A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011 by Claire Campbell

Author:Claire Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55238-526-5
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
Published: 2011-05-11T21:32:21+00:00

Fig. 1. Looking towards Mount Rundle, across grounds and road way, to the semi-subterranean house sites near Banff. [© Canadian Museum of Civilization, Harlan I. Smith, 1913, no. 25654.]

Fig. 2. Semi-subterranean house sites between Mount Rundle and Bow River near the Golf Grounds, Banff. [© Canadian Museum of Civilization, Harlan I. Smith, 1913, no. 24014.]

Smith, Harkin, and park staff worked over the next year and a half[603] to restore the pits to their original condition and to withdraw the lots from townsite development. As Smith reminded Harkin on 28 May 1914, “I believe these are the first prehistoric remains to be preserved in Canada, and I am anxious that they should be both protected and kept as near as possible in their original condition.” Unfortunately, this protection only lasted until 1928, when an expansion of the Banff Springs golf course destroyed the remaining pits.

Smith’s work at the housepits demonstrates the value that the new national parks system was willing to ascribe to archaeological remains. Although it was the first professional archaeological work in the mountain parks, recording the group of housepits was a minor incident as far as archaeological fieldwork goes; Smith did not even have the chance to excavate before the First World War intervened. However, an interest in the housepits is a thread that we can follow through the more recent research in Banff National Park. Today, we know of seven similar sites in the park, dating from the last three thousand years: the only such sites recorded in the Canadian Rockies, distinct from the usual range of precontact campsites, killsites, and quarry sites.[604] They speak to the Rocky Mountains as a crossroads of cultures from the British Columbia Plateau and the Plains, and to people arriving from the west and making a substantial investment of time and labour in excavating and building these structures with the intent of returning. In the late precontact period, Banff was already a village.

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