A 6,000-year-old processing plant
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a UNESCO World Heritage site in southwest Alberta where the Rocky Mountain foothills meet the Great Plains. For nearly 6,000 years, Plains Indigenous peoples, primarily the Blackfoot, used this 300-meter-long cliff for large-scale bison hunting. The site is a complex consisting of a large gathering basin, a network of drive lanes marked by stone cairns, the cliff itself, and a processing area below. Hunters, known as "buffalo runners," would guide bison herds into the drive lanes, which extended for kilometers. Often disguised in coyote and wolf pelts, they would initiate a stampede, driving the animals towards the precipice. The cliff, at its highest point, drops more than 10 meters to the valley below. The fall would kill or disable the bison, which were then processed at a camp established at the base. This efficient method could produce an enormous amount of food and materials in a single event.
The name of the site comes from a Blackfoot legend about a young brave who wanted to witness the hunt from below. He stood under a ledge but was buried and killed as the bison rained down. When his people found him, his head had been crushed by the weight of the carcasses.
Reading the layers of time
The main scientific feature of Head-Smashed-In is the vast deposit of bones at the base of the cliff. These archaeological layers, a field of study known as stratigraphy, are over 10 meters deep and contain the remains of millions of bison. Excavations reveal a timeline of use stretching back at least 5,800 years. The layers contain bones and tens of thousands of stone weapon tips, primarily arrowheads and spear points. Analysis of these artifacts shows changes in technology over millennia. The deepest, oldest layers contain different styles of points compared to the upper layers, which even include metal arrowheads acquired after European contact.
Archaeological research has revealed that the site is one of the oldest and largest buffalo jumps in North America. The sheer volume of bones and artifacts provides a detailed record of the Plains peoples' subsistence, technology, and culture. The abundance of resources from successful hunts allowed time for art and ceremony. Scientific analysis continues, with researchers using modern techniques on long-curated museum collections to refine the site's chronology and understand the species of bison hunted in the earliest periods.