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Edmonton Beneath Our Feet

My Neighborhood

I live in the tranquil, lovely neighborhood of Pleasantview, located in the heart of Edmonton. My house sits at the base of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, which is perched on a very high hill (known as a kame – a short ridge, hill, or mound deposited by glacial melt-water sediments). Based on past research, similar large hills in Edmonton contain archaeological sites representing a First Nations history that goes back thousands of years (for more details see: Heinz W. Pyszczyk, Elizabeth Noble, Ross W. Wein. 2006. ‘Aboriginal Land Use in the Greater Edmonton Area’. In: Coyotes Still Sing in My Valley : Conserving Biodiversity in a Northern City. Spotted Cow Press). But one would never know it, by just looking around the neighborhood.

The top of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, one of Edmonton’s highest points of land. This south facing hilltop would have been an ideal camping and lookout spot.
Excavations, by Mr. Charles Ramsey, Stantec, at the base of Rabbit Hill (a kame), southwest Edmonton, before residential development.
Projectile points found at the Rabbit Hill excavations, some dating back to approximately five thousand years ago.
My Back Yard

It was reasonable to ask then, what might be in my back yard, since it is located close to the base of a kame?

As I was building my new walkway in the back yard, here is what I found. It wasn’t an earth-shattering discovery – actually, almost expected given what we know about these hills. But, it did show that First Nations People camped here long before the first Europeans ever stepped on this ground.

Some artifacts from my back yard. From left to right: Two quartzite stone flakes from making stone tools; a quartzite uniface, perhaps being shaped into a knife; and, a piece of butchered animal bone.

Much of the ground in my neighborhood, including my back yard, has been severely disturbed over the years, so these artifacts are no longer in their original context. It is virtually impossible to date the stone artifacts. But there are still some places in my community, and elsewhere in Edmonton, where the ground is not disturbed, where intact archaeological deposits might still be present.

So people of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, what lies beneath your feet that you don’t know about? Probably more than you think!

References

Very little published material exists about the Prehistory (that period of human history before the written record) of the Greater Edmonton Area. Here are a few key references (but by no means all) about First Nations archaeology before Europeans entered Alberta:

Pyszczyk, Heinz W.  1996. Archaeology Guide & Tour of Greater Edmonton Area. Provincial Museum of Alberta. (Copies of this booklet should be in the Edmonton Public Library, or University of Alberta Library)

Pyszczyk, Heinz W., Elizabeth Noble, Ross W. Wein.  2006. Aboriginal Land Use in the Greater Edmonton Area. In Coyotes Still Sing in My Valley: Conserving Biodiversity in a Northern City, edited by Ross W. Wein. Spotted Cow Press.

B. Newton and J. Pollock, J. W. Ives, Heinz W. Pyszczyk.  1985. Strathcona Site (FjPi-29) Excavations. Archaeological Survey of Alberta. Manuscript Series 2, 3, & 4. Alberta Culture. (This volume is out of print but should be in the University of Alberta library, and perhaps in the Edmonton Public Library. This is a technical report describing the archaeological remains recovered from the Strathcona site in east Edmonton.)

Losey, T. C.  1971. The Stony Plain Quarry Site. Plains Anthropologist, 16-52: 138-154. (Description of a Prehistoric site along the Saskatchewan River, west of Stony Plain, Alberta. Quite technical.)