Earlier in 2020, an archaeological survey conducted near Kamloops by the Skeetchestn Indian Band, in collaboration with other local Indigenous communities, resulted in a rare and ancient find — a large spearpoint rarely found in the region and with a poorly understood place in the history of Indigenous occupation of this area.
This spearpoint closely resembles what local experts in the region call an intermontane stemmed point. These points are estimated to have been in use in the region between around 10,500 to 8,500 years ago.
These large, finely made spearpoints have been recovered from very few sites in a broad geographic area in northwestern North America.
In the Southern Interior of British Columbia, only a handful have been recovered during archaeological investigations.
The vast majority have been collected by members of the general public and exist in local museums and private collections.
This type of artifact recovery is problematic; not only is collection of artifacts without a permit issued by the B.C. government illegal, collection by the public usually results in the loss of a wealth of information about the location and environment the artifact is located in (the context).
Just as the climate is changing today due to an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the ancient climate changed over time due to natural climatic processes.
The people who used intermontane stemmed points lived in the Southern Interior shortly after the last ice age, called the Fraser glaciation, ended.
At this time, a large glacial lake called Glacial Lake Deadman filled the Thompson River Valley, dammed by an ice dam near present-day Spences Bridge. Much of present-day Kamloops would have been underwater.
The climate was warmer and drier than it is today, with grasslands extending higher into the hills than they do today.
The people who used this particular spearpoint technology between 10,500 and 8,500 years ago experienced dramatic changes to the landscape. Glacial Lake Deadman drained catastrophically at some point during this period, exposing much of the Thompson River Valley bottom.
Once this exposed valley stabilized and grasslands took hold, the vast grasslands allowed large ungulates (deer, elk, caribou and mountain sheep) to flourish.
The people living on this landscape likely focused significant effort on hunting these animals for meat, hides, antler, horn and bone. The intermontane stemmed point was just one of several spearpoint types used during this period.
Archaeologists have hypothesized that different spearpoint types were used by small groups of people from different cultural backgrounds that moved into the Southern Interior of B.C. with their unique tool-making traditions after the retreat of the glaciers.
This hypothesis has been difficult to test due to the rarity of known sites of this age and the illegal removal of the spearpoints and other distinctive artifacts from these sites by collectors — making them much more difficult to pinpoint on the landscape.
The site this spearpoint came from has immense cultural value to local Secwépemc and Nlaka’pamux communities and scientific value to archaeological researchers.
The symmetry and visual appeal of this artifact make it attractive to local collectors.
Luckily, Secwépemc archaeological stewards were able to recover it with the appropriate permits in place before it was removed from its context.
Without this artifact in its original location (in situ), this site may have gone unnoticed — and unprotected.
Ramsay McKee is a Kamloops-based archaeologist.