Post by UKarchaeology on Jan 25, 2016 0:11:54 GMT
Ancient burial site offers insight into early encounters between indigenous people and European settlers
It was late summer and Brian Rozmahel's organic hemp crop just outside Viking, Alta., had already been devastated by drought.
Now gophers were feasting on anything left over. And one morning as he set out to check some snares, something caught his eye that would change him profoundly and set in motion an anthropological mystery.
Protruding from a badger hole in his field was a human skull.
"I realized when I picked it up that it was light, and ... I recognized it right away as a human skull. It took me aback."
Seeking advice, he called a relative working for the RCMP.
In very short order Rozmahel's field looked like a crime scene with ribbons of yellow police tape and a 24-hour guard watching the site.
Two days later the Mounties pulled up stakes when an examination of the skull determined it was from the early nineteenth century, before European settlement in the area.
Start of a new adventure
"That was the start of a new adventure for me," Rozmahel says.
"I would come out here every day, and I would look at the badger pile and I would sift through, and then we started discovering some beads and some rings and buttons.
"And I started collecting them, and I put them in a container to keep them all together until the people from the government could come out and examine them."
In the meantime, a group of indigenous elders paid a visit, and along with Rozmahel and a few of his family members, held a ceremony at the newly-discovered gravesite.
"I was very honoured to witness the ceremony and to take part in it," Rozmahel says.
"I felt like I was entering a world that was really unaccessible to most of us. A world of mystery, of great reverence."
Full story/pics/video: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ancient-burial-site-viking-alberta-1.3368518
It was late summer and Brian Rozmahel's organic hemp crop just outside Viking, Alta., had already been devastated by drought.
Now gophers were feasting on anything left over. And one morning as he set out to check some snares, something caught his eye that would change him profoundly and set in motion an anthropological mystery.
Protruding from a badger hole in his field was a human skull.
"I realized when I picked it up that it was light, and ... I recognized it right away as a human skull. It took me aback."
Seeking advice, he called a relative working for the RCMP.
In very short order Rozmahel's field looked like a crime scene with ribbons of yellow police tape and a 24-hour guard watching the site.
Two days later the Mounties pulled up stakes when an examination of the skull determined it was from the early nineteenth century, before European settlement in the area.
Start of a new adventure
"That was the start of a new adventure for me," Rozmahel says.
"I would come out here every day, and I would look at the badger pile and I would sift through, and then we started discovering some beads and some rings and buttons.
"And I started collecting them, and I put them in a container to keep them all together until the people from the government could come out and examine them."
In the meantime, a group of indigenous elders paid a visit, and along with Rozmahel and a few of his family members, held a ceremony at the newly-discovered gravesite.
"I was very honoured to witness the ceremony and to take part in it," Rozmahel says.
"I felt like I was entering a world that was really unaccessible to most of us. A world of mystery, of great reverence."
Full story/pics/video: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/ancient-burial-site-viking-alberta-1.3368518