Large Transportation Project from HRIA to HRIMLarge transportation developments often encounter unique challenges once field work begins because of their large scale and the inherent difficulty in modifying existing plans to avoid archaeological sites. When archaeological sites of signficance can not be avoided by a major transportation project, the solution usually involves mitigating a portion of the site. This was the case for the Highway 63 Upgrade project. Prior to the Highway 63:14 Upgrade project, located north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Altamira Consulting Ltd. carried out an HRIA in 2000 and Historical Resource mitigation in 2001. The project parallels the Athabaska River from the Peter Lougheed Bridge to north of Bitumount, Alberta, a distance of approximately 30.5 km. During the project, we visited six existing archaeological sites and discovered a further 28. We recovered more than half a million artifacts. Altamira Consulting Ltd. is committed to finding innovative solutions to these large scale project in order to limit the impact they may have on cultural resources and mimimize the potential delays to the projects. By using a mass sorting system and efficient cataloguing typology developed by Altamira Consulting Ltd., we were able to catalogue these artifacts in a minimum amount of time, saving our client both time and money. We estimate that these systems cut the time spent cataloguing by at least half, enabling us to finish the process in approximately 10 months.
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