archeology – Page 5

Thousands of B.C. archeological sites

Hartley Odwak holds a 1,000-2,000-year-old stone projective point recovered from one of the sites on which he has worked. (photo from Hartley Odwak)

What is fascinating and striking is that it’s largely unknown to most Vancouverites and British Columbians that there is a plethora of documented archeological sites in and around the Lower Mainland and all over B.C. – quite literally, thousands,” said archeologist Hartley Odwak.

Odwak, 48, grew up in Winnipeg and earned his bachelor’s (with honors in anthropology) at the University of Winnipeg (U of W), before moving to Vancouver for graduate school at Simon Fraser University (SFU), and later moved to London, England, for his PhD. He now calls Vancouver home.

“All the houses at Locarno Beach and south, up the hill a block or so, are on top of one of the most important archeological sites in the province – the Locarno site – which dates to at least 3,300 years ago,” said Odwak. “There are 45 archeological sites in Stanley Park. I don’t believe any are marked by interpretive signage, which makes knowing about them all the more unlikely. The same is true for all of the major cities, towns, villages and Gulf Islands in B.C., from Victoria to Nanaimo, Saltspring Island, Pender Island, Sechelt and Campbell River.”

According to Odwak, there are many archeological consulting firms in British Columbia – 30 or more – some very large and some very small. As for what types of archeological sites exist in the province, he said they include everything from winter and summer villages to seasonal camps, fortification sites, hunting sites, sacred sites, resource-gathering sites and rock art sites. “All these sites document the traditional use of the lands and waters of B.C. by First Nations people back several thousands of years … and we keep finding older and older sites.”

Road to archeology

After completing his BA, Odwak sought a graduate program with a strong human evolution component for his master’s. Although he felt he had received excellent training from Chris Meiklejohn at the U of W, there was no U of W graduate program at the time and the University of Manitoba also did not have a strong human evolution component.

“At the time, SFU’s archeology department had one of the best programs in the country and, as I wanted to stay in Canada, I thought it would be an interesting place to live and study,” said Odwak. “I’m not sure of the exact moment I decided to become an archeologist or if it was entirely intentional.”

At U of W, Odwak was drawn to anthropology, particularly the very early prehistoric periods and human evolution. Anthropological training gives a broad background in many sub-areas, such as archeology, biological anthropology (prehistory and evolution), linguistics and cultural anthropology. Odwak focused on biological anthropology and archeology and, early in his academic career at U of W, held summer jobs with Parks Canada as an archeologist. This provided him with diverse experiences, including traveling to excavate in the Yukon and in Saskatchewan (at Batoche).

When Odwak moved to Burnaby for his MA in 1990, he specialized in human evolution. As part of his thesis, he went to Israel to conduct research and excavations. At SFU, he said he hoped to do what every student of human evolution dreams of – “excavate at an early human site in the old world … and, given [his] Jewish background, love of Israel and grasp of Hebrew, Israel was [his] obvious choice. Israel contains many famous prehistoric archeological sites and fossils critical to the story of human evolution.”

According to Odwak, the oldest sites in Israel are nearly 400,000 years old (before the appearance of modern humans) and several sites contain evidence critical to our understanding of the appearance and evolution of modern humans.

Starting up a firm

When Odwak was hired by B.C. archeological consulting companies, he began working with local First Nations to collect archeological information from their territories.

“I felt an instant connection with the First Nation communities,” said Odwak, who was on his way to becoming an academic biological anthropologist, specializing in prehistory and human evolution in Israel, before his consulting career took on a life of its own.

“It really almost happened by accident,” he said. “When I was doing my MA at SFU, I needed to make some money and was asked by a colleague to help him on a very small archeological project on the Gulf Islands of B.C.”

This led to another project, and another, and, eventually, Odwak was hired by other firms to do work around the province. In 1997, one of the First Nations on Vancouver Island, with whom Odwak had been in the field earlier, asked if they could retain him exclusively. He accepted and, with a partner, started up the firm Sources Archeological and Heritage Research Inc.

Most archeological consulting in Canada, including Odwak’s, involves assessing proposed development areas for the presence of archeological sites. The firms locate, record and map sites to protect them during construction and development.

Making a new home

Coming from a tight-knit community in Winnipeg, it took Odwak a little while to get rooted in Vancouver but, once he and his wife, Anthea Lee, settled down in the Commercial Drive area in the early 2000s, he started to feel more comfortable.

“It’s a very diverse, welcoming neighborhood where, in my experience, you get recognized by the ‘people in your neighborhood,’ as the Sesame Street saying goes, more than other places I’ve experienced here.”

When the couple had children they became more connected to the Jewish community and have since made some very good friends through their kids – sons Noah and Sam – being enrolled at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver day care.

Odwak’s sister, Mindy, moved to Vancouver shortly after he did and now lives a few blocks from them. She and her partner, Nina, are loving aunts to Noah and Sam.

Having outgrown day care, Noah, 6, is now active in after-school programs and classes at the JCCGV, while Sam, 2, has been at the day care for several months. “It’s an absolutely wonderful program,” said Odwak. “Noah and Sam’s growth, development and strength of character gained so much from the teachers, administrators and overall day-care philosophy. This has helped our children develop an early group of community-based friends who, including their parents, are becoming very much like extended family to us.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Discovery of copper awl at Tel Tsaf a game changer

A copper awl from the fifth millennium BCE that was discovered at the site in Tel Tsaf. (photo by Yosef Garfinkel via Ashernet)

Excavations at Tel Tsaf in the Jordan Valley, near the Jordan River, revealed in a woman’s grave a small copper awl. Generally speaking, this would not have been regarded as special except, in this instance, the grave where the awl was found dates from 5200 BCE.

This find, announced by archeologists from the Zinman Institute of Archeology of Haifa University on Aug. 24, pushes back the time that metal technology was thought to have been introduced into the region by at least 500 years. The awl is probably the oldest metal object ever found in the Middle East.

The find also adds another dimension to the Tel Tsaf community itself. Discovered in 1950, it was not until about 10 years ago that it was established from excavations directed by Prof. Yosef Garfinkle that Tel Tsaf dated to about 5200 to 4700 BCE, the Middle Chalcolithic period.

It was clear that Tel Tsaf was a centre of regional commerce. There were silos that could store up to 30 tons of grain in each individual silo, and excavations, including burial sites, had revealed painted pottery, bullae (seals), basalt and obsidian beads, seashells, but no copper – until now.

The discovery of the copper awl would point to a population with advanced technology, and the fact that a copper implement was discovered at the site has a significant bearing on understanding the history of the period, both in Tel Tsaf and the rest of the Middle East.

Tel Motza excavation points to “pagan Yahwism”

A horse figurine is evidence of early Jewish ritual practice.
(photo by Clara Amit/IAA.COM)

One might think that a significant archeological find a few hours’ walk from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem would turn up artifacts we would recognize as Jewish. But since the Judaism of the day was not what we know, the find yielded ritual objects that seem vaguely pagan, almost heretical by today’s standards.

Archeologist Shua Kisilevitz describes the religion of the era as “pagan Yahwism.”
(photo from cjnews.com)

Shua Kisilevitz, the archeologist who was part of the team that excavated the site at Tel Motza, about seven kilometres west of Jerusalem, prefers the phrase “pagan Yahwism” to describe the religion of the era.

Last December, Kisilevitz and three fellow archeologists announced what they called an “unusual and striking” find, unearthed in construction for a highway: the 2,750-year-old walls of a temple, along with a cache of ritual objects that included a pedestal decorated with lions and sphinxes, pendants, pottery and vessel fragments, and figurines – two human and two animal – that may or may not have depicted deities.

The dig provides “rare archeological evidence for the existence of temples and ritual enclosures in the Kingdom of Judah in general and in the Jerusalem region in particular,” the team announced.

The uniqueness of the find is even more remarkable, the archeologists said, because of its proximity to the First Temple, built, according to the Bible, under King Solomon in 960 BCE. But archeologists know little about the period’s religious practices because there are hardly any remnants of ritual buildings from the era, according to Kisilevitz.

While more study is needed, the find provides valuable insights into what those rituals might have been, she said in an interview prior to her recent talk on the subject at the University of Toronto. While those practices may seem strange and un-Jewish today, they were in keeping with the rules of the time, Kisilevitz said.

Previous excavations showed that Motza functioned within the royal administration of the Kingdom of Judah, she said. “It was very much connected to Jerusalem. [It couldn’t] create its own religion. The people of Motza didn’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Oh, we want to create something new.’ They couldn’t break off so easily.”

photo - artifacts from Tel Motza excavation — According to Shua Kisilevitz, artifacts such as these found at Tel Motza, are important because they reflect a formative time for Judaism.
*(photo by Clara Amit/IAA.COM)*

The artifacts are important because they reflect a formative time for Judaism, she noted, adding they show that the ancient Israelite faith was not always centralized in Jerusalem and its practitioners may have used ritual objects now forbidden as graven images. “There are all these presumptions we have which we project onto the early formation of religion,” Kisilevitz said. “This temple finally shows us how the religion started out and what it really looked like at the time. They [were] doing what was common in the period.”

The find also conforms to biblical accounts, which mention local religious precincts outside Jerusalem, she added. And “Motza” is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as a town in the tribal lands of Benjamin, which bordered Judah.

Kisilevitz, who works for the Israeli Antiquities Authority and is in Ontario for several months on an exchange with the University of Toronto, said the team does not know whether the human and animal figurines served a religious purpose. “It’s kind of tricky and a little bit hard to say,” she noted.

The archeological team believes the temple at Tel Motza must have functioned before religious reforms enacted in the times of kings Hezekiah and Josiah, which abolished all ritual sites outside Jerusalem and concentrated religious practices solely in the Temple.

Kisilevitz believes the artifacts do not conflict “at all” with modern understanding of Judaism. “We just have to change the way we think of the religion at the beginning.”

Ron Csillag is a Toronto freelance writer. A version of this article was originally published in the Canadian Jewish News.