Haida Gwaii: Human History and Environment from the Time of Loon to the Time of the Iron People

Joan Lovisek, Ph.D., is a consulting anthropologist and ethnohistorian
in British Columbia.

In the 1970s, archaeologist Knut Fladmark proposed an intriguing
hypothesis that parts of the Queen Charlotte Islands and Hecate Strait
may not have been completely covered by ice during the last ice age and
could have been used as a coastal corridor for early human migration to
the Americas. The existence of an unglaciated refugia requires
archaeological evidence to date to at least 14,000 BP, which would have
allowed humans time to travel to and occupy the oldest archaeological
site at Monte Verde in Chile, which is dated circa 12,500 BP. Non-human
evidence like pollen suggests the possibility of human migration 15,000
to 10,000 years BP, but any human evidence may be underwater in Hecate
Strait.

By examining the environmental and biological potential for the
presence of early human populations during the late glacial and early
Holocene time periods, the contributing authors in this collection of
studies update the current state of knowledge. Building on the findings
of an earlier publication, The Outer Shores (1989), Haida Gwaii offers
significant advances in paleoenvironmental and archaeological data in
the form of pollen, plant, animal, and artifact studies that provide new
and compelling lines of evidence for the existence of unglaciated
refugia. Of the 16 chapters of independent studies, the majority involve
archaeological field studies and paleoenvironmental studies, while two
chapters are devoted to Haida interpretations of history. These
chapters, written by Haida contributors, interestingly stress the
historical (and not social) validity of oral tradition.

The debate over early postglacial occupation of Hecate Strait by
plants, animals, and humans is intriguing, but in the absence of human
evidence, the editors are correct in adopting a conservative approach to
the findings. While drowned landscapes offer the promise of a biological
refugia and early human occupation, there are immense logistical
challenges and costs in such field investigations. Haida Gwaii is a
scholarly reference consolidating current findings and will be of
immense value to scholars for some time. Its quest for evidence of early
human occupation in Hecate Strait can only inspire future directions in
Northwest Coast archaeology and paleoarchaeology.