist, and activist, in many diverse areas of endeavour.

Fundraising Goal

The goal of the Society is to establish a fund of approximately $15,000.00 as a trust fund, with a portion of the interest to be disbursed annually to a worthy recipient, when the size of the fund permits. The initial goal is to have $500.00 available for an award during each calendar year. All money received for this purpose is maintained in a separate trust account by the Society, to be used only for this award.

Purpose of the Award

The purpose of the award is to provide financial support to students in need enrolled in Anthropology/Archaeology at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon or in the Departments of Indian Studies, Indian Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, Indian Education, or Indian Fine Arts at Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, University of Regina, either at the Saskatoon or Regina campus.

Form of the Award

The award will be made as a bursary.

General Conditions

The student must meet the requirements of the University of Saskatchewan or Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, as the case may be, and must provide proof that these requirements have been met. Other conditions regarding eligibility, etc. will be set out in detail when the fund grows to the appropriate size so that the first award may be made.

People have lived in Saskatchewan for at least 10,000 years. The purpose of this handbook is to provide those not previously acquainted with this rich and extensive history and heritage, as it is interpreted by the discipline of archaeology, with a brief and convenient introduction to archaeology in Saskatchewan.

Any curious person who has encountered rings of stone on unbroken prairie or found a hammerstone in a cultivated field has likely wondered, “Who made these things? Why? How? How long has it been since they were used by people?” Such basic human concerns are the motivation that drives archaeologists to consider what human life in the past might have been like. The endeavour to answer such questions responsibly constitutes the practice of archaeology.

By carefully and scientifically studying evidence in the soil of past human activities, archaeologists are able to reconstruct past human lifeways. By tradition, there are two broad categories of archaeology: historic and prehistoric. Historic archaeology deals with sites and artifacts after the start of European exploration, when records existed, while prehistoric (or pre-contact) archaeology is the term used to refer to times previous to approximately 1690 A.D. These terms have been adopted because not all history is written, and it recognizes the impact European contact has had on the indigenous populations of North America.

Archaeologists undertake several scientific practices to investigate how people lived in the past. Two important research activities are excavations and surface surveys.

At a “dig” or excavation, archaeologists control the unearthing of areas occupied or modified by earlier human activity. Scientific examination of artifacts and other remains of human activity within a buried context can explain the kinds of activities people engaged in during their daily existence. The study of fossilized pollen grains and other deposits in soils containing artifacts helps archaeologists reconstruct earlier ecological environments.

Surveys of land surfaces containing archaeological materials are important methods of obtaining information about where people chose to live. For instance, surface surveys which have mapped many different tipi ring encampment sites from different geographic regions can be compared, and settlement patterns can be suggested. Occasionally, surveys identify areas that are intrinsically significant, such as boulder configurations (effigies, medicine wheels, etc.), rock art, and vision quest sites.

Archaeological Sites

A site can be understood as any place where human activity occurred sometime in the past, and for which there is evidence of that activity. A site is categorized and interpreted according to several criteria: its geographic location, the artifacts and features it contains, the space and time relationships among the artifacts and features, its age, and the purpose for which the site was used. There are various kinds of sites: habitation, kill, quarry, burials, rock art, boulder configurations, trade centers, agricultural, transportation, and fortification. Although most sites are recognized when artifacts or features are discovered, not all sites contain direct evidence of human presence. Areas which figure prominently in events related through oral traditions or through written documentation are occasionally considered to be sites.

Features and Artifacts

Features are things like hearths, postholes, stone flaking stations, stone rings, boiling pits, and storage pits. Unlike artifacts such as arrowheads which can be removed intact from a site, features depend entirely on their position within the site for their identity. Features are therefore often understood as nonportable artifacts.

Artifacts are any portable objects that are considered to have been modified, shaped or moved by human action. For purposes of resource management and interpretation artifacts are classified according to their function. Some types of artifacts that are unique to specific places and /or times, are said to be diagnostic. In excavations in Saskatchewan, especially of ancient Pre-European Contact sites, only items of more durable materials such as bone, stone, or ceramic are preserved from corrosive natural processes. The following are examples of common artifact types.

Projectile Points

The term projectile point is used to refer to any object that was fastened, or hafted, to a shaft that was intended to be thrown or cast. Projectile points have been divided into three types based on their function: spear points, dart points, and arrow points. Many archaeologists believe that the earliest points found in the province, such as the Folsom point below, were used to tip hand-held javelin-like spears. Spear points tend to be the largest and oldest of the three types of points. The somewhat smaller Dart points were hafted onto shafts intermediate in size between spear and arrows. Darts were hurled by means of a throwing stick, usually called an atlatl. While it is agreed that the atlatl and dart weapon system was used in Saskatchewan until roughly 2,000 – 1,500 years before present, it is uncertain when this weapon was first used. Some believe it was introduced by the people who used the Clovis points 11,500 years ago; others believe the atlatl and dart technology was adopted or developed as late as 7,500 years ago. The smallest and most recent of the projectile points is the arrow point, which apparently was first used with by the people who made the Avonlea style points about 1,700 years ago.

Cutting, Scraping, and Engraving Tools

Sharp flakes of all sizes freshly struck from a larger stone core and biface knives were used as multipurpose cutting and scraping implements. Burins, with their chisel-like edge, were used for engraving or carving. Ground and polished stone axes were used for chopping wood. Hides were scraped with stone end and side scrapers, and with fleshers made of bone.

Percussion and Grinding Tools

Stone mauls, or hammers were used for everything from pounding stakes to quarrying stone. Many of the larger mauls are grooved to facilitate hafting. Smaller pecking stones are ungrooved, but can be identified by the impact scars usually at either end. These smaller pecking stones were often used in the chipping of stone tools, a process called flintknapping. Bell-shaped pestles were used for pounding and grinding everything from dried meat and chokecherries for pemmican, to earth paints for adornment.

Drills and Perforators

Drills fashioned from stone were used to auger through wood and bone. Perforators, made either of stone or bone, were used to punch holes in softer materials such as leather.

Ceramic Vessels

The oldest pots made of fired clay containing grit first appear in the archaeological record about 2,000 years ago, associated with Besant artifacts. Overall size and shape, construction methods, and some decorative markings can be used to identify different styles of ceramics. As is the case with projectile points, some types of pottery are diagnostic to particular place in time.

Portable and Non-Portable Art

Portable Art is the term used to refer to art objects that can be moved easily from place to place, such as sculptures and engravings. Pictographs, or pictures painted on stationary rock, and petroglyphs, or pictures carved into stationary rock, are the two main kinds of non-portable art in Saskatchewan.

Artifact Affiliations In Southern Saskatchewan

Projectile Point Chronology of Southern Saskatchewan

It is generally assumed that the area of North America now bounded within the jurisdiction of the province of Saskatchewan has been occupied by people at least since the last glacial retreat about 11,500 years ago. Some archaeologists think that humans could have lived here far earlier, 20,000 – 35,000 years before present, during intermittent warmer periods of the last ice age. However, unequivocal evidence for such occupation has not yet been established, so the current chronology of human habitation in Saskatchewan begins with the ending of the last ice age and the appearance of the distinctive Clovis technology.

The record of human presence in Saskatchewan has most often been divided into three time periods, largely as a matter convenience, but not without some empirical justification. Drastic changes in climate mark corresponding changes in lithic technology between the Early and Middle periods, while the switch to the bow and arrow as the dominant weapon along with the new use of pottery signal the transition from the Middle to the Late Period.

The Early Period, 11,500 – 7,500 Year Ago

The period of Early human occupation begins about 11,500 years ago, but it is likely more accurate to consider the first (Clovis) and possibly the second (Folsom) discrete point technologies as categorically separate from the later Paleo-Indian technologies of the Early period. Clovis and to some extent Folsom represent human activity in the Pleistocene epoch. The end of the Pleistocene witnessed the mass extinction of the big-game animals hunted by these people. It was also at this time that the grasslands began to expand northward and the bison emerged as the species which was to provide the foundation of Plains Indian subsistence.

Several traditions of lanceolate-shaped projectile points occur in the archaeological record after Folsom. The Lanceolate Straight group consists of Agate Basin and Hell Gap style points, which date from about 10,300 – 8,000 year ago.

Lanceolate Stemmed points, such as Eden and Scotts bluff (part of the “Cody complex”) date from 9,500 to 8,500 years ago. The points tend to have a restricted basal stem, which produces a shouldered blade.

Late Lanceolate points date from the last 1,000 years of the Early period, 8,000 to 7,000 years ago. The concave base and parallel-oblique flaking make these leaf-shaped points distinguishable from the Lanceolate Straight points.

The Middle Period, 7,500 – 1,900 Years Ago

The climatic environment at the beginning of the Middle period became much more arid than it had been throughout the Early period. Some archaeologists have argued that few if any people lived on the northern plains at this time, but current research indicates that this was not so. A new group of distinctive but diverse projectile points, collectively referred to as Early Side-notched, emerged about 7,500 years ago and lasted until about 5,000 years before present. Many of these points are indistinguishable from side and corner-notched points which appear several thousand years later, but as a general rule Early Side-notched points are slightly larger.

As the arid years of the early Middle period gave way to a climate more like our own today, another point style appears for the first time in the archaeological record. The Oxbow point with its concave base and notched sides dates from about 5,000 – 3,100 years ago.

Although the Hann/McKean/Duncan points differ stylistically, it is believed that these three distinct point types should be treated as a single related group which dates from about 4,100 – 3,100 years ago. Lanceolate-shaped McKean points have a pronounced notched base; Duncan points tend to have a flared concave base; Hanna points have wide, shallow side-notches.

The last point style of the Middle period is called Pelican Lake. The deep corner notches near the base create a “tanged”, or pointed shoulder. The base is often rounded, but may be flat. Some Pelican Lake points are quite small, which has led some archaeologists to suggest that these might have been used as arrowheads rather than as atlatl dart tips. Pelican Lake dates from 3,300 – 1,900 years ago. However, the wholesale transition to the bow and arrow as the dominant weapon is considered one of the events that inaugurates the Late Period of human habitation in Saskatchewan.

The Late Period 2,000 – 170 Years Ago

About 2,000 years ago it is believed that the bow and arrow began to quickly replace the atlatl and dart as the preferred weapon on the northern plains. Also, at about the same time pottery, or ceramic technology, makes its first appearance in the archaeological record. The oldest ceramics have been found in excavations containing Besant style projectile points. Besant points date from 2,000 – 1,150 years ago. Most of these larger side-notched points seem too large to have been used to tip arrows, so it is assumed that theBesant point makers were the last people to rely primarily on the atlatl and dart for hunting.

Contemporaneous with Besant, another point style clearly reflects that the people who made these delicate side-notched triangular points were using the bow and arrow. Avonlea points (1,800 – 1,100 years ago) are typically thin, well-flaked points with small shallow side-notches placed close to the slightly concave base.

The last two styles of stone points used on the northern plains are together referred to as Late Side-Notched, or Old Women’s style points. Separately, they are called Prairie and Plains Side-notched with the appearance of Prairie points (1,100 – 900 years ago) predating the Plains (800 – 300 years ago) by several hundred years.

If You Have Questions About Archaeology

Nature and human activities are constantly altering the soil surface, and exposing archaeological artifacts. As well, surface features like stone cairns or petrolyphs may still await discovery in remote or unbroken land. If you do discover something which you think is archaeological there are a number of places where you can obtain information about your find. First, if the material is buried or partially buried, or if it is an intact feature like a tipi ring, etc. – do not disturb it – take a photograph or two (with something for scale in it), and ask one of the following offices to identify the feature.

If you come across an artifact (or have artifacts collected earlier) and wish to have them identified, either bring the artifact to one of the archaeology offices, or send a good photograph. Again, you should not simply collect artifacts as curiosities or only for your own collection. Every artifact taken from the soil of Saskatchewan should have its exact location recorded and those records deposited in a responsible public institution.

All archaeological excavations, any disturbance of archaeology sites, and collection of artifacts in Saskatchewan are regulated by the Saskatchewan Heritage Property Act, and administered by the Heritage Unit of the Provincial Government.

Rock Paintings of Northern Saskatchewan on the colourful and ancient rock paintings found on the cliffs along the Churchill River and other waterways of the Boreal Forest in northern Saskatchewan. This region holds 70 known sites, of the approximately 700 or so found on the bedrock cliffs of the Canadian Shield. Archaeological and ethnological evidence points to a mostly Algonkian-speakers authorship, and while the exact age of all individual sites has yet to be determined, a number are documented to be several hundred years old, possibly as old as 2000 years or more.

The exhibition will contain colour photographs both from water level and from the air, as well as drawings of the paintings, and paintings of the rock art as interpreted by a northern Saskatchewan artist. In addition, there will be text panels detailing what is known about the archaeological and ethnohistorical origins of the art. The intent of the exhibition is to expose more people to this magnificent art heritage, and to encourage its protection and conservation.

No such exhibition on the Canadian Shield rock art tradition has been available for touring before this.

The exhibition is mounted on a user-friendly “portable” display system developed by Greg Burke of the Diefenbaker Canada Centre, shipped in sturdy rollable trunks. Plans are to open the exhibition in 2004 at a site yet to be determined. (Contact the S.A.S. or check this page periodically for a finalized schedule).