Writing On Stone Provincial Park
Table of Contents
Archaeological site location……………………………………………………………………….. 3
Environmental conditions………………………………………………………………………….. 3
Site discovery……………………………………………………………………………………………. 4
Archaeological remains……………………………………………………………………………… 4
Excavation methods and techniques…………………………………………………………… 5
Site chronology………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Archaeological significance……………………………………………………………………….. 8
Writing on Stone Provincial Park site in Southern Alberta
Archaeological site location
Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park can be found approximately 100 kilometers southeast of Alberta, Canada or 45 kilometers east of the area of Milk River, and encompasses the Milk River itself. It is one of the biggest places of protected prairie in the Alberta parks, and acts as both a natural preservation site for a huge quantity of Native Indian rock sculptures and other artworks.
Environmental conditions
Writing-on-Stone Park has the biggest concentration of stone artworks on the US Great Plains. There are more than sixty petroglyph areas and hundreds of works. The park also promotes a North West Mounted Police (NWMP) station rebuilt on its original area. The station was replaced since the first station was destroyed by huge fire.
The park is composed 18 square kilometers of coulee and prairie niches, and houses a wide variety of bird species and other animals. Bird species include different types of falcons, owls, swallows, pheasants and partridges (Brink, 2009).
The prairie around the park is a niche for antelopes, and other animals living in the park include various species of deer, skunks and cats. Leopards, frogs and various types of snakes can also be found in the park.
The coulee setting is excellent for tree species like balsam and cottonwood. Willows and cottonwood can also be located here. A huge quantity of shrubs can also be seen here, including chokecherry various kinds of wild rose. Some of the rarest types of cactus, including prickly pears can also be seen in the park also.
Site discovery
The park was established in 1957 and was proclaimed as an archaeological preservation site in 1977. As part of the NWMP festivities, the station was rebuilt in the 1970s, and is now one of the top places to see in the park. Experts from the Alberta Provincial Parks Department researched and discovered various petroglyph and pictograph areas within the park in 1973. In 1981, a part of the park was proclaimed as a Provincial Historic Resource to safeguard this rock artwork from the effects of vandalism. The most vulnerable areas are now organized in places assigned for guided tours only. In March 2005, the park was proclaimed as a National Historic Site. On June 2007 the park’s new tourist area, with sights of the valley from the north area, was formally launched.
Archaeological remains
The area where the park now sits was, 80 million years ago, the coastal part of a huge inland body of water. Sand lodged in the latter parts of Cretaceous Period solidified over time and transformed into sandstone. With the folding of the ice sheets at the conclusion of the final Ice Age, water and wind altered the sandstone to create the hoodoos and edges that can be seen in the park at present.
Well known for petroglyphs marked and painted onto the sandstone edges, the park has the biggest concentration of original rock artworks on the North America areas. The Shoshoni and later the Blood thought that the place was being controlled by strong spiritual beings. Ritualistic sculptures and paintings were left on the sandstone edges of the Milk River as messages to the spiritual beings (Burke, 2005). The following periods thought that spiritual beings left the writings. Buffalo hunters, medicine people, soldiers and people on their vision adventures went back to the sites for hundreds of years looking for spiritual guidance. Native people still go back to the writings and rituals are done at the edges of the cliffs. To prevent additional damage caused by vandalism, access of the people to the rock artworks is limited to controlled interpretive tours.
Created by ice, wind and rain, the hoodoos that can be seen in the park create one of the most important landscapes in the US. As people take a view all over the valley, it’s not that hard to know why First Nations individuals claim this area to be holy. Based on the Blackfoot beliefs, the hoodoos that mark the landscape they pertain to as Aisinai’pi are really rock creatures. Blackfoot myths mention that spiritual beings in the rock make images appear and become invisible on the rock walls to aid portray the previous and to predict the future.
Excavation methods and techniques
The most important thing in the excavation of Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park is stratification. Stratification pertains to the procedure of the leveling of debris in due time. This debris can be composed of a variety of materials from broken objects as well as decayed fossils of animals (Haney, 2001). Stratification is most of the time utilized in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park for dating and indicating chronological relations between various periods of time on the site. Basic developments happen in the similar strata of Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park and development through time can be observed by comparing strata.
Normally speaking, the deeper the layer, the more ancient the time period it connects to.
However, sometimes levels can be altered resulting to discoveries in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park from later time periods to go down into earlier strata. For this reason, it was necessary that the discoveries in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park were carefully examined. Artifacts like disintegrated bones and bits of flint found in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park can most of the time joined back together. If this reconstruction within the park happens with pieces from various strata, it can be perceived that there has been slippage over time. Excavation in n Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park usually emphasizes on one specific level of strata connecting to a particular time frame of a sites life or analyzes a part of history by analyzing vertical strata.
There are three major methods of excavation are used within Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. These are vertical, keyhole and open area excavation. Under vertical excavation, this enables the comparison of the various layers of time by freeing up a trench immersing all the levels in a vertical section. Vertical digging in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park normally happens on complex sites that have numerous periods of occupancy. When this excavation process was utilized in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, the entire park would be immersed with intact lines of earth left in place between places of excavated sites. These gridlines would immerse the strata and could be eliminated to further immerse significant attributes of Writingon-Stone Provincial Park.
Sometimes, the keyhole excavation in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park focused on particular attributes of interest determined by initial surveying. Trenches are opened only around the determined attributes of m Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park and the contents dug up are noted without exposing the park in its entirety (Hempstead, 2007). This process has been widely utilized in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, enabling the attributes of the park to be compared to the already identified common plans. However, it has not been a helpful process for obtaining comprehensive data regarding the entire Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park
The open area excavation in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park is only utilized when an evaluation of the park in its entirety is needed. Since it entails stripping off strata over the site of interest, it is most of the time utilized on shallow areas of Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park with only one or two levels of occupancy. There are situations when huge sites of different occupancy have to be dug up in detail both in horizontal and vertical ways. This was specifically the case when the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) station was destroyed by fire. In these situations, combinations of processes are utilized. The park in its entirety will be exposed and every level dug up and documented in detail whilst vertical parts will be sunk in sites of specific interest.
Site chronology
There is proof that the Milk River Valley was the residence of natives as early as 8000 years ago. Native groups like the Blackfoot perhaps established majority of the rock sculptures and paintings. Other native tribes like the Shoshone also went through the valley and may have also established some of the artworks. These sculptures and paintings portray not only of the lifestyles and adventures of those who established them, but also of the spiritual beings they discovered here. The huge cliffs and hoodoos had a strong effect on the native tourists, who thought these were the houses of strong spiritual beings (Wishart, 2007). The house of the coulees and the existence of game and fruits transformed the site that is currently the park a great place for these nomadic individuals to halt on their periodic movements. While the best usage of the place was made by those in movement, there is some proof, including tipi rings, that there was some permanent residence here.
Starting at about 1730, huge quantities of horses, metal products, and weapons started to appear on the Western plains. This meant not only a development in the native way of living, but a development in the content of the rock art. Images of people on horseback, and soldiers without body protection started to be established. The Sweetgrass Hills of Montana rise over the prairies and the Milk River goes its way through the valley along the cliffs of the path. Across the river can be seen various white establishments, which were established in 1975 to portray the site of the original North West Mounted Police stations at this area.
In 1874, more than 200 Mounties used July and August trekking the prairies to the current Alberta. In September, they stayed at Writing-On-Stone for four days and eventually established tents and stations at the area. Near the latter portion of the trail, there can be seen excellent and astonishing rock structures, pertained to as the Battle Scene. Even though it is hard to determine the exact age of majority of the sculptures and paintings in the site, the images themselves most of the provide hints as to the time they were established.
The Battle Scene portrays a huge war and people can see males, weapons and horses in the fading sculpture. Since horses and weapons were not evident to the Northwestern Plains until the early 1700s, people realize that the scenario was created some time after this period. Based on the Blackfoot myth, it portrays a huge war that happened in 1866 and is thought to have been created sometime in the latter parts of the 1800s (Kraulis, 2005).
In 1887 a North West Mounted Police station was built at Writing-On-Stone to try to mitigate inter-territory whiskey smuggling, which was destroying the native people, and to prevent native horse-raiding celebrations. But in reality neither issue ever became threatening at this station, and the NWMP used majority of their time confronting summer grass fires, guiding lost US cattle back to the territory, and riding lots of boring kilometers on territorial patrol. In the time immediately before the World War I, people started to come in the site, which aided to ease some of the loneliness and separation the NWMP people confronted.
Archaeological significance
The park is significant and holy to the Blackfoot and many other Native Indian groups. Even though the beginnings of most paintings and sculptures discovered at Writing-On-Stone will still be mysterious, the art portrays the origins of the Canadian West. It has become part of a precious site that has filled tourists and First Nations individuals with amazement for thousands of years and is still a living legacy of a spiritual bond between a person and a place.
REFERENCES
Brink, J. (2009). “Rock art conservation research at Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park.” Alberta Revista de Arqueologîa Americana. Instituto Panamericano de Geografica e Historia, Volume:
25 Page: 55(45)
Burke, J. (2005). Seed of Knowledge, Stone of Plenty: Understanding the Lost Technology of the Ancient Megalith-Builders. Council Oak Books
Haney, C. (2001). Badland of the High Plains. Farcountry Press
Hempstead, A. (2007). Moon Alberta: Including Banff, Jasper, and the Canadian Rockies.
Avalon Travel Publishing; 6th edition
Kraulis, J. (2005). Grand Landscapes of Canada. Firefly Books; Bilingual edition
Wishart, D. (2007). Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians. Bison Books
