Dig at The Forks sheds light on location’s rich history

A fascination with The Forks and its significance to Canada’s First Nations as a historical gathering place has led Sid Kroker and his team of archeologists down a path of discovery this summer.

Since the beginning of June, Kroker and his 22-member team have been painstakingly sifting through soil and uncovering ancient artifacts in an archeological dig at the future site for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

“We are going to be digging the entire basement area by hand, going through the cultural layers which date from about 1000 AD to 1450 AD. For some reason during that 500 year period, this was prime real estate location at The Forks,” Kroker said.

The area encompasses 880 square metres, which makes it one of the largest dig sites to date at The Forks.

“By being able to open up a block area like this it gives us an idea of the entire living area, as opposed to a lot of other projects, where you are looking at just a water trench and you can’t necessarily piece everything together,” Kroker said.

Also, working to the team’s advantage is the location of the dig. Because The Forks area was flood prone, every time a flood occurred it would put down a layer of silt.

“That layer gives us a buried time capsule so we get an idea of what people were doing and how they were patterning their lives,” Kroker said.

Some of the items recovered so far during the dig include different styles of pottery, stone tools, including projectile points, scraping tools for cleaning hides for clothing and stone knifes for butchering animals and cutting hides.

Nathalie Cahill, an archeological student at the University of Manitoba, is one of the 22 team members. The dig is her first opportunity to work in the field and she says it has provided her with valuable experience.

In addition, to recovering the artifacts, she’s also been asked to give each of them a unique catalogue number so they can be located in the collection and chronicled in a report.

“Once the dig is over in September no one will have the chance to see the sight again so we want to map everything as best we can so we can reconstruct the sight in 3D afterwards,” Cahill said.

Kroker said after all the artifacts have been analyzed they will be going into a depository at the Manitoba Museum or the Manitoba Historical Branch.

However, interested parties don’t have to wait that long to catch a glimpse of these items. The dig site has been opened to the public, with interpretative viewing being offered by Parks Canada.

“People that want to come to dig site will get an introduction and overview about the history of The Forks to put the dig time period into context,” said Barb Ford, manager of Heritage Programs for The Forks National Historic Site.

“The Forks is a very large historical site that represents a huge continuum of time, it is 6,000 years-plus. The time period they are looking at within the archeological dig is a pre-contact period before Europeans came to this area.”

Ford said the interpretative talk will focus primarily on the actual artifacts, how they might have been used and the importance of where items were found.

The interpretative sessions will take place twice a day from Thursday-Sunday at 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3p.m. to 5 p.m., weather permitting.