University of Calgary archeology students explore Edworthy Park dig site

Calgary's Archaeological Field School lets volunteers and students work with professionals at a dig site in Edworthy Park along the Bow River.

Students from the University of Calgary were at Edworthy Park on Monday to dig up the past as part of the university’s archaeology field school

This is the third year for the program, which sees volunteers work alongside professional archaeologists, graduate students and University of Calgary undergraduate students.

“This is a site that we actually found about a year ago,” assistant professor Lindsay Amundsen-Meyers said.

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“I find it a really fascinating site, because it has a very longtime depth and history of use, so we have everything here.”

Amundsen-Meyers says they chose the specific location they’re at in the park after conducting a series of “shovel tests,” where a team dug test holes 90 centimetres deep to see if there were any artifacts buried.

It was in one of those holes where a projectile point was found.

“It is something that dates roughly between 2,100 and 2,800 hundred years ago,” she said. “Based on its style – these things change stylistically over time, and they would have been using an atlatl or a dart thrower rather than a bow and arrow – so it’s a dart point.”

Amundsen-Meyers says she’s excited at the prospect of what the team will uncover this year, because on top of its indigenous use as a camp site pre-dating Calgary, it was also a homesteaded by Thomas Edworthy and was also the site of an industrial brick making operation.

“We kind of have two different occupations there,” she said. “But we have found already some complete bottles, pieces of ceramic with maker’s marks, they have a brick feature that looks like some kind of drainage feature that was built out of bricks that’s still in place below the ground that they’re excavating so some really neat things as well from that historic period.”

The program runs until June 10.

Laureen Bryant, a cultural landscape planner for the City of Calgary, says it’s a great opportunity for Calgarians to learn more about the use of the land.

Bryant says there are more than 1,600 archaeological sites recorded within city limits, and more than 200 of them are within the city’s park spaces.

“Most citizens don’t realize the depth of history we have here,” she said.

Amundsen-Meyers says there is also an Indigenous archeological field school program where Indigenous youth who may be interested in the field are exposed to dig sites and mentored by archaeologists.

The program also works with all of the Treaty 7 Nations, inviting Indigenous elders to conduct ceremonies on the land before any digs start.

“The Indigenous communities are underrepresented in archeology as professionals,” she said.

“So, if we can get Indigenous youth interested, get them trained and set them on their way so that we increase capacity of those communities to study their own history, I think that’s a really, really key piece of what we can do here.”

Whatever the team discovers at the dig in Edworthy Park will go back to the University of Calgary to be cataloged.

The artifacts will be sent to the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton.