Old Women's Buffalo Jump National Historic Site
© Parks Canada / Jeff Bolingbroke
Old Women's Buffalo Jump was designated as a national historic site in 1960.
Commemorative plaque: no plaque installedFootnote 1
Description of historic place
Old Women’s Buffalo Jump National Historic Site of Canada is a historic buffalo jump that was used continuously for roughly 2000 years, located in a small coulee on the edge of the Alberta foothills near the town of Cayley. The site consists of landscape and topographic features common to buffalo jumps, notably a cliff face of Paskapoo sandstone rising over a coulee, with archaeological deposits in excess of six metres deep at the cliff base. The remains have accumulated in numerous deposits along the cliff toward a creek, where the deepest vestiges are still largely undisturbed. The official recognition refers to the 3.3 hectares of landscape and all of the associated archaeological remains.
© Parks Canada / Jeff Bolingbroke
Heritage value
Old Women’s Buffalo Jump was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1960. It is designated because: it is a visually dramatic and archaeologically important example of a buffalo-jump, an important food gathering technique for Indigenous peoples who lived on the Prairies.
This undisturbed site had been repeatedly used over many centuries. Buffalo were the foundation of life for the First Nations of the plains, providing an essential food source and raw materials for clothing and lodging. The use of buffalo jumps was an important food gathering technique, a way of gathering a quantity of meat at one time that could be dried and preserved for future consumption. A successful buffalo drive involved a high level of ritual, planning, and communal endeavour.
Old Women’s Buffalo Jump is important because of its archaeological integrity and because it was the site of the first major excavation of a buffalo jump in the Canadian Prairies. Richard Forbis, the first professional archaeologist working in Alberta, excavated the site for the Glenbow Foundation in 1958 and 1959. Due to the integrity of the site, the archaeological sequence identified defined the cultural history of the Old Women’s phase (800 CE to 1700 CE) of the late Prehistoric period in the Prairies. The arrowheads from this deeply stratified excavation show a steady series of small changes through time, and these diagnostic elements are still used to determine the age arrowheads found elsewhere in the Prairies. The earliest radiocarbon dates available are 100 CE, but arrow and spearhead points are associated notably with the late Middle Prehistoric period Napikwan Tradition Besant phase (200 CE to 800 CE) and Tuxana Tradition Pelican Lake phase (1000 BCE to 200 CE), which suggest the jump was used at least as early as 1000 BC.
Sources: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, June 1984, October 1969; October 1967, October 1964, May 1960.
The National Program of Historical Commemoration relies on the participation of Canadians in the identification of places, events and persons of national historic significance. Any member of the public can nominate a topic for consideration by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
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