Description of Historic Place

The Napao Site is a Municipal Heritage Property consisting of 64 hectares of cultivated land located approximately 10 km west of the Town of Ponteix. The property features precontact artifacts and other cultural remains exposed on the surface of its cultivated fields. Test excavations have confirmed the existence of buried remains, including deposits below the plough zone.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Napao Site resides in the information it reveals regarding Saskatchewan’s precontact cultures. Artifacts, butchered bone and hearths exposed by cultivation and erosion span a period extending from a few centuries to several thousand years ago. The site is notable for significant amounts of very ancient cultural remains. Stone tools related to the Scottsbluff culture (ca. 8,500 years before present) are particularly abundant. Projectile points from even older periods have also been found. The site is most significant for buried cultural deposits that are approximately 7,000 to 8,000 years old, among the oldest undisturbed archaeological remains thus far discovered in Saskatchewan. These intact components provide a rare opportunity to learn about the lives of some of Saskatchewan’s earliest known inhabitants.

Source:

Rural Municipality of Auvergne, No. 76 Bylaw No. 92-12.

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the Napao site resides in the following character-defining elements:
-elements that reveal information regarding precontact use of the site and contribute to its interpretation, including hearths or other archaeological features, butchered bone, artifacts such as projectile points and other stone tools, and the spatial relationships and environmental context of the archaeological remains.