MANITOBA
Confirmation of a 50-year archaeological potential project


Anne Davison / Virden Empire-Advance
AUGUST 18, 2021 

Alicia Gooden, President of the Manitoba Archaeological Society.
PHOTO/ ANNE DAVISON

The area could offer decades of digging and cataloguing to plumb the depths of the treasures in the Gainsborough Creek watershed.

The Manitoba Archaeological Society (MAS) and Dr. Mary Malainey concluded their dig at the Gainsborough Creek Wildlife Management Area (the Olson site) on Thursday, Aug. 5. Alicia Gooden, President of MAS, and a Virden resident said that while it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the discoveries of the 2021 exploration near Melita, it was very fruitful.

Gooden said, “Site Director, Dr. Mary Malainey, confirms we have uncovered two separate occupations in both the western prairie level and the valley bottom at the Olson site.”

She said that the earlier, deeper occupation is believed to be Besant, which dates to 1,000 - 2,000 years ago. That means that people lived there around the time of Christ or as late as 1000 AD.

The Archaeologists say the evidence points to people who were agriculturalists. Gooden explained, "The later, shallower occupation represents the horticultural population from around 500 years ago; that is at the forefront of Dr. Malainey's current research. She (Malainey) states, ‘The area was so densely populated that we could probably spend the next 50 years excavating and still find stuff.’”

Meanwhile, the work continues as the Olson site artifacts are analyzed and catalogued in the lab.