New research analyzing jade artifacts, unearthed east of the Rocky Mountains, sheds light on vast Indigenous trade networks that once cut across pre-colonial Western Canada.
For more than 3,000 years, pieces of nephrite jade were carefully hand-polished and sharpened into blades, chisels and axe heads.
For central and coastal Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest, these tools — made of an incredibly durable stone found in shades of emerald green, black, yellow and white — were essential everyday items used to carve the wood that sustained daily life.
Some of these stone tools, however, travelled from where they were quarried in B.C. across the Rocky Mountains and have since been found in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
The Edmonton-based Archaeological Survey of Alberta led a peer-reviewed study of those tools, recently published in North American Archaeologist, that brought together researchers from the University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Saskatchewan and Royal Saskatchewan Museum.
Their findings suggests these tools, known as stone celts, were highly coveted prestige items in the Prairies.
Crafted in what is now British Columbia, they were passed along to Dene and Cree communities east of the Rockies on extensive pre-contact trade networks that crossed cultural and linguistic boundaries.
The widespread distribution of such artifacts demonstrates that large social networks formed between Indigenous peoples across Western Canada, said Todd Kristensen, regional archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of Alberta and the study’s lead author.
“By the time it made its way across the Rockies around 1,000 years ago, the jade was more about cementing social alliances and networks — kind of a gift, as opposed to a functional tool,” he said.
‘The mystery’
The study sought to answer questions that have lingered in anthropology for decades. The use of nephrite by pre-contact peoples in B.C. is well documented, but its presence east of the Rockies had received little attention, Kristensen said.
With no local nephrite deposits nor evidence of local crafting in the Prairies, researchers wanted to know where these artifacts originated from and how they arrived.
“In B.C., they would use them to make cedar dugout canoes and all kinds of other woodworking,” Kristensen said. “In Alberta and Saskatchewan, where a few of these jade celts appear, it’s a different story.
“That was part of the mystery. Why do we have these jade artifacts showing up in a place where it doesn’t seem like people really needed the jade in a functional sense?”
Researchers analyzed the 24 nephrite celts recorded east of the Rockies over the past 75 years. They confirmed their mineral composition and origin by using portable X-ray fluorescence, gamma spectrometry and specific gravity testing.
The results proved that each specimen came from the Fraser River region of B.C.
The study found that, on average, the celts travelled nearly 850 kilometres from their origin. Some travelled almost 1,500 kilometres.
The study proposes several possible routes along which these items moved across the continent.
Interior Salish craftspeople may have traded with neighboring Dene groups, who then carried the celts east, across the Rockies, to share with Dene kin and ancestral Cree communities, the study suggests.
It also says Dene groups traveling west from northern Alberta, for trade fairs on the Fraser River, may have acquired the celts and brought them home, or Salish groups making trips east into Alberta’s mountain river valleys may have traded directly with western Dene communities.
“We think that Dene people migrating through the region led to a new flourish of relationships that shot the jade east across the Rocky Mountains,” Kristensen said.
“Jade might be a smoking gun that tells us of a new economic relationship that distributed goods in a different way.”
‘Beautiful object’
Manufacturing one nephrite celt required labour-intensive grinding and polishing. A smaller one often took more than 100 hours to make, while larger pieces could take up to 500 hours.
“To invest 100 hours in an object gives it a lot of meaning and value,” Kristensen said.
Celts in the Pacific Northwest were continually re-sharpened and re-used as tools for generations. But those recovered by archaeologists in the parklands and boreal forests, where communities relied on birch bark and hide structures rather than heavy timber, were noticeably larger and showed minimal wear.
This suggests the stone celts were no longer functional tools as they travelled further away; they were prestige items.
Kristensen compares them to sentimental items someone today might keep on display on a desk or mantelpiece.
“It’s a beautiful object, but the real value is the relationship that delivered it,” he said.
Pre-contact people are typically portrayed as isolated hunter-gatherers, but the study paints an alternate picture, Kristensen said.
“We sometimes think of people as adapting through hunting and gathering enough tools and foods and resources to stay alive. But relationships were just as important,” he said.
“That’s what this jade study is helping us understand.”
Kisha Supernant, director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology at the University of Alberta, said the research challenges the idea that pre-contact Indigenous groups were isolated, instead demonstrating human connections and long-distance travel across the western landscape.
Supernant praised the researchers for engaging with Indigenous communities, as well as bridging the gap between their data and the broader context of pre-contact Indigenous cultures.
“That brings that human element — and that is essential, because archaeology, fundamentally, is trying to understand the people of the past,” she said.
Kristensen emphasized that the study relied heavily on citizen science, as almost all 24 artifacts were originally found by farmers plowing their fields, rather than during formal archaeological excavations.
Moving forward, he said, the research team plans to engage with Indigenous communities to pair their findings with traditional oral histories.
