PROGLACIAL LAKE-MARGINAL WETLANDS AND THE PALEOINDIAN TRADITION IN SOUTHERN MANITOBA, CANADA

Paleoindian sites in the Canadian Prairies are often found in association with the margins of large proglacial lakes. However, since these lakes were nearly abiotic due to cold water temperatures and high turbidity, the significance of the archaeological site distributions remains unclear. On-going geoarchaeological research in southern Manitoba is addressing this research question through regional- and local-scale paleoenvironmental reconstructions of proglacial lake-marginal locales. Behind the active beaches of glacial Lakes Agassiz and Hind, we note that paleolagoons and fens/ peatlands on recently-drained lake surfaces were numerous throughout the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Preliminary macrobotanical (and other paleoecological) data indicate that these small wetlands were sufficiently isolated from the oligotrophic conditions of the larger, meltwater-fed, lakes to support a stable assemblage of economic and medicinal plants by approximately 10.5 ka BP. Because the proglacial lake shorelines would also have constrained animal migration routes, we therefore hypothesize that the adjacent wetlands were highly efficient locales for plant gathering and large mammal entrapment.