Archaeological survey and research in Uplands Park (DcRt- 124), Corporation of the District of Oak Bay, B.C.

Darcy Mathews and Nicole Kilburn 2013 Section 2.2 Funerary Petroforms on Southern

Prior to 1,500 years ago, flexed midden inhumation burials were the primary means of interment used by the Coast Salish peoples, with the deceased placed in shallow pits dug into midden. Occasionally some of the graves had very elaborate mortuary inclusions associated with them (Burley and Knusel 1989). Around 1500 years ago, there was a significant transition in mortuary practices from inhumation to the use of burial cairns and mounds in coastal southwestern . Burial cairns and mounds are surficial arrangements of rock and soil that were built by pre-European contact Coast Salish peoples and are common archaeological features throughout southern Vancouver Island, the Salish Sea and the lower Fraser River valley (e.g. Hall and Haggarty 1981; Hill-Tout 1930; Lepofsky, et al. 2000; Mathews 2006; Oakes, et al. 2008; Pickford 1947; Smith and Fowke 1901; Thom 1995). They most commonly date to the Late Period, between approximately 1500-500 years ago (Oakes, et al. 2008). The terms “burial cairn” and “burial mound” represent a continuum between the relative proportion of rock and soil (Mathews 2006). Burial cairns are primarily arrangements of rock with little soil, whereas mounds tend to be primarily soil, sometimes with a burial cairn inside. In the Salish Sea region, during the Late Pacific Period, the distinctiveness of the individual dead becomes externalized in the cairn and mound, with the dead surfacing and moving outward from the ancestral place of the village to new spaces. Burial cairns and mounds appear during the transitional Middle/Late Pacific Periods in the Salish Sea region, as midden inhumations began to wane and were finally abandoned and ethnographically observed surface exposure began (Ames and Maschner 1999; Curtin 1999; Lepofsky, et al. 2000; Oakes 2000; Oakes, et al. 2008; Thom 1995). This transition is one of the most dramatic shifts in mortuary ritual in the entire prehistory of the Northwest Coast, and likely signifies important social changes, but is still very poorly understood and only minimally investigated (Ames and Maschner 1999:192). This section presents a regional synthesis of the funerary petroforms of southern Vancouver Island, beginning with the many early investigations of these burials during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. During this time, there was a brief but intensive amount of excavation conducted by local “naturalists” such as James Deans and the Natural History Society (e.g.Deans 1871a, b, 1872a, b, 1891), visiting naturalists (e.g.Pinart 1876), visiting geologists (e.g.Richardson 1871, 1872, 1872-1873), anthropologists such as Franz Boas working for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Cole 1999), the Chicago Field Museum (Cole 1999), and most notably the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History (Smith and Fowke 1901:59).Despite prolific early interest in funerary petroforms, there is a conspicuous absence of work on these features until nearly a century later, when Mathews conducted extensive survey and analysis of a cemetery at Rocky Point (Mathews 2006b). A synthesis of this large body of literature can address the following: the structured deposition of funerary petroforms, the bodily treatment of the corpse, and the use of space and material in the burial of the dead. The largest and most systematic early investigation of funerary petroforms on southern Vancouver island was conducted by Harlan Smith, under the guidance of Franz Boas, for the Jesup North Pacific Expedition (JNPE). In three field seasons between 1897-1899, Smith reported on the excavation of 93 funerary petroforms around , including 51 in and 42 in (Smith and Fowke 1901). Most of these were features Smith excavated as part of the three field seasons of JNPE work, but he also incorporated results from some previous and unpublished excavations conducted by their local field assistants O.C. Hastings and James Deans. Both of the latter were prominent members of the Natural History Society and prolific excavators of burial cairns. While the ethics and legality of all this early work was shameful even by the standards of the day, some useful information pertinent to contemporary research can be salvaged from their work. Smith offered some insightful observations about the distribution of burial cairns and mounds from which possibilities about regional differences in funerary practices might be inferred. He states that while burial cairns and mounds are found throughout southwestern British Columbia and adjacent Washington state, the “most elaborate cairns, and the greatest variety, are found near Victoria” (Smith and Fowke 1901:59). Echoing Bancroft (Bancroft 1875), Smith observes that stone cairns are centered around Victoria while burial mounds such as those at Qithyil (Scowlitz, located at the confluence of the Harrison and Fraser Rivers in the Fraser Valley) are situated outside of this burial cairn core area (Smith and Fowke 1901:59). Hill- Tout (1930), Pickford (1947) and others more recently (e.g.Brown 1994; Clark 2010; Mathews 2006; Thom 1995) have noted that in general terms, burial mounds tend to be equated with both Upriver and Island Halkomelem peoples and Mitchell's (1971) "Central and Southern Gulf River Fishermen" culture type, while the practice of building burial cairns was centered around the Straits Salish ethnolinguistic area of Victoria. In the intervening area of the Downriver Halkomelem on the lower reaches of the Fraser River delta, the picture is less clear. Interestingly however, at Point Roberts, Smith commented on the practice of inhumation burials associated with small stone features which he interprets primarily as groups of box burials covered with boulders (Smith and Fowke 1901:59,61), reminiscent of those more recently excavated at the nearby Tsawwassen site (Curtain 1999). The large numbers of cairns seen around Victoria and the adjoining Gulf Islands are not evident along the Fraser River delta. About 45 km upriver, Smith did excavate a large mound at Port Hammond on the lower Fraser River, which was 7 m long and 1.5 m high. In both this and another nearby mound, no internal stone structure was present (Smith and Fowke 1901:60). Reading Smith, it is unclear what, specifically, constitutes a burial cairn or a mound. While Smith makes this typological distinction, he concludes that the transition between these kinds of burial features is gradual (1901:59). Furthermore, the classification is confounded by the broad range of features he encountered, including for example, burials demarcated by a single stone (Smith and Fowke 1901:67). Despite defying easy classification, Smith observed that the practice of building funerary petroforms followed identifiable patterns in their construction and placement (Smith and Fowke 1901). Synthesizing the descriptive data of Smith and others, funerary petroforms can be defined as structured depositions centered on the idea of creating a space to contain and conceal the corpse. There is some variability in the treatment of the corpse at the moment of burial. The corpse was generally placed on its side in a flexed position, either in a shallow excavated pit or sometimes on the ground surface. It was common for the body to be burned, either on the spot or cremated elsewhere and brought to the burial location. In addition, there may have been ritual burning, perhaps of food for the dead, before the funerary petroform was built. At the Hall site on Salt Spring Island for example, a large, hard mass of ash, charcoal and clay was found at the west edge of the burial depression for an unburned flexed burial beneath a stone cairn (Hall and Haggarty 1981:71). Red ochre, called təməɫ, is associated with some cairn burials (e.g.Hall and Haggarty 1981:71; Hill-Tout 1930) and non-perishable funerary inclusions were rare but when identified, consisted primarily of the same kind of copper discs found in Mound 1 at Qithyil and elsewhere. Sometimes a small amount of quartz was included (Bancroft 1875). Both təməɫ and quartz crystal are also evident in earlier midden inhumations (e.g.Hickock, et al. 2010). It is possible that wooden boxes were sometimes used to contain the dead inside burial cairns, and some burial cairns at Cadboro Bay had fragments of wood (Bancroft 1875) which may be the remnants of burial boxes. The kinds of cairns with more definitive burial boxes, however, tend to be smaller (and possibly earlier) inhumation burials with a small number of stones on the lid (e.g.Curtin 1999; Hall and Haggarty 1981:73; Mitchell 1971; Wilson 1988). Fragments of perishable material, likely matting, were found with some burial cairns at Cadboro Bay (Bancroft 1875) and Beacon Hill (Keddie 1984), suggesting some antiquity to the ethnographic practice of tightly wrapping the body into a fetal position using tule mats (e.g.Boas 1891:575). Generally one body was placed inside each burial (Hill-Tout 1930:120; Smith and Fowke 1901) although two bodies are sometimes present, such as the remains of a newborn infant placed together with an adult female at the Hill site (e.g.Hall and Haggarty 1981:71). A rectangular central enclosure was constructed around the corpse using stones with at least one flat side, with the straight sides of the often tabular stones facing inwards toward the body. This enclosure, presumably for protecting the body from contact with and the weight of the surrounding stones, was then sometimes capped by cover-stones, weighing as much as 450 kilograms (Smith and Fowke 1901:63). The largest of these cover stones was often placed over the head of the corpse (Smith and Fowke 1901:75). Often the flat sides of these cover stones were placed with the flat side down and towards the corpse (Smith and Fowke 1901:63, 68). Around this central enclosure, a peripheral structure was built, often of larger boulders, and the bounded space between enclosure and periphery was filled with boulders, smaller stones and soil. Some of the peripheral stones were set on edge, and often the flattest sides of the stones were facing inward. It may be interpretively significant that the flat surfaces of the stones that defined both the sides and top of the bodily enclosure and the peripheral structure were generally facing inwards. The outline of the features ranged from well-defined rectangular arrangements to irregular and loose constructions of stone and soil. In some instances, stones were collected from the beach (Hall and Haggarty 1981:71; Smith and Fowke 1901:66) but typically locally and immediately available stones were used, which dictated to some degree, the overall shape of the features (Smith and Fowke 1901:59). In addition to burial cairns and mounds, other funerary petroforms were described by Smith. It was also common, for example, for burials to be built against in situ glacial erratics, with the large stone used to define part of the central enclosure for the corpse (Smith and Fowke 1901:55,69) and the body placed so that it was facing toward the largest stone (Smith and Fowke 1901:74). Small rectangular petroforms were also associated with funerary petroform sites (Smith and Fowke 1901:68). Smith was unclear what these performs might be, speculating that they might denote unfinished funerary petroforms or a site for ritual fires, although only a small amount of bone and no ash or charcoal was evident in them. Their small size (less than 1 m long) and composition (straight sides of the stone facing inwards) suggests they may be an internal enclosure for a burial. While they do not recognize the process as deflation, Smith reported that some features at Cadboro Bay consisted of small boulders covered by a thick layer of gravel and small cobbles. One feature was 2 m long and less than 10 cm high, yet covered a flexed burial (Smith and Fowke 1901:71) . Similar features were recently observed in the Uplands (Mathews and Kilburn 2013). These features suggest that site formation issues can affect not only feature morphology, but the correct identification of such deflated features. Lastly, Smith noted that some burials had concentrations of stones around them that were clearly not part of a funerary petroform. While he speculated that some might be petroforms associated with or radiating from the burials, he concluded that “the ground is so strewn with bowlders (sic) that lines and circles may be imagined in many directions” (Smith and Fowke 1901:68). There are some differences in both the use of space and materials between the funerary petroform sites investigated by Smith at Cadboro Bay and those in North Saanich. According to Smith (1901:57), burial cairns and mounds around Victoria, such as those around Cadboro Bay, were built on well-drained slopes away from village sites and overlooking or near the sea, with gravelly soil and plentiful exposed stones with which to build the burials. The Cadboro Bay site extended from Oak Bay north to Cadboro Bay (Figure 1), and had “several hundred cairns” made from locally available stones (Mathews and Kilburn 2013; Smith and Fowke 1901:58). Unlike North Saanich, the Cadboro Bay site was largely inland and outside of the boundaries of village midden, although a few cairns were located very close to the village (e.g.Mathews 2002). In North Saanich, while “small cairns were found on every point of land” (Smith and Fowke 1901:57), many funerary petroforms were built on top of shell midden (Smith and Fowke 1901:63) in a practice reminiscent of Somenos Creek (Brown 1994, 1996a, b, 2003) and Tsawwassen (Curtin 1999). In general, the funerary petroforms at the North Saanich sites were also smaller. Some mound-like features were also present, built from yellow clay, and similar to mounds in Upriver Halkomelem territory (Smith and Fowke 1901:66). Several of these mound- like features were clustered together. At Cadboro Bay, mound-like features were also found, but consisted of substantial stone cairns covered by a large mound of soil. They were “in external appearance, an earth mound” (Smith and Fowke 1901:73) but lacked the internal peripheral rectilineal petroform of the Qithyil site(Lepofsky, et al. 2000; Oakes, et al. 2008). However, like Mound 1 and 23 at Qithyil, they did have a large straight-sided cairn inside. The overall dimensions of one of these features was 5.5 m long and was ringed by a low trench from which sediment was excavated and used to cover the cairn. Interestingly, some of the larger excavated funerary petroforms at Cadboro Bay did have the concentric rectilinear arrangement of a straight sided feature enclosed by a perimeter petroform, but instead of the intervening space filled and covered with soil and clay, cobbles, some boulders and a lesser amount of soil were used. While Smith does not state it, it was generally the larger features that had both well defined and straight-sided peripheries. It was the largest feature that Smith excavated in North Saanich, for example, that was both rectangular and unusually large (3.6 m long) for the site. Within this feature, inside a well-made central enclosure, two copper discs like those at Qithyil Mound 1, were found at the head of the flexed burial (Smith and Fowke 1901:65). While the types and proportions of materials used to build funerary petroforms differs in some ways between North Saanich and Cadboro Bay (and Qithyil for that matter), some interesting patterns emerge, including the repetitive use of distinctly rectilinear outlines for generally larger features.

Figure 1: Excavated funerary petroform from the Cadboro Bay site (modified from Smith and Fowke 1901:72, Feature “No. 10”) illustrating the two concentric rectilinear petroforms.

Figure 2: Generalized cairn construction, based on descriptions, diagrams, and photographs in Smith and Fowke 1901.

Figure 3: Synthesis of cairn construction techniques based on the work of antiquarians in Victoria.