The modern world has brought much in the way of time-saving technology; for example, many people in more affluent societies have machines to do the laundry, wash the dishes and even vacuum the floors.
The concept that modern life is more convenient has led many people to believe that life in the distant past was nasty, brutish and short.
Contrary to popular belief, ancient people had more free time than most people have today.
Anthropologists have studied societies in sub-Saharan Africa that still practise a gathering and hunting economy and found that such societies typically spend about 20 per cent of their time at work, acquiring and processing food, travelling, making and mending clothing and household goods and completing domestic activities.
Throughout much of the history of the B.C. Southern Interior, people practised a gathering, fishing and hunting economy.
The archaeological record has left evidence of how these people spent their free time.
In the Fraser Canyon area, examples of ornate ground stone bowls with anthropomorphic (human-shaped) and zoomorphic (animal-shaped) figures integrated into the bowl have been recovered.
It likely took the makers of these items hundreds of hours to make.
While these stone bowls are exceedingly rare in the archaeological record, they offer an excellent example of artistic expression facilitated by abundant time not spent on survival.
Chasm, north of Clinton. - Ramsay McKee
Throughout the Southern Interior of B.C. (and throughout most regions of the world), rock painting (pictographs) and images ground or carved into stone (petroglyphs) can be found, often in difficult to reach places.
While interpreting these images is best done in collaboration with Indigenous people who can put the images into a cultural and ecological context, the time and effort required to make these images is significant.
Grinding images into stone by hand could take hundreds or thousands of hours.
Procuring, preparing and painting images took less time, but still required plenty of hours and effort.
Oftentimes the locations of these sites are difficult to access and that required intense effort over several days or weeks to complete the images. The choice of where to place these images took time and contemplation.
Many places that are considered “points of interest” or scenic places to visit today contain evidence that ancient people also visited these locales.
Spectacular waterfalls, caves, scenic viewpoints and rare geological features are often places where archaeological sites are more likely to be found.
These places often do not offer much in the way of good hunting or plant gathering, yet still contain evidence of human presence.
While it is possible that these places were of spiritual significance, they may have also been visited just because they are worth the trip.
Many people, and even some archaeologists, believe life in the distant past was a struggle for survival that took up most of people’s time.
This often dominates archaeologists’ understanding and study of past lifeways.
The archaeological record of the Southern Interior demonstrates that people in the past had plenty of free time — and they used that time to pursue artistic, spiritual, recreational and leisure pursuits.