A story that’s been written in stone

Not all research is planned. Not all discoveries come about by intent. Sometimes, a person is just in the right place at the right time.

For me, that place was a Kamloops area beach last week, walking with my dogs. The snow and ice had just melted away, revealing a single artifact on the sand: a complete spear point made more than 6 millennia ago.

It’s just a single artifact, but an object with the potential to tell us so much.

This artifact joins a small handful of other local sites known to date to what we call the “early period”, those few thousand years after the last Ice Age when the climate and landscape were shifting and settling into the world we now know. It’s a rare and tantalizing glimpse into a very ancient past.

The object is a distinctive style known as Old Cordilleran, and is typically found in sites dating from about 9,000 to about 6,000 years ago. Functionally, it’s what archaeologists call a “projectile point”, a group of tools that includes the tips of spears, darts, and arrows.

This style is believed to be a spear head, meaning it was attached to the end of a long handle, and used by thrusting, most likely in the hunting of large game. It’s long, blade-like edges could serve double duty as a butchering tool.

When the artifact was made—and lost—the environment here was warmer and drier than today, and the valleys around Kamloops would have been rolling savannah of scattered ponderosa pine and tall grasses, supporting large herds of elk and deer, with mountain sheep, moose and caribou passing through.

The tool is made of a black volcanic stone called dacite, likely sourced from the nearby Arrowstone Hills, where Secwépemc, Nlaka’pamux, St'át'imc and their ancestors have been mining the valuable toolstone since time out of mind.  

The artifact is rare—as are most things of that age—but not unexpected. The Kamloops area has been home to more than 500 generations of Secwepemc and their ancestors, and the evidence of their occupation is plentiful here. But a thing can be significant without being surprising.

Artifacts of this age, beauty and completeness are unusual, in part, because of unlawful collection. When people find objects like this, and keep them as collectible curiosities, the information they contain is lost to the rest of us. The archaeological record gets fragmented.

It can be helpful to imagine the archaeological record like an actual book, and artifacts as pages. When a page is removed, the rest of the story is harder to understand. Sometimes we don’t even know what’s missing.

If a collector had picked up this spearhead, taken it home as a prize, this page would be gone, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell you its story.

Collection of artifacts is illegal, and also deeply unethical. That object is part of cultural patrimony that—unless you are an Indigenous person in your home territory—probably doesn’t belong to you. 

If you happen upon an artifact, there is a way you can actually contribute to the record. Take a photo, take a waypoint using Google maps (which lets you share a location), or just note your location as carefully as possible, and bring your information to someone that can help record the site.

In Kamloops, the Secwepemc Museum can give direction, as can the BC Archaeology Branch in Victoria. And, as a Dig It reader, you know that our group of local archaeologists are here for you. Reach out and help us help you, and together we’ll learn from and protect the past.

Finding the Individual in Archaeology

As an archaeologist who has worked both internationally and locally for many years, a question commonly asked is, ‘What is the most interesting thing you have ever found?’ The answer usually surprises people because it is not the ceramic vessel decorated with hieroglyphs, or the 6,000 year old projectile point, it is a single stone bead. Not that interesting, you might think. However, if we change our focus from talking about material culture (i.e. the ‘stuff’) and starting thinking about individual people who made and used these items, the bead can tell us about a unique part of the past. This single bead could be one part of a necklace, a bracelet or sewn onto clothing, footwear or a bag. We may not be able to determine exactly how it was used, but the bead, like other small objects from archaeology sites, can provide information about the past in a different way because it is a personal object. More utilitarian, and more commonly found items, like ceramic vessels and projectile points are also made and used by individuals, but objects like shell or stone beads and bone hair combs are an everyday item that could be used for many years by a single person, and likely held a more personal meaning.

Considering the extensive lands that people travelled within British Columbia for access to seasonal resources, small objects were significant because they were lightweight, portable and individuals carried these objects with them on their travels. These objects would be worn or carried long distances, but they are not a part of a hunting, gathering or fishing tool kit, they were personal items. In this way, they tell archaeologists something about the past that a stone tool does not. They tell us about the individual and the personal style and likes of a person in the same way that jewellry and other adornments are used and displayed today

Shell and stone beads have been found throughout British Columbia from archaeology excavations of the living floors, from winter homes in the Plateau area, for example. Other personal objects like bone hair combs, decorated digging stick handles (for digging roots), and incised bone and antler tools also offer insight for archaeologists because the decoration has little to do with the function of the object, the decoration is created by individuals as a personal choice. Incised lines, geometric shapes, as well as human and animal motifs have been identified on bone, antler and wooden objects from a number of archaeology sites dating to different time periods. Since not all bone, antler and wood objects are preserved in archaeology sites due to the organic nature of these items, the objects that do last only represent a small sample of what individuals may have used in the past, and are especially exciting for us to find.