Barnet Marine Park, SFU/Tsleil-Waututh Summer 2017

Eighteen SFU undergraduate students were enrolled in the 2017 Archaeology Field School participating in a research program at the Barnet Marine Park, Burnaby.  Fieldwork was undertaken as a collaboration between SFU Archaeology and the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation with David Burley (SFU), Morgan Ritchie (Tsleil-Waututh) and Sean Connaughton (Inlailawatash) serving as field directors. The field project included excavation of a well stratified multi-component (450 BC- 1600 AD) Tsleil-Waututh resource collection site with elder berry and clam processing features. Adjacent test excavations also recorded a large cobble cairn surrounded by thick shell midden deposits. A historic shipwreck in the intertidal zone, the Hulda O (1917), was documented and mapped in detail as a student project. A principal goal for the research, as defined by the Tsleil-waututh, was to provide pre-European base-line ecological data for Burrard Inlet in support of ecological restoration efforts.  Beyond insights from the archaeological project, this included a detailed botanical survey of the site and adjacent area and intertidal sampling to record contemporary shell fish populations.