River through the dry prairie: Heritage resource management and the archaeology of the southeastern Qu'Appelle River Valley in Saskatchewan

I have worked in the Heritage Resource Management Industry since 2013 on various projects in western Canada. In this thesis, I present a range of data recovered from one of these projects in the Qu’Appelle River Valley of south-central Saskatchewan. Here I integrate excavation results from three sites and position these results within their geological and environmental context, the archaeological culture history for the study area, as well as documented First Nations history in the region. I expand the archaeological context for the study through examination of other sites in the vicinity, the dominant majority having been documented during other heritage impact assessment projects. My first objective for the thesis was to provide a synthesis of prehistory in the region as best as these data would allow. In this respect, I have been largely limited to the Late Prehistoric Period where Avonlea and Old Women’s phase peoples were inhabiting the Qu’Appelle landscape. A second objective has been to assess the usefulness of the unpublished gray area literature as it might facilitate and support the production of a synthesis. This literature is limited in a variety of ways, but it provides some insight that otherwise would not be present.