Areas Requiring Additional Survey

Many areas in British Columbia require additional inventory before accurate predictive models of site location can be produced. Certain regions of the province have had no or very little survey, including areas expected to have high site densities. Even in areas of expected low densities, systematic surveys have found significant numbers of sites. The areas requiring additional survey are identified on Figure 3, but the map does not indicate all areas in which additional survey is needed. Some of the areas where data is critically short include:

• all areas further than 100 m from the coastline west of the Coast Mountains, especially known high potential areas such as lakes and subalpine parklands;
• the north and west coasts of Haida Gwaii;
• the north coast excluding areas surveyed around Prince Rupert-Port Simpson and the mouth of the Skeena;
• the entire Nass River drainage;
• the Rocky Mountains and foothills northwest of the Peace River, and the northeast corner of the province;
• the Fraser Plateau outside the immediate areas of the Blackwater, Dean, and Chilcotin rivers, south to the Bridge River (although much of this area could be mapped extrapolating from existing data);
• the highland and subalpine area between the Okanagan and Arrow Lakes

In order to check quality of existing surveys there is a need for systematic survey of areas of Interior Douglas-fir zones using subsurface testing, to determine if the density of archaeological sites in these areas is really as low compared to the grassland regions as is currently indicated. Ideally, this survey would resurvey a few quadrats previously systematically surveyed and would include some survey of grassland areas, only counting sites found in subsurface tests to control for the difference in surface visibility.

Culturally modified tree studies need to be undertaken in the Interior. Many of the early instances of recording tree modification took place in interior locations (e.g., Borden 1952b; May 1977; Eldridge 1982; Mobley and Eldridge 1992), but there has never been studies of their distribution comparable to those on the Coast where red cedar is a major component. Studies could profitably be conducted in lodgepole pine and hemlock forests, both species of which were extensively used for food. These environments are much easier to survey in than the coastal rainforests, due to a comparative lack of understory. Logging is rapidly removing older stands.

More diverse areas of subalpine parkland need to be surveyed throughout the province to test whether the high density of sites in these locations holds over large areas, or is the result of conducting survey in areas used particularly heavily by Native peoples, such as Botanie Valley or Potato Mountain. No high altitude survey has occurred on Vancouver Island, despite various indications that these areas were used. For instance Sproat (1868) mentions that the Nuu-chah-nulth built stone huts in the alpine areas while hunting, and there has been recent evidence for intensive exploitation of marmots in the interior of Vancouver Island (MacNab 1993, personal communication).

In much of the Northwest, survey is almost exclusively concentrated along riverine valley corridors. The resulting apparent site distribution is in marked contrast to the Native view of the same landscape. As one leader asked us: "Culturally the entire landscape up to the mountain peaks was used and occupied. What can be done to connect the riparian with the mountain peaks?" (Loring 1992).

Very few of the trading trails, such as the grease trails of central British Columbia have been surveyed. The location and routes of these surveys is generally well known (e.g, Bussey and Alexander 1992: Figure 13; Mackie and Eldridge 1992: 18-19). These areas have a high potential for archaeological sites although, as such, they can be mapped as having high potential without specific surveys.