Palynology and palaeoenvironmental work at The Provincial Museum of Alberta is mainly directed towards the investigation of the postglacial landscapes and environments of Alberta, particularly as they relate to the Province's human history, which extends back over 10,000 years. In the last nine years, I have worked closely with colleagues from the Archaeological Survey on a number of joint projects. A particular focus has been the landscapes associated with some ancient archaeological sites, such as Saskatoon Mountain (ca. 9500 years old), Fletcher (ca. 9300 years old), and James Pass (ca. 10,000 years old).

The Palynology Laboratory houses collections and facilities for sample processing and analysis. The Laboratory moved recently into new quarters in the basement of the Provincial Museum. This now includes work space for students and visiting scholars wishing to use the comparative collections. There are two Reference Collections (Pollen and Seeds) for identification and confirmation of material from lakes, peatlands, and archaeological sites. The Pollen Reference Collection comprises about 780 samples, mounted in silicone oil, and represents 86 plant families, mainly from native Alberta plants. The collection has good representation of plant taxa commonly encountered in Late Quaternary records from Alberta.

The Seed Reference Collection is small but growing rapidly! It consists of 220 catalogued samples, with about 100 other samples undergoing processing, and so far represents 47 plant families. Because there is no published reference manual for seeds of western Canadian plants, one recent focus of curatorial activity has been documenting the collection (photographs, drawings, size measurements etc.) and compiling a database which can be used to develop an identification manual. Each reference sample consists of a minimum of thirty seeds, thus allowing generation of size statistics for comparative purposes. The collection includes seeds from many plants known from ethnobotanical studies to have been used by Aboriginal people in Alberta.

The Working Collections consist of samples mainly from Alberta archaeological sites, lakes and peatlands. At least seven records are in various stages of processing. I am especially interested in landscape history following deglaciation. Current projects focus on macrofossils from 9300-year-old sediment at the Fletcher Site in Southern Alberta (which is now the subject of a diorama being constructed for exhibit in the new Aboriginal Peoples Gallery at the Provincial Museum) and analysis of ca. 10,000-year-old plant remains from several dugouts in southeastern Alberta (Vickers and Beaudoin 1989, Beaudoin 1995). These remains are highly significant because they provide a "snapshot" view of southern Alberta landscapes at a time that is poorly documented in the Plains but is important for human history because it coincides with some of the oldest known archaeological sites in the Province.

Seeds recovered from a ca. 9300-year-old hearth at the Saskatoon Mountain Site, west of Grande Prairie, included raspberry (Rubus sp.), cherry (Prunus sp.), bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), and strawberry (Fragaria sp.). These plants were all used by Aboriginal people in the recent past and people at Saskatoon Mountain over 9000 years ago were presumably gathering and using them also (Beaudoin et al., 1996). Published Holocene pollen records are available from the area north and west of Grande Prairie but there is comparatively little information available from the region immediately to the south. In consequence, three lakes (Hilltop, Pierre and Nose Lakes) have been cored in the Grande Prairie area ) and the pollen record from Pierre Lake is under investigation.

A recent project looked at a 9300-year-old record from "Wood Bog", just east of Grande Prairie. Fifty samples were processed for macrofossils (seeds, mollusc shells, ostracodes, insects, wood). The samples comprised over 21,000 seeds from about forty plant types and 12,000 shells from ten different mollusc taxa. This project provided new information about the early Holocene landscapes inhabited by the people who occupied the Saskatoon Mountain Site (Beaudoin 1993b). Pollen samples from this site should provide an interesting regional contrast to the predominantly local record given by the seeds.

Before joining the Archaeological Survey, I worked primarily in the Canadian Rockies. I have continued to analyse the data from this work (Beaudoin and King 1990, 1994). As an extension of this interest, I have recently completed an investigation, with Mel Reasoner, of pollen focussing and differential pollen deposition in the sediments of Lake O'Hara (Beaudoin and Reasoner 1992).

Further afield, I have been involved in a project based in Heilongjiang Province, northeast China (Ives et al. 1994, Beaudoin and Reintjes 1994). Samples from sites in southern Heilongjiang have yielded abundant Late Pleistocene remains of large animals and tantalizing suggestions of human activity. At Xue Tian, near the Jilin border, for instance, remains of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, and horse have been recovered. Organic-rich sediments from this level are expected to produce details of Late Pleistocene environments.

Colleagues and students are welcome to visit the Palynology Laboratory. For more details or to arrange access to the Reference Collections, please contact: Alwynne B. Beaudoin, Archaeological Survey, Provincial Museum of Alberta, 12845-102nd Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, T5N 0M6, Canada.

For more information on these programs and projects, please visit the Provincial Museum of Alberta's WWW presentation.

References and some recent publications

Beaudoin, A. B., 1995. Early Holocene Vegetation and Landscapes in Southern Alberta. In "Climate, Landscape and Vegetation Change in the Canadian Prairie Provinces", Edmonton, Alberta, May 1995, Program and Abstracts.

Beaudoin, A. B., 1993a. A Compendium and Evaluation of Postglacial Pollen Records in Alberta. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 17:92-112.

Beaudoin, A. B., 1993b. Seeds, Shells and Sediment: 9,000 Years of Environmental History Near Grande Prairie. Alberta Past 9(3):6-7.

Beaudoin, A. B., and R. H. King, 1994. Holocene Palaeoenvironmental Record Preserved in a Paraglacial Alluvial Fan, Sunwapta Pass, Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. Catena 22:227-248.

Beaudoin, A. B., and R. H. King, 1990. Late Quaternary Vegetation History of Wilcox Pass, Jasper National Park, Alberta. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 80:129-144.

Beaudoin, A. B., and M. A. Reasoner, 1992. Evaluation of Differential Pollen Deposition and Pollen Focussing from Three Holocene Intervals in Sediments from Lake O'Hara, Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada: Intra-Lake Variability in Pollen Percentages, Concentrations and Influx. Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 74:103-131.

Beaudoin, A. B., and F. D. Reintjes, 1994. Late Quaternary Studies in Beringia and Beyond, 1950-1992: An Annotated Bibliography. Archaeological Survey, Provincial Museum of Alberta, Occasional Paper No. 35. Alberta Community Development, Edmonton, Alberta. viii + 386 pp.

Beaudoin, A. B., M. Wright and B. Ronaghan, 1996. Late Quaternary Landscape History and Archaeology in the "Ice-Free Corridor": Some Recent Results from Alberta. Quaternary International, 32:113-126.

Dormaar, J. F., and A. B. Beaudoin, 1991. Application of Soil Chemistry to Interpret Cultural Events at the Calderwood Buffalo Jump (DkPj-27), Southern Alberta, Canada. Geoarchaeology 6:85-98.

Ives, J. W., Yang Zhijun, A. B. Beaudoin and Ye Qixiao, 1994. Human Presence in Heilongjiang, China, Along the Late Pleistocene Periphery of Beringia. Current Research in the Pleistocene 11:136-138.

Vance, R. E., A. B. Beaudoin, and B. H. Luckman, 1995. The Paleoecological Record of 6 KA BP Climate in the Canadian Prairie Provinces. Géographie physique et Quaternaire 49:81-98.

Vickers, J. R., and A. B. Beaudoin, 1989. A Limiting AMS Date for the Cody Complex Occupation at the Fletcher Site, Alberta, Canada. Plains Anthropologist 34-125:261-264.
 

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Note: This article appeared in CAP Newsletter 18(2):14-17, 1995. It has been slightly updated.