History of excavations

Excavations by archaeologists have taken place at Charlie Lake Cave on a number of occasions.There is also evidence for twentieth century non-archaeological disturbance in the form of relatively shallow features near the surface which contain artifacts of metal, glass and plastic, and in physical and verbal evidence that the deposits within the cave itself have been extensively disturbed by children.The site has seen five seasons of archaeological work prior to 2022.In 1974 the site was recorded by archaeologists, and Knut Fladmark, Sharon Fladmark and Richard Gilbert (all from SFU) excavated a 1 by 0.5 metre test pit in front of the cave mouth.This excavation occupies roughly the east half of unit 6.A month later, a similar sized test pit was excavated adjacent to the first test pit, forming roughly the west half of unit 6.Both test pits penetrated about 1.3 metres of sediments.This second excavation was undertaken by Richard Gilbert, Jim Burns (vertebrate paleontologist who worked on cave sites in Alberta) and Alan Bryan (Professor, University of Alberta, where Gilbert had gone to start a masters degree).A radiocarbon date of about 1800 BP (uncalibrated) was obtained from the base of this excavation unit (lab number and full information currently unknown).In 1983 Knut Fladmark returned to the site with a larger crew, funded through a SSHRC grant.Excavations were undertaken in a series of 1 by 1 metre units designed to sample the deposits in the cave and in the gully.These excavations resulted in the discovery of the Paleoindian component at the site, as well as a long sequence of later cultural and faunal components.Fladmark oriented a 1 by 1 metre grid over the site such that the east-west axis ran roughly parallel to the gully.As a result, grid north is oriented roughly northeast.Grid lines running east-west were defined as "north" lines, and grid lines running north-south were defined as "east" lines.All units were defined in field notes using the grid line system.Thus, the most westerly unit excavated in 1983 was "N20-21 E20-21".During the analysis which followed the 1983 season each excavation unit was assigned a simple number (e.g."unit 4" replaced "N21-22 E20-21"), which reduced cataloguing time and reduced the chance of making mistakes in unit designations.A few potential areas of confusion should be noted.First, field notes taken in 1983 refer both to the "test pit" or "test pit 1" when discussing the two small contiguous excavation units excavated in 1974.The 1983 grid was oriented slightly differently from the earlier test pits.However, most of the 1974 test pits were contained within unit 6 (N21-22 E23-24).Before unit 6 was excavated in 1983, the backdirt that filled the old 1974 test pit was cleaned out, and further excavation more than doubled its original depth.Secondly, one should note that during the analysis of artifacts and bones from the 1983 season this same unit (N21-22 E23-24) was initially defined as unit 15, and was subsequently changed to unit 6.Some of the original records from the 1983 season may still make reference to unit 15.Thirdly, in 1983 a

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