The Bodo Archaeological Society (BAS) was honoured to receive an Outstanding Achievement Award at the Alberta Heritage Awards presented by Alberta Culture on Oct. 3, 2022.
For nearly 20 years, the society has championed public archaeology and preservation and protection of the Bodo archaeology sites.
Executive members, Myron and Irene Ganser, attended the awards ceremony and accepted the award on behalf of the BAS.
The Bodo Archaeological Society had a busy and successful 2022. The Bodo Archaeological Centre opened on May 24th and closed on August 26th and was open for a total of 14 weeks.
Over 500 visitors came to Bodo between May 24th and August 27th with numbers rebounding following the covid pandemic. A big factor that contributed to this rebound was that schools were able to go on field trips again. We had school groups from Coronation, Macklin, Delia, Edgerton, Hughenden, Provost, and a homeschool group from Luseland, SK. Kids Camp numbers were down compared to 2021 which I believe was due to so many other programs opening again after a couple year hiatus. That being said, we offered more Family Camp programs this year that each spanned two or three days. We had a total of 25 adult dig participants over three sessions (June 8-11, July 4-8 and August 2-5).
An open house was held on July 1 with approximately 50 in attendance.
Other activities included visits from other organizations, a speaker series, and an Adult Dig Program where three sessions for offered in 2022 focusing on three areas.
TP5 was started in 2019 and was a concentrated area of heavily processed bone, fire-cracked rock, debitage, stone tools, and some soil discolouration that represents a hearth.
TP3 continued to yield bone, pottery and stone tools but became less dense as we went down. Eventually, we reached very compact clay in this unit and after a few sterile levels, we considered it complete at 90 cmbs. We also hope to submit samples for radiocarbon dating from this unit.
The ”big block” was reopened this year for the first time since 2016. This area is part of the bison pound and contains a very dense bone bed and lots of projectile points.
