North America - NW Coast/Alaska (Geographic Keyword)
151-175 (301 Records)
Spatial modeling of early prehistoric maritime movements on the Pacific Northwest Coast is important in contemporary archaeology as a site prospection tool in a landscape which has radically changed over the last 16,000 years. GIS analysis can model ancient site locations now hidden by changing sea levels. We present findings from a project which developed a new method for modeling maritime movement using least cost path analysis (LCA) of both behavioral and cultural constraints to determine the...
Least Cost Analysis of Peopling Events on the Northwest Coast of North America (2015)
The peopling of the Americas continues to be a relevant issue in contemporary archaeology. Due to the very small number of discovered sites which predate 10,000 years before present, the chronology and method of these migration events are not well understood. Previous research has been unsuccessful in consistently identifying sites from this time period and better models are needed to successfully locate sites in this landscape which has gone through radical change over the last 16,000 years....
Leukoma Seasonality and Maturity in the Locarno Beach Phase sites of the middle Salish Sea (2016)
Leukoma staminea sclerochronology data are now available from several mainland sites along the middle portion of the Salish Sea dating to the Locarno Beach Phase (~3500-2400 bp). Western Washington University field schools have conducted several seasons of test excavations, resulting in an extensive collection of shell from spatially distinct sites of this phase. Leukoma seasonality and maturity data from these sites will be used in combination with a modern sample of to address questions of...
Lies, Damn Lies, and CRM—Archaeology as White Power and Neoliberal Statecraft (2015)
In 1989, anthropologist Bruce G. Trigger (1937-2006) successfully showed archaeology to be a conduit for social power. What he did not elaborate on was that archaeology largely represents a racialized form of power insofar as most archaeologists are white and those whose past they "study" are largely minority Indigenous peoples. Further, while Trigger considered archaeology a bourgeois pursuit, he did not adequately account for the near wholesale commercialization of archaeology in the form of...
Lithic Landscapes and Mobility from the Great Basin to the Salish Sea (2017)
Beck and Jones’ approach to settlement patterns is useful beyond the small highly mobile groups of the Great Basin Paleoarchaic because they expertly model how to connect lithic artifacts with the lithic landscape: first, conduct a thorough investigation of toolstone sources; second, consider how people brought toolstone to sites and how that might be reflected in the reduction sequence; and third, examine the representation of the reduction sequence at many sites across the landscape. I have...
Lithics and Learning: Towards a Heart-Centered Lithic Analysis (2017)
Both archaeologists and the knappers who created the lithics we recover are skilled practitioners implicated in a genealogy of technological practice. These living, thinking, and feeling beings make tools with their hearts and their minds–two inseparable components of the complete corporeal experience. A heart-centered approach to lithic analysis offers insights about the social and emotional contexts of situated learning in which ancient and contemporary makers of stone tools engage. The...
Locating Stories of Survivance within the Colonial Archive: Crafting New Accounts of Grand Ronde History (2017)
Archival material plays an important role in historical archaeological research. This is particularly true in studies of Native American communities of the recent past since the colonial archive comprises a sizable portion of available historical sources. Yet the archive must not be treated as a storehouse of information alone, as it constitutes both state perceptions of Native lifeways and modes of knowledge production through which colonial projects were realized. When approached as sites of...
Long-term culture landscape development at (EkTb-9) Triquet Island, British Columbia, Canada (2017)
EkTb-9, a Heiltsuk First Nation village site located on Triquet Island, British Columbia, Canada, has an occupation span of over 11,500 calendar years. Archaeological and palaeo-environmental research indicates that local sea level was relatively stable during that time. EkTb-9 is rich in archaeology strata including a five meter deep shell midden and nearby water-logged deposits which contains perishable materials, most notably parts of bent wood and compound fish-hooks and wooden bi-point...
Looking for Fish of the Right Age: Using GIS in Conjunction with Salmon Genetics to Identify Key Submerged Drainages (2017)
Geospatial analysis of Beringian bathymetric data provides powerful tools for formulating predictive modeling of submerged sites of Pleistocene age. With the acceptance of Pre-Clovis archaeological sites in the Americas (Jenkins et al., 2012), attention has shifted to alternative models of the peopling of the Americas. A Coastal Migration hypothesis has been proposed by Erlandson et al. (2013, 2015), however any evidence of such a route is now submerged. Ice free areas along the Pacific margin...
Magnetic Gradient Survey of a Hunter-Gatherer Plank House Village at the Dionisio Point Site, Northwest Coast of North America (2016)
We present the results of magnetometry survey of four houses at the Dionisio Point site, a 1,500 year-old settlement in the Gulf Islands of southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Intensive excavations have uncovered much of one of five substantial houses. It is the remains of a shed-roof plank house, the winter residence of a large multi-family corporate group. We suggest that the rest were contemporaneous households organized in a similar fashion and that Dionisio likely constituted an example...
The Maplebank Site: New Findings and Reinterpretation along the North American Northwest Coast (2017)
Most discussions of the ‘complex’ fishing-gathering-hunting peoples of the Northwest Coast (NWC) focus on the Marpole Phase sites around the Fraser River Delta, BC. These contain evidence of developed social structures, an economy based on huge salmon runs and storage, and sophisticated art/architecture, and discussions of contributing factors to these traits usually focus on the perennial access to the Fraser River salmon runs. In contrast to Marpole sites are nearby ‘Islands’ sites, located...
The Maritime Fur Trade before the Maritime Fur Trade on the Pacific Coast of North America (2017)
The maritime fur trade on the Northwest Coast of North America (ca. AD 1778-1850) was a historically consequential process that unfolded throughout the Indigenous territories of the Pacific Coast. Tens of thousands of astronomically valuable sea otter pelts were traded by Indigenous chiefs with visiting ship captains, who then transported these pelts across the Pacific and sent profits home. The massive wealth generated by this colonial trade encircled the globe but also amplified existing...
The Mass Grave at Kulleet Bay: Bioarchaeological Evidence of Human Catastrophe (2017)
A mass grave of cremated individuals representing 15,353 comingled bone fragments representing 65 individuals was uncovered from the ancient Northwest Coast archaeological site of DgRw-17, a continuously occupied Stz’uminus First Nation village in Kulleet Bay. Cremation of multiple individuals buried in a mass grave is not an established burial tradition or mortuary practice of any Coast Salish community. Mass graves of comingled and cremated human remains may represent ossuaries or episodic...
Material Technology As An Indicator of Past Species Size (2017)
Archaeological materials can provide data useful for modern conservation and resource management efforts. Zooarchaeological materials have been used to provide information about past species distributions as well as their characteristics. I am interested in using the material technology of prehistoric resource harvesting to provide information about species in the past. This poster will discuss my research using traditional halibut fishing technology to provide information about the fish being...
Metagenomic analysis of pre-contact diet using ancient dental calculus from Prince Rupert Harbour, British Columbia (2017)
Prior to the displacement caused by European colonization, the Coast Tsimshian harvested an array of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine dietary resources as they moved between coastal settlements and the nearby Skeena River valley. Conventional paleodietary analysis using faunal analysis and isotopic values has provided valuable data which, when paired with the knowledge of First Nations communities, can help reconstruct how ancestral communities utilized food resources prior to the cultural...
The Metlakatla first nation and archaeology: an Indigenous Community's Views in the course of 50 years of archaeological and related research in the Prince Rupert Harbour Region (2017)
This paper discusses the Metlakatla First Nation’s views and roles in the archaeological and related research that has occurred within their traditional territory over the past 50 years, the core of which is the Prince Rupert Harbour area. Unlike many other First Nations, Metlakatla has long embraced the opportunity to actively participate in the documentation of their ancient history, rather than merely being a subject of research. This view of archaeology has led to mutually beneficial...
Micromorphological Analysis of Thin Sections from Bear Creek (45KI839), Redmond, King County, Washington (2017)
Micromorphology samples were collected during data recovery at the Bear Creek Site (45KI839) in Redmond, Washington in order to supplement the site’s formation history. Micromorphological analysis of these samples has shed light on the taphonomic and sedimentary depositional processes at work prior to, during, and after Late Pleistocene-Holocene transition (LPH) occupation of 45KI839. This poster presents the micromorphology research design, sampling and analysis methodology, and results of...
Midden Accumulation Rates in Prince Rupert Harbour: New Applications for Percussion Coring (2016)
The monumentality of the anthropogenic landscape of the Prince Rupert Harbour region on north coastal British Columbia has long been recognized for the number, density, and size of the shell midden terraces containing villages dating to the last 5000 years. The scale of the region’s archaeological record makes regional assessments of the mode and tempo of shell-bearing site construction difficult. We report on a program of regional and site-specific percussion coring combined with 14C dating to...
The Millennium before Clovis in Alaska (2015)
The early archaeological record of Beringia continues to be left out of most discussions of the peopling of the Americas, partly because of repeated discoveries of older-than-Clovis sites in temperate North America and Beringian archaeologists’ own admission that the early northern record looks very different from Clovis technologically. In this paper, I attempt to recast Beringia in a leading role by (1) reviewing new genetic studies of humans and their prey species positing that late-glacial...
A Millennium of Fishing: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Faunal Remains from the Shaktoolik Airport Site (NOB-072), Norton Sound, Alaska (2017)
Contemporary economic and subsistence fisheries are a significant resource in Norton Sound, Alaska. Artifacts and faunal remains recovered from test excavations at the Shaktoolik Airport site (NOB-072) demonstrate that indigenous peoples have been fishing in the region for at least the last millennium. We aim to trace the regional development of fishing strategies, and how they were influenced by demographic and climactic changes by comparing over ten thousand faunal remains collected in-situ...
Mobility and Resource Exploitation during the Late Glacial in the Shaw Creek Flats (Eastern Beringia) (2017)
The colonization of Beringia during the Late Glacial period (about 14,500-11,700 cal. B.P.) represents the first permanent settlement of the subarctic and provided a pathway to the colonization of North America. The Shaw Creek Flats and nearby middle Tanana river, in central Alaska, constitute the densest area of identified Late Glacial sites; these are generally characterized by low-density occupations and diverse technological complexes. Recent research suggests some of these sites were...
Modelling Village Development in the Prince Rupert Harbour (2015)
The initial results of a radiocarbon local marine reservoir correction study are presented for Prince Rupert Harbor in northern British Columbia, Canada. These preliminary results are integrated into a series of Bayesian age-depth models that illustrate how shell-midden accumulation rates can dramatically vary. Village development in the harbor is discussed in the light of these new findings. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center...
The Montague Harbour Underwater Archaeology Project: Final Conclusions and Prospects for Future Research on the Northwest Coast (2015)
Twenty-one years ago we completed our last of four field seasons excavating inter-tidal and sub-tidal sediments in Montague Harbour, Galiano Island, British Columbia. While a permit report describing basic results and several analytical publications ensued, a final summary concluding publication remained to be completed. Here we present the essential elements of this forthcoming publication, which will discuss methodology, provide a comprehensive database on recovered artifacts and ecofacts,...
Monte Cristo’s Gold: A Case Study of a Hard Rock Gold Mining Town in Washington’s Cascade Range at the Turn of the 20th Century. (2017)
In the 1890s, the town of Monte Cristo, located deep within Washington’s Cascade Range, promised to be one of the state’s most profitable mining towns. Gold was first discovered in Glacier Basin in 1889, and Monte Cristo, assisted by a railroad that ran directly from the town to the city of Everett, developed nearby to support local mining endeavors. Unfortunately, the mines were not as profitable as originally hoped. By 1905, mining had mostly seized, and the town was eventually abandoned. In...
Monumental Stonework and the Making of Places and History on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia (2016)
Archaeologists do not think of the peoples of the Northwest Coast as monumental stone builders, yet current research indicates that the enhancement and demarcation of critical resource sites entailed both the massive movement of stone and the building of stone monuments. The Coast Salish peoples built remarkable numbers of burial cairns and mounds, using stones cleared from important and valuable root crop fields to then inscribe the landscape with their ancestral dead. Their Heiltsuk neighbors...