Charlie Lake is a 14 kilometre long lake bordering the Alaska Highway in Northern British Columbia around the south end of which has grown the community of Charlie Lake. Charlie Lake Cave is about 175 metres northeast of the highway, surrounded by the community. This is not a large cave, at most 4.5 to 5 feet high inside and about 20 feet in circumference. There are reputed to be pictographs within, but, with the latter day graffiti, it's hard to tell.
Because it is an archaeological site access is somewhat limited, but one may tour the exterior via
Google Street View.
Archaeologically, the cave has proven to be very important in furthering understanding of the evolution of the fauna of North America, as well as the human habitation of the area. While the cave itself held no artefacts associated with human habitation, a waste pit directly in front has yielded artfacts up to 10,500 years old. Evidence of native rituals and various stone tools have been found. Some of the more notable artefacts found at the site include a fluted point, six retouched flakes, a stone bead, a fragment of a human mandible dated to 7360 BP, the remains of two types of bison, signs of two bird burials dating to 12,000 years ago and approximately 1,000 years ago.
The land on which the cave is located was purchased by three Treaty 8 First Nations – Doig River, Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations – in 2012 with the intent to restore, preserve and enhance the site. The three First Nation communities see Tse’KWa as a cultural and heritage resource for Treaty 8 and the general public, and have proposed developing a museum and/or interpretive center at the site. The Peace River Regional District also supports the site’s development as a park.
The archaeological site, which is only a portion of the property, is designated a Provincial Heritage Site. The site is also automatically protected under Section 13(2)(d) of the HCA as it is “…a site that contains artifacts, features, materials or other physical evidence of human habituation or use before 1846.”
From Our Alaska Highway
Some snippets denoting the importance of the cave site are below.
Charlie Lake Cave
In a cave, north of Fort St. John, British Columbia, important discoveries were made by Dr. Knut Fladmark in 1974, then in the 1980s and again from 1990 to 1991 by Dr. Jon Driver and Dr. Fladmark. From the remains found, archaeologists have a clearer understanding of the people, environmental changes, and the animals that lived in the region, spanning thousands of years.
Preserved at Charlie Lake Cave, also known as Tse'K'wa, was a rare record of artifacts dating from the end of the last ice age to recent times. It is located on the side of a steep hill and while the cave itself is relatively small, the major feature is a deep gully in front of the cave itself. Over the years, the people who temporarily stopped at the cave while on a hunting or fishing trip, used the gully as a ‘waste-pit’ which filled with successive layers of soil. Evidence of people visiting the area over 10,500 years ago, up until the 1940s, has been preserved...
...Animal bones tell us a lot about historical environments and those from Tse’K’wa are special for a number of reasons, including the fact that this was one of the few sites in northern Canada with a complete record of well-preserved animal bones from the end of the last ice age to modern times and two major environmental periods represented...
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Sacred Rituals
The oldest traces of sacred rituals by the ‘Paleoindian’ people in Canada, considered by many as the most culturally significant find at Tse’K’wa, were the two raven burials. In among the toe bones of the first raven, dating back 9,500 years, was a ‘microblade core’ which is a fine-grained stone that ancient people used to remove small, parallel sided flakes of stone, which could then be slotted into in a variety of handles. This technology is so distinctive that archaeologists make special note when it appears and the fact that the raven was buried with this tool contributes to the theory that the burial was deliberate. A deeper level excavation revealed a second raven skeleton, predating the first by at least 1,000 years and even better preserved...
...DNA research found that there were two distinct bison populations. One group of bison lived to the south of the ice sheets in the continental USA and very southern parts of Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. The other population lived in unglaciated regions of Yukon, Alaska and northeast Asia. When the bison fossils from across the vast regions were studied, it was found that in every location - except one - the bison were either northern or southern types. The one exception was Tse’K’wa where bison from both the north and south were discovered...
...This was the first site in Canada in which ‘fluted point’ tools and animal remains – in this case, a well-preserved extinct form of bison – have been found undisturbed, and could be so precisely dated.
From Ancient Origins