The Seymour Valley Archaeology Project (SVAP) is a long term project, with 13 seasons of field work since 2000. Field seasons are seven weeks long and the work is done by students enrolled in the Capilano University Archaeology Field School. The study area is within the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve (LSCR), about 20 km northeast of Vancouver in western Canada. The time period of interest is between 1900 and 1950. There is very low archaeological visibility of historic period activities in the LSCR due to the deliberate demolition of structures in the 1940s, and the total closure of the area in 1950. Forest re-growth has covered most remains of human occupation and use of the area. The Seymour Valley Project has focused on finding, recording, and in some cases, excavating places where people worked and lived. This includes Euro-Canadian sites, but most of the focus has been on early 20th century Japanese logging camps.
The 2019 field season is focusing on one Japanese camp that was initially established and used as a logging camp for a few years around 1920. It is hypothesized that after its use as a logging camp, a small community of Japanese continued to live at the camp until WW II. The field season will involve training students in field methods. Other objectives include providing data on the material culture of people living at the camp, and obtaining data that can support the hypothesis that people continued to live at the camp after its initial use as a logging camp.
The camp is unique. Previous field seasons have revealed the foundation of a bathhouse, the locations of a dozen small houses (assumed based on clusters of household items), a wood-lined water reservoir, a garden, and a rock feature that may be the base of a small shrine.
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