Ancient Wetland Garden Found in the Pacific Northwest

News December 27, 2016

(Katzie Development Limited Partnership)
SHARE:
Waterlogged wapato plants
(Katzie Development Limited Partnership)

BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA—Live Science reports that a prehistoric garden has been found on Katzie First Nation territory, located to the east of Vancouver. Archaeologist Tanja Hoffmann of the Katzie Development Limited Partnership and Simon Fraser University led the excavation of the 3,800-year-old waterlogged site. It yielded more than 3,700 whole and fragmented wapato plants, which grow in wetlands and produce starchy roots similar to potatoes. The plants were not domesticated, but Hoffmann said they were grown in a plot set over a pavement of tightly packed, uniformly sized rocks, which would have made it easier to harvest the tubers. Some 150 wooden harvesting tools were also recovered. To read more about archaeology in Canada, go to “A Removable Feast.”

  • Features November/December 2016

    Expanding the Story

    New discoveries are overturning long-held assumptions and revealing previously ignored complexities at the desert castle of Khirbet al-Mafjar

    Read Article
    (Sara Toth Stub/Courtesy The Rockefeller Archaeological Museum)
  • Letter from Maryland November/December 2016

    Belvoir's Legacy

    The highly personal archaeology of enslavement on a tobacco plantation

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Maryland Department of Transportation, State Highway Administration)
  • Artifacts November/December 2016

    18th-Century Men's Buckle Shoe

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Dave Webb: Cambridge Archaeological Unit)
  • Digs & Discoveries November/December 2016

    Piltdown’s Lone Forger

    Read Article
    (Arthur Claude (1867–1951) / Geological Society, London, UK / Bridgeman Images)