1600 Year Old Feast

[Kaere]

This is so wild! Imagine finding something like this?

I'm going to check this out when the exhibit makes it to the museum next year. I'll try to remember to come back to this thread then

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/1-600-year-old-meal-unearthed-at-head-smashed-in-buffalo-jump-1.3794056

An ancient feast, left untouched for 1,600 years until it was unearthed this summer in the foothills of southern Alberta will be preserved inside Edmonton's Royal Alberta Museum.

The roasting pit was excavated from Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, on Blackfoot First Nation territory.

The earthen oven was discovered perfectly intact with a prepared meal sealed inside.

"The unusual thing is someone prepared this meal and they didn't go back and open it up and eat it," said Bob Dawe, the museum's lead archaeologist on the project

"It's as unusual as if you were to put your turkey in the oven and never take it out for your turkey dinner."

The area was home to tribal gatherings by Aboriginal people of the Northern Plains for 6,000 years or more, and the grassy landscape is riddled with artifacts of the past, like bones, tools and arrowheads, but Dawe says this find is unique.

Dawe says the meaty meal would have been cooked by digging a hole in the earth, lining it with rocks and willows, and placing the food inside, before covering it with dirt and building a fire, creating a dense layer of piping hot coals.

"Usually it would be left to cook overnight and then in the morning, when it was dismantled, the meat would just be falling-off-the-bone tender.

"It would a be very delicious meal … and this is probably no exception. It would have been a wonderful feast."

What exactly was on the menu remains unclear. The contents of the pit won't be revealed until the artifact has been carefully transported back to its new home.

The pit hasn't seen the light of day in thousands of years, and unearthing it, without disturbing its fragile content, was a painstakingly difficult task.

The museum called in experts from the Royal Tyrrell Museum to aid in the delicate excavation.

"It's a tricky process," said Dawe, who found the artifact during another dig years ago and has been waiting for the perfect opportunity to excavate.

"To get down to this object, you had to dig through 1,600 years of history, carefully stripping back off each layer of bones and artifacts and soil to uncover it intact.

"It was really a lucky find in the first place. If we had dug 20 centimetres one way or another in 1990, we would not have found it at all."

After a traditional blessing by a local elder, the kitchen-table sized artifact was carefully enveloped in layers of plaster, burlap and foil before being hoisted out of the ground with a crane.

Once carefully transported up the highway to its new home among the exhibits of the provincial museum, those protective layers will slowly be peeled back, revealing the contents inside.

But even after its meaty innards are fully explored, one question will remain for Dawe. Why didn't they finish dinner?

"There is no ready answer," Dawe said.

"It may have been a prairie fire or perhaps a blizzard, or maybe some other party of people interceded. We're not really sure. We'll never know."

The roasting pit is set to be added to the permanent indigenous exhibit at the Royal Alberta Museum next year.

[Agartha]

Wow!!!! How amazing!!! I wonder what kind of meat it was...... but what I really wonder is: what happened for the meal to have been left forgotten like that? This is a real mystery!

[Rockhopper]

Great find! Earth ovens are common around the Pacific. Souvik in Siberia, Hanxeng in China, Tan Dhu in Vietnam and Sth Asia. Various names in Indonesia and Sth America. Hangi in Polynesian and Loba in Melanesian.

This is unique in the fact that it was left for some reason.

Tim.

[Agartha]

This is unique in the fact that it was left for some reason.

Do you think it was left there purposely?

My first thought was something happened to the person who left the meat to cook, and nobody else knew about it or where it was, so it was forgotten forever........

[Rockhopper]

It must have been an emergency As. It takes a lot of preparation to do one so there has to be a good reason. An attack perhaps?

Tim.

[Kaere]

It would not have been left by just one person, the article implies it was a very large meal made for a lot of people, not just one or two. The author suggested that perhaps a prairie fire (that would for sure get you moving) or yes, an attack, either by people or animals. Or a stampede of bison. It's fascinating to think about.

[Agartha]

Fascinating indeed! This is one of those moments when I wished I had a time machine!

[Solace]

Cool share Kaere!

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