North America - NW Coast/Alaska (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (301 Records)
The archaeological record of Eastern Beringia plays an important role in understanding global human dispersals and settlement, and is a proving ground for testing ideas about high latitude hunter-gatherer land use, technology, and socioeconomic interaction. Obsidian provenance studies provide an excellent means to address these issues. Since 2006 we have compiled, organized and generated new obsidian geochemical analyses for more than 11,000 artifacts from 1200 sites across Alaska and Yukon...
Abalone in the Archaeological Record of Barkley Sound (2017)
This report focuses on the northern abalone (Haliotis kamtschatkana) recovered in the 2016 excavation of Hup’kisakuu7a (Site 93T) in Pacific Rim National Park. This study combines an analysis of the data recovered through archaeological excavation and column sampling at 93T, a review of neighbouring archaeological site reports, and the collection and measurement of a modern assemblage of abalone shells. The aim was to answer three research questions: first, how ubiquitous is the presence of...
Accessing and Assessing Coastal Shell Middens on Private Property in the Pacific Northwest (2015)
The majority of coastal property in the Pacific Northwest is in private hands. Although laws in Washington State protect archaeological sites on private property, such sites are traditionally only assessed on a case by case basis when the landowner seeks a permit. Landscape scale assessments of coastal resources in the Puget Sound region are rare. Here we compare the results of two such projects along Puget Sound; an academic project in the San Juan Islands conducted by researchers at the...
After the War: An Analysis of the Mortality of American Soldiers from the Last Century (2017)
This historical archaeological analysis examines differences in the age of mortality for US Army personnel who fought for America in the last 100 years. This study centers on the historical data gathered from historic mortuary monuments and compare that data with contemporary mortuary monuments. Specifically, I focus on the timing of death for returning veterans and the increased occurrence over time and by war, as reported by Veterans Affairs (2016). The data are separated by years of service,...
Alaskan Game Drives: An Architectural Assessment (2017)
Ethnographic accounts of communal hunting activities in Alaska are abundant, yet archaeological evidence of this practice is scarce. The inuksuit--elaborate stacked rock cairns--that demarcate many game drives in Alaska provide evidence of these important traditional subsistence strategies. Improved documentation of these features will facilitate a better understanding of not only their function but their meaning to the original builders and implementers of game drive systems. Comprehensive...
Ancestral Landscapes of the Salish Sea: Exploring Inland Shell Middens, Social Memory and Coast Salish Narratives (2017)
This paper will explore indigenous and archaeological ways of understanding "inland shell middens" in the Salish Sea on the Northwest Coast, British Columbia, Canada. Archaeological evidence suggests inland shell middens represent depositional practices that may have embodied new strategies of social memory and ritual practice beginning in the Marpole Phase (2400 to 1200/1000 calBP). To move beyond the deeply-plumbed Northwest Coast ethnographic literature to interpret the archaeological past,...
Ancient Clam Gardens and Ecological Enhancement on Northern Quadra Island, BC (2017)
Clam gardens, anthropogenic rock-walled terraces built at the lowest intertidal, are part of an ancient system of mariculture of the Indigenous people of the Northwest Coast of North America. The construction of clam gardens increased shellfish production by increasing ideal clam habitat and creating substrate preferred for clam growth. On Northern Quadra Island, where there is a dense concentration of clam gardens, we assess bivalve productivity of clam gardens by 1) calculating how much clam...
Ancient Clam Gardens of the Southern Gulf Islands (2015)
Clam Gardens of the Southern Gulf Islands and southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia This paper describes a comprehensive, five-year archaeological project to identify and document the location of ancient intertidal clam garden features in the Southern Gulf Islands and southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It is discovered that clam gardens in the Southern Gulf Islands region are extensive, exhibit clear patterning in location and morphology, and demonstrate a monumentality...
Ancient Clam Gardens: Exploring Cultural and Ecological Mechanisms that Enhanced Clam Production (2017)
Emerging evidence suggests that Northwest Coast First Nations sustained and enhanced shellfish production through features known as clam gardens, intertidal rock-walled terraces, built in the late Holocene. Experiments and surveys have revealed that clam gardens are 2-4 times more productive than non-modified clam beaches, supporting greater densities, biomass, and higher growth rates of important clam species. While heightened productivity within clam gardens is partly attributable to the...
Ancient DNA, Zooarchaeology, and the Case for Whale Hunting on the Northern Oregon Coast (2015)
Pre-contact whaling on the northern Oregon coast is an issue that has received limited attention from archaeologists. The discovery of a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) phalanx with an embedded elk (Cervus elaphus) bone point from the Par-Tee Site (35CLT20) in Seaside, OR precipitated a discussion of ethnographic and archaeological evidence for whaling in the area. Previous genetic and archaeological research suggested that opportunistic whaling may have occurred in this region. We...
The Ancient Floors of Housepit 54, Bridge River site: Stratigraphy and Dating (2015)
The Bridge River Archaeological Project is a long-term partnership between The University of Montana and X’wisten, the Bridge River Indian Band. The focus of the project is on understanding the historical development of this large housepit village, located near Lillooet, British Columbia. Previous research has emphasized village-wide demographic, technological, and socio-economic and political change during the Bridge River 2 (1600-1300 cal. B.P.), 3 (1300-1000 cal. B.P.), and 4 (post 600 cal....
Animal Fats and Ancient Pyro Technologies in the North American Arctic: Contextualized Analysis of Lipids in Archaeological Sediments, Combustion Features, and Ceramics (2017)
Processing and combustion of animal products including bone, fat, and oil for food and fuel was critical for human occupation of far northern latitudes. Remnant fats from these activities preserve exceptionally well in many Alaskan sites and various sources can be identified using standard techniques of lipid analysis. Combining lipid analysis with ethnographically informed experiments and high-resolution analysis of archaeological sediments, combustion features and ceramics, could help trace...
Animal Resources and Technology in Eastern Beringia During the Late Pleistocene (2016)
Bone technology is often omitted from discussions about technological variability and functionality in eastern Beringia, where recovered organic artifacts are rare. However, based on discoveries in Northeastern Eurasia with good organic preservation, it can be surmised that bone technology was similarly important to Beringian hunter-gatherers during the Final Pleistocene. Here we present the results of faunal and spatial analyses of the site of Swan Point CZ4b, the oldest known archaeological...
Anthropogenic Thermal Alteration of Marine Bivalves, Recrystallization, and Isotope Integrity (2015)
Archaeologists have given little direct attention to the taphonomic effects of cooking methods for marine invertebrates, particularly the effect on shell mineralogy. Various methods of heating and steaming shellfish directly in the shell are recorded as traditional for Northwest Coast peoples and the shell samples at the Tse-Whit-Zen Village site in Port Angeles, Washington State, contain many specimens that visually appear to be thermally altered. This type of heat exposure has been shown...
Application of LIDAR in New Site Discoveries, Susitna Valley, Alaska (2015)
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have long been a standard tool for mapping or depicting archaeological features and sites in the circumpolar north. Recently, remote sensing techniques including Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) have provided extremely high resolution datasets for landscape level survey and site detection from the GIS platform. Initial applications have proven useful for identifying temple complexes and other large scale archaeological sites in the Central American...
Applied Zooarchaeology and Oregon Coast Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris): Following up on Lyman 1988 (2017)
The sea otter (Enhydra lutris) was nearly driven to extinction on the Pacific Coast in the 19th century due to intensive commercial hunting and the maritime fur trade. Despite some successful reintroduction efforts in North America, the Oregon sea otter population remains locally extirpated and listed as endangered. One aspect of Lyman’s 1988 study examined precontact sea otter teeth from Oregon and found they were similar in size to modern California sea otter teeth, and smaller than modern...
Applying North American Approaches to Community Archaeology in Khirbet al-Mukhayyat, Jordan (2015)
"Community based" archaeology programs are all the rage in North America, as both academic and consulting archaeologists respond to descendant communities’ rights to management over their cultural heritage in the face of large-scale development and resource management. This movement is not yet applied in other regions facing similar challenges of economic development opportunities and access to heritage. The Khirbet al-Mukhayyat Community Archaeology Program (KMCAP) is inspired by North...
An Archaeobotanical Analysis of the Upward Sun River Site, Central Alaska (2016)
Vegetation and plant resources can impact forager mobility and subsistence strategies. However, misconceptions about the preservation of organics in subarctic archaeological contexts and underestimations of the importance of plant resources to foraging societies limit paleoethnobotanical research in high-latitude environments. This research addresses these issues with analyses of archaeobotanical remains found in hearth features from multiple components (approximately 13,300 through 8,000 cal...
Archaeological Assessment of Land Claims (2017)
The 2014 Tsilhqot’in Decision in the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirms the relevance of archaeological research in the adjudication of Indigenous land and title claims. The evidentiary standards adopted by the Court, that occupation must be sufficient, continuous, and exclusive, invite comparisons with previous archaeological contributions to land claim settlements, refresh inquiry into current applications of archaeological data and perspectives to argue for (and against) affinities between...
Archaeological data from Washington State indicate that northern fur seals will likely once again be a dominant predator in the California Current System (2017)
Northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus) of all ages (pups, juveniles, bulls and adult females) dominate the mammal assemblage of prehistoric (prior to 1850) coastal middens from California to Alaska. We reviewed archaeological data, historical documents on the early fur trade, as well as more recent data on fur seal genetics and migratory patterns of fur seals―and discovered that most of the fur seal remains in Washington State middens likely originated from a very large colony of northern fur...
Archaeological Evidence for Bighorn Sheep in the Portland Basin (2017)
The Burnett Site (35CL96) in Lake Oswego, Oregon, has yielded important information about settlement, subsistence, and lithic technology in the Portland Basin during the Early Archaic. The lithic assemblage is dominated by Cascade-style projectile points, but also contains a high percentage of bifaces and expedient flake technology. The identification of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) blood residues on both hunting and processing tools from the site provides new data about the resources used by...
Archaeological Fish Traps on the Coast of British Columbia (2017)
Fish traps are a ubiquitous fishing feature on the Northwest Coast, with thousands of features recorded at hundreds of sites. This fishing technology represents a use and modification of intertidal and riverine environments at an industrial scale, yet protocol and management practices ensured that fish populations flourished. As in other areas of the Northwest Coast, First Nations and archaeologists in British Columbia have documented fish traps, resulting in the registration of 822 fish "trap"...
An Archaeological Investigation into the Genetic and Dietary Histories of Dogs at the Bridge River Site, BC (2017)
Domesticated dog (Canis lupus familiarus) remains have been recovered from a variety of Northwest Plateau archaeological sites, including Bridge River, a complex hunter-gatherer village on the Fraser River of British Columbia. To gain insight into the genetic continuity and dietary history of these dogs, this study applies ancient DNA techniques to dog bones and coprolites recovered from two pithouses at Bridge River. Dog mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is used to inform on genetic relationships...
Archaeological Investigations of the Intertidal Ecotone on the Central Pacific Coast of Canada (2017)
On the outer central Pacific coast of Canada, the intertidal zone is a highly productive ecotone that lies between temperate rainforest and marine biomes. The tide comes in and out over five vertical metres twice everyday. While the tide is out, our research teams have been investigating archaeological aspects of intertidal strata, artifacts and features. Stratigraphically the intertidal zone provides a window into the late Pleistocene archaeology of the region. Our subsurface testing into beach...
Archaeological investigations on the Lucy Islands, near Prince Rupert, B.C. from 2010 to 2013: New evidence relating to the Development of North Coast Culture. (2017)
In the summer of 1966, George MacDonald launched the wide-ranging North Coast Prehistory Project. One of his goals was to document the broader patterns of human settlement along the north coast of British Columbia, and in 1968, this led to the first test excavations at GbTp-1, a small seasonal encampment on the Lucy Islands, 19 km west of Prince Rupert, in the open waters of Chatham Sound. The data from that excavation showed that this remote site was already inhabited by about 2500 years ago,...