Wil Luunda ‘Waada aks (Where the Waters Meet): Deep-time histories of shifting estuarine landscapes and human settlement in Laxgalts’ap watershed, northern British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

The geomorphological dynamism of estuarine landscapes provides challenges to archaeologists trying to understand the long-term, intertwined histories of people and place in these ecotones. This is especially the case in regions like the Northwest Coast of North America, where the location of the interface between river and coast has shifted in tandem with changing relative sea level (RSL) positions in the late Pleistocene through the Holocene. We explore the deep-time landscape and settlement histories of the estuarine landscapes of Laxgalts’ap, a culturally significant place for the Gitga’at First Nation on the northern coast of British Columbia, Canada, by melding archaeological, paleoenvironmental, and oral historical knowledge. Using geological data and GIS modeling, we document the evolution of the estuary at Laxgalts’ap in the context of a transformation from a marine channel to an inlet and then a river valley over the last 14,500 years. Our archaeological surveys revealed evidence of human occupation that is over 10,600 years old and spans the Holocene, demonstrating the long-term connections to estuarine areas that are also reflected in Gitga’at oral traditions. This study demonstrates how, with careful attention to geomorphological processes and landscape change, we can document deep-time cultural connections to place, even in the most dynamic landscapes.

Keywords:

• Northwest Coast archaeology
• estuaries
• paleolandscape reconstruction
• oral histories
• archaeological survey
• Ts’msyen/Tsimshian

Acknowledgements

We express our deepest gratitude to the Gitga’at Nation for their partnership and for allowing us to research in Laxgalts’ap, one of their cultural heartlands. We thank Chris Picard and the Gitga’at Oceans and Lands Department for help with project conceptualization, organization, and logistical assistance. This project could not have been completed without assistance in the field from Donald Reece, Justin Clifton, Isiah Dundas, Gary Robinson, Jacob Kinze Earnshaw, Rasha Elendari, Mark Wunsch, Sue Formosa, Ginevra Toniello, Alex Testani, and Jerram Ritchie. We thank the following people for lab assistance: Rhy McMillan (obsidian sourcing), Nick Waber (lithic analysis), Alex Testani (zooarchaeological analysis), Natasha Lyons (charcoal identification), Jenny Cohen (charcoal identification), Megan Poland (flotation, artifact photography), and Laura Bayes (flotation, cataloguing). John Southon provided expertise and advice for all our radiocarbon dating. Ian Hutchinson provided insight and advice on how to deal with the Marine Reservoir Effect in the study area. Susan Kidwell (University of Chicago Department of Geophysical Sciences) identified the bryozoan ectoprocts on the surface of the FkTi-2 cobble tool. We thank Derek Heathfield, Santiago Gonzalez Arriola, Keith Holmes, and Eric Peterson and Christina Munck from the Hakai Institute, and Brian Menounos from UNBC, for acquiring and processing LiDAR data for us. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for providing constructive comments that strengthened this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 The name Laxgalts’ap is also used to refer to a Nisga’a village in the Nass River Valley to the north (alternatively known as Greenville), where substantial archaeological work has been conducted in the past (Cybulski 1992). Laxgalts’ap means “On the main village” in the Tsimshianic languages of the Ts’msyen and Nisga’a; because of its intuitive meaning it is the name given to multiple locations in the region.

2 Gitga’at is the anglicized spelling of Gitk’a’ata, from which the Kitkiata Inlet and Kitkiata River of Laxgalts’ap derive their name. The Gitga’at are one of seven Ts’msyen (anglicized as Tsimshian) First Nations in British Columbia today, the others being Lax’Kwalaams, Metlakatla, Gitxaała, Kitasoo, Kitsumkalum, and Kitselas Nations.

3 The general locations of place names are given in Greening, Rosenblum, and Lepofsky forthcoming.

4 In a previous publication (Letham, Lepofsky, and Greening 2021) we calibrated marine radiocarbon ages with a ΔR of 273 ± 38 using the MARINE13 calibration curve, a value calculated for late Holocene aged marine samples in the Prince Rupert Harbour area to the north (Edinborough et al. 2016). Recognizing that there is spatial and temporal variability in the marine reservoir effect (Hadden, Hutchinson, and Martindale 2023; Hutchinson 2020), we opt to use a locally-derived value here—even though it is based on a much smaller sample size. Ultimately however, given the broad time scale that is the focus of this study, the differences between these two corrections is minor, and does not impact the overall narrative or interpretations. Additional detail, caveats, and justifications can be found in Supplemental Table 1.

5 The radiocarbon ages of bryozoan ectoprocts can be calibrated using the same ΔR value as clams because both animals are filter feeders that live in the near-surface ocean. Therefore, the majority of carbon that enters their carbonate skeletons is derived from the same source: dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in the water that is consumed by each animal. Thus, any reservoir effect incorporated into the carbonate structures of each will be the same (John Southon, personal communication, December 7, 2022). Additional support for the antiquity of this artifact is provided by an age on a non-archaeological Saxidomus gigantea shell from the paleomarine deposit at the find site of 10,166-9882 cal. BP (UCIAMS-180101; Quaal River Shell EXP 2016-004, Supplemental Table 2). The older age on the bryozoan ectoprocts is considered a more direct limiting age for the artifact, but this shell age confirms that the paleomarine deposit dates to the early Holocene.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under Grant #435-2016-0427; the Vancouver Foundation under Grant #UNR16-0666, in-kind contributions from the Gitga’at Nation, and in-kind contributions from Simon Fraser University Department of Archaeology. Letham was supported by a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a MEOPAR Postdoctoral Fellowship during research and writing.