CBC, CTV: Anthropology students digging at Lockport site for connections to Aboriginal agriculture
Nine anthropology students from the University of Manitoba have spent the past month digging at a heritage site on the Red River looking to unearth more artifacts that could shed light on the first farmers in the Red River valley.
The project spearheaded by Dr. E. Leigh Syms of the Manitoba Museum, is only the fourth time there has been any archaeological excavating on the banks of the Red River beside the St. Andrews Dam and Lock in Lockport.
The Manitoba Museum reached out to the University of Manitoba to enlist the help of anthropology students. The group will finish working on the five-week excavating project later this week, as course credit towards a field study class. The university runs the field study class every two years and has done field work most recently at Upper Fort Garry and Bonnycastle Park in downtown Winnipeg.
A group of nine anthropology students from the University of Manitoba helping with the research have made a number of exciting discoveries during the five-week dig, including fragments of pottery, bone, and tools dating as far back as 1200 A.D.
“They’re finding bits of ceramic, bits of bone fragments,” Robyn Neufeldt, an anthropology professor at the university, told CTV News. “We’ve actually found bone tools and an arrowhead.”
The artifacts will be sent to labs across Canada and the United States for further testing.
“(The site) roughly dates to the time of the Vikings,” said University of Manitoba archeology professor Robert Beardsell — a period known as “the medieval warming period.”