The Province of Alberta has two superb museums associated with outdoor sites. One, of course, is the famed Tyrell Museum of Paleontology. The other is Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1981, with its Interpretive Centre. For a period of five thousand years, native peoples of the region drove herds of buffalo over this cliff. The beasts were driven and herded to their deaths with aid of a complex system of cairns, fences, and corrals, and organized team-work. The bodies were butchered and processed into pemmican (a spoilage-resistant concentrated food) and hundreds of other products, which were traded across the region. It was virtually an industrial-scale enterprise. Head-Smashed-In was only one of many such sites in the region, but it is the one most thoroughly investigated.
This book takes Head-Smashed-In as the starting point for an exploration of the prehistory of the Canadian prairie provinces, examining the archaeological record with care, and interpreting it with strict discipline. But it’s written with a personal voice, and without jargon or academic dithering.
The author is the Curator of Archaeology at the Royal Alberta Museum, and the world’s authority on buffalo jumps. The book is extremely well-written and organized. It’s magnificently illustrated and graphically pleasing, a fine production in every respect. I can’t think of any better introduction to the prehistory of our prairie provinces. It should be in every school and library in Canada.
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