The Archaeological Survey in Numbers – 2022 Update Part One

Written By: Colleen Haukaas, Archaeological Survey

This week’s post is an update on 2022 archaeological permits from the Archaeological Survey of Alberta. All archaeological field research in Alberta must be carried out under a permit issued by the Archaeological Survey by a qualified professional archaeologist. In 2022, the Archaeological Survey issued 209 permits to 53 professional archaeologists at 19 companies.

As in previous years, the majority of permits were issued for mitigative assessments, or assessments to determine if a proposed development may impact a known of potential archaeological site. The majority of assessments were Historical Resources Impacts Assessments (HRIAs), which are generally preliminary examinations intended to determine whether a development will impact archaeological sites. More detailed site excavations are less common in mitigative archaeology, but do occur when sites cannot be avoided by a development. In 2022, mitigative archaeologists carried out 194 assessments, which included the excavation of more than more than 27,000 shovel tests and 476 square meters of formal site excavation.

The infographic below includes details about archaeological permits and assessments, based on information provided to the Archaeological Survey in permit applications, reports and other reporting materials.

Part two of this post will discuss the archaeological sites recorded in 2022.

You can explore previous Survey in Numbers to compare statistics year over year.