Growing up on Vancouver Island I have been surrounded by beautiful forested areas and oceanic landscapes. When I was younger I used to play hide and seek with my friends on Beacon Hill Park near the flag pole, which is located in downtown Victoria, British Columbia. Very close to the flag pole that dominated the top of Beacon Hill there is a cluster of massive rocks my friends and I used to climb on and hide behind. I had no idea until I took a British Columbia archaeology course that those large rocks were in fact stones that marked burials from the Late Prehistoric Period (1500-1000). Stones like the ones found near Beacon Hill are actually quite common all over the island. Archaeologically they are called burial cairns, practiced by many prehistory firstnation communities as a way to dispose of the dead. I think it is important to understand burial cairns from an archaeological and cultural perspective, so this blog will be devoted to a brief discussion of burial cairns from Vancouber Island.
Around 1500-1000 years ago the people of the North West Coast, particularly the “Straits Salish speaking areas on the Gulf Islands and Saanich Peninsula,” began to practice a mortuary ritual which consisted of marking the graves of their loved ones by an “arrangement of rocks and soil mounds” (Thom 1995: spatial patterning and Mathews 2008:1). “The identification of burial cairns by the means of their external characteristics is based upon ethnographical accounts and well documented cases” (Tapani 2002). In the 1800’s European antiquarians excavated these cairns by the hundreds, documenting and illustrating their finds. Modern day archaeologists such as Darcy Mathews have studied these ethnographic accounts for years to understand the inner structures of these mounds, without further excavation or damage to the features.
(Image of Race Rocks, near Down Town Victoria, B.C.)
Some of the shared characteristics these cairns possess is that they were used to house one individual, typically a person from the upper-ranks of society (Thom 1995). The body was carefully wrapped into a fetal or flexed position, and protected from the elements by a wooden box. Furthermore, cairns appear to vary in size and shape, ranging from round, rectangular, or oval. Mathew Darcy hypothesized that these mounds are shaped in a way that is similar to the shapes of coastal pre-historic houses, perhaps indicating these mounds are the houses for the dead spirits (Darcy Mathews, personal communication 2010). Furthermore, the materials used were carefully chosen from local indigenous rocks, the location of cairns was “generally very rocky and well-drained” for successful construction (Mathews 2008: 11).
It is evident that the people who built these cairns used specific rocks that potentially weighed up to several tons. This indicated that cairn construction was extremely labour intensive work (Thom, 1995). When these cairns were built the entire village’s life stopped, and the rituals of burying a loved one took precedence. Often these funerals would last long after the deceased was laid to rest, establishing an “institution of ceremonial exchanges” with other territories and tribes (Mathews 2008:14)
With that said, it can be seen that the clustering’s of cairns vary by region, and that this may “suggest how people interacted throughout the broad social network” (Thom 1995). Further analysis of cairns help to recreate the lives of prehistorically Coastal people.
A great example of a cairn site would be Race Rocks, an island near Victoria, which possesses over several stone mounds. It is a location that seems rather isolated from the social world, and is hard to access because the waters are very rough. There are many hypothesis regarding why these graves were placed at Race Rocks: perhaps the graves are territory markers, or for spiritual reasons individuals with great spiritual powers were separated from the village to contain the spirit, or perhaps the location is a testament of bravery, in honour of a fallen warrior?
Today the remnants of these ancient cemeteries are now overgrown by dense forest land and moss, or are hidden close to the rocky ridges that look out at the sea. These ancient burial sites reflect the lives of important individuals, and the material objects placed within the cairns symbolize the person’s status and their role within society (Thom 1995). According to Mathew Darcy’s research he “theorizes that the arrangement and use of mortuary space and the structure of individual cairns are the material expression of changing social identify at the regional, local, and site-specific levels” (Pearson College research at Race Rocks 2009). To conclude, it is evident that these gravesites are places that tell a story of a past society and the lives of the individuals buried there.
For those who want to learn more about the current archaeological work conducted on Vancouver Island, regarding the study of Burial Cairns, I strongly suggest taking a look at this link: Race Rocks. The website displays the current research conducted by Mathew Darcy, a professor at the University of Victoria.
References Cited
Lester Pearson. 2009. First Nations Burial Cairns on Great Race Rock Island. Electronic document. http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/firstnations/burialmound/burialmound. htm#Anchor-The-49575, accessed March 15/2011. Lester B. Pearson College of the Pacific.
Mathews, Darcy.2008. Draft: Immortal Landscape: Burial Cairns and Precontact Straits Salish Identity. pp. 1-17. Paper presented at NWAC Paper 2008.
Thom, Brian David.1995. THE DEAD AND THE LIVING: Burial Mounds & Cairns and the Development of Social Classes in the Gulf of Georgia Region. Electronicdocument. http://home.istar.ca/~bthom/thesis.htm, accessed March 15/2011. The University of British Columbia.
Tuovinen, Tapani.2002.The Burial Cairns and the Landscape in the Archipelago of Åboland, SW Finland, in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Electronic Document, http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514268024/html/index.html, accessed March 15, 2011. Oulun Yliopisto, Oulu.
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