Big Questions, Disappearing Data - ASA Calgary

Join us for our October Lecture Series talk, Big Questions, Disappearing Data: The Late Maritime Woodland and the Impact of Erosion in the Wabanaki Homeland, as part of the ASA Calgary Lecture Series, partnered with the Calgary Public Library! This in-person event will be held at the Central Library - Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall. Secure your spot now!

Presenter: Dr. Ken Holyoke

Date: October15, 2025

Time: Lecture start at 7:00p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Location: Central Library - Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall

ABSTRACT:

During the Late Maritime Woodland (ca. 1,300 to 550 years ago), the widespread distribution of particular stone-tool materials correlates with an intensification of regional exchange systems, evidence of increased ritualization of mundane tasks, and increasingly sedentary behaviours among Ancestral Wabanaki on the Maritime Peninsula. Despite this, at a regional scale, chronological resolution between 1,300 years ago and the 20th century is poor. This complicates understanding of how Ancestral Wolastoqiyik and Wabanaki negotiated change in the late pre-Contact and early post-Contact periods despite evidence for continuities and persistence in use and inhabitation of the land. Climate change is having a direct impact on this historical record; as shorelines and islands erode, Ancestors and Ancestral belongings (artifacts) are lost as is the ability to tell stories of millennia past. The Lower Wolastoq Erosion Project is a collaborative project launched in 2024 with the intersecting goals of 1) developing strategies and solutions for the long-term management of Wolastoqey heritage and 2) to answer critical research questions about the nature of Ancestral Wolastoqi lifeways during the Late Maritime Woodland and proto-Contact/Historic (ca. 1450 CE to the early 20th century) periods in the Lower Wolastoq.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER:

Dr. Ken Holyoke

Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Environment

University of Lethbridge

Dr. Ken Holyoke is an assistant professor of archaeology in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Lethbridge, where he also coordinates the CRM master’s program. Ken has over 15 years’ field and research experience, including in both private and public-sector CRM archaeology, and his research interests include hunter-fisher-gatherer lifeways and mobility, lithic quarrying, sourcing, and exchange, as well as heritage policy, legislation, and ethics. His current projects involve multiple collaborations with Wolastoqey communities in New Brunswick and studying the Canadian CRM labour market. Ken is also co-host of the New Brunswick Archaeology Podcast.

With gratitude for the first, past and present caretakers of the land now also known as Calgary, including the Blackfoot Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), the Tsuut’ina, the Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda Nations, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government and Métis nation, and all people who make their homes in the Treaty 7 region of Southern Alberta.