North America: Pacific Northwest Coast and Plateau (Geographic Keyword)
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This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Public Archaeology Field School at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, in Vancouver, Washington, is a long-standing partnership between Portland State University, Washington State University Vancouver, and the National Park Service. The program teaches archaeological field...
75,000 troops, 10,000 square miles, 3 months, 8 battles . . . and Only a Handful of Archaeological Sites? Reassessing Archaeology of the World War II Oregon Maneuver Training Exercise (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1943, 75,000 US military troops descended on the small town of Bend in central Oregon to engage in a corps-on-corps training exercise in preparation for overseas battle. The Oregon Maneuver consisted of eight mock battles, or “problems,” that pitted Red Force against Blue Force teams—including infantry, engineers, tank battalions, and air...
Activity Area Analysis of the Sanders Site (45KT315), 3–4 Kya Yakima Uplands, Washington (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. LaPlante recently led a new study of the Sanders Site (45KT315) collection. Excavated in the 1970s, the site is located within the Yakima Uplands of the Middle Columbia River. This is the sixth thesis or research scholarship study of Dr. William Smith’s legacy collection, and one of two dozen similar student projects focused on four CWU collections from...
Alternative Recipes: Exploring the Diversity of Foods Prepared in Prehistoric Earth Oven Cooking (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Camas (Camassia spp.) was among the most important foods for many cultural groups of the Pacific Northwest in the past. The Pend Oreille Valley in northeastern Washington and the Kalispel people were particularly known for their large camas fields and the archaeological record of the valley is replete with earth oven features. Archaeological site 45PO422,...
Analysis of Recovered Hull Elements from the Manila Galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos of 1693 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Pacific Maritime History: Ships and Shipwrecks" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2022 wood beams were recovered from the wreck of the Manilla galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos, which wrecked on the north Oregon coast in 1693. This paper presents analysis of those beams and other artifacts from the wreck, including species identification and radiocarbon dating.
Analysis of Sorting Errors of Animal Remains from Shell Middens: Lessons Learned from the Čḯxwicən Project (2018)
Zooarchaeologists routinely analyze assemblages that were initially sorted into major animal type (birds, mammals, fish, invertebrates) by students or lab technicians with little experience in zooarchaeology. Sorting errors are likely made, which affect taxonomic representation and understanding of human-animal relationships. Recent study of the immense faunal assemblage (over 500,000 NSP) from Čḯxwicən, a 2800-year-old Lower Elwha Klallam village located on the coast of Washington (USA), allows...
Analysis of Western Stemmed Tradition Stone Tool Patterns and Faunal Remains from Pit Feature 95 at the Cooper’s Ferry Site (10IH73), Idaho (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology from Western North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations at the Cooper’s Ferry site (10IH73) reveal unique insights about the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). Previous studies at the site presented information on WST pit cache features; here specifically, I present a study of Feature 95 (F95), which provides an archaeological snapshot of site occupation at ~9679 ± 33 BP (11,190–11,093 cal...
The Ancestral Remains of the Cheslatta T'en: A Rare Burial Site from the Middle Holocene in Central British Columbia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the fall of 2020, human ancestral remains were discovered eroding out of the bank of a lake within the traditional territory of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, at the northern end of the Canadian Plateau. In 2021 more remains were found at the same location. At the request of the Cheslatta t’en archaeologists conducted salvage excavations to protect and...
Ancient Herring DNA from the Burton Acres Shell Midden (45KI437) and Pacific Herring Population Dynamics in the South Salish Sea (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacific herring (Clupea harengus pallasi) is an important forage fish and staple food of many Northwest Coast indigenous peoples. Archaeological evidence throughout the south Salish Sea extends this ecological relationship back at least several millennia, but the presence of herring in archaeological deposits is often considered...
Ancient Mitogenomes from Oregon Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris): Genetic and Archaeological Contributions to the Historical Ecology of an Extirpated Population (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The sea otter (Enhydra lutris) was nearly driven to extinction on the Pacific Coast in the 19th century due to the commercial maritime fur trade. Despite successful reintroduction efforts in North America, the Oregon sea otter population remains locally extirpated and endangered. Prior studies have used precontact and modern...
Application of Dietary Isotopes to Estimate Temporal Context of Unidentified Remains in British Columbia Canada (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Isotopic analysis has been used in archaeological and forensic contexts to examine diet, migration, trace evidence, and the origin of individuals. This project examines whether individuals were of a forensic or archaeological context using δ13C, δ15N, and δ34Sisotope values on behalf of the British Columbia Coroners Service. Carbon, nitrogen, and sulphur...
Archaeological Survey Feasibility of Postharvest Units within the Coast Range (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Coast Range in Western Oregon is characterized by deeply incised canyons and a climate that promotes rapid growth and diverse communities of vegetation. Due to these characteristics, it is difficult to conduct archaeological investigations within the Coast Range. This problem is further exacerbated by a shortage of staff and lack of field opportunity...
Archaeology and Behavioral Ecology of Maritime Hunter-gatherers of the Northeast Pacific Rim (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human-behavioral ecology (HBE) provides a powerful framework for understanding human adaptations under differing environmental and socio-economic circumstances. In this paper I summarize influential HBE models and approaches as they have been applied to understanding the behavior and...
Archaeology and Ethnobiology of Late Holocene Bird Remains from the Northern Oregon Coast (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Birds in Archaeology: New Approaches to Understanding the Diverse Roles of Birds in the Past" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological bird remains from the Oregon coast have recently received renewed attention. We contribute to this discussion with an analysis of bird remains from the Late Holocene Par-Tee site (35CLT20) in Seaside, Oregon. We sampled the Par-Tee avifaunal assemblage to near-redundancy and...
The Archaeology of Herring: A 10-Year Effort to Overcome Technical Challenges, Part 1 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alaska Natives and BC and Washington State First Nations have maintained sustainable relationships with herring over millennia. Over the past 10 years, we have been using molecular methods to study the ancient and modern DNA of Pacific herring to track changes in genetic diversity through time. Analysis of over 260 herring bones from 24...
The Archaeology of Herring: A 10-Year Effort to Overcome Technical Challenges, Part 2 (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Zooarchaeological Methods" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pacific herring were an abundant and important component of the coastal ecosystems of western North America for millennia; today, many populations have been decimated as a result of commercial or reduction fisheries. Focusing on genomic data, our hypothesis was that population and phenological diversity was higher in ancient herring than...
The Archaeology of Shuká Káa Cave: Final Report (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Shuká Káa Cave, is located on an island in the homeland of the Tlingit and Haida people of Southeast Alaska, and records seven episodes of human activity dating between 12,170 and 1200 cal BP. Three periods of occupation (10,600–10,150, 9930–9450, and 8360–7929 cal BP) contain microblades, bifaces, and expedient tools. The discovery of 10,500 cal BP human...
Archival Oral Histories, Intellectual Property, and the Indigenous Community: The Legacy of Mary Kiona, “Grand Matriarch” of the Upper Cowlitz (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archival collections of Native language oral histories are widely scattered among universities, museums, and tribal repositories throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Many of these oral histories are an important primary source of information relative to traditional Indigenous land-use practices, in turn critical to an understanding of the...
Assembling Infrastructure, Detotalizing Communities: Provincial Infrastructure as Situated History and Landscape in British Columbia (2018)
Investigation of the material, spatial and temporal distributedness of large-scale, infrastructure projects holds significant potential to lay bare histories of underlying political rationales and practices that challenge overtly utilitarian narratives of public welfare and economic good. This paper investigates the differential experience and perception of a sample of state-initiated or sanctioned infrastructure projects (e.g., Hydro power lines and substations, pipelines, highways and...
Assessing Settlement Dynamics in the San Juan Islands and Northwestern Washington, a Bayesian Approach (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent developments in Bayesian approaches to radiocarbon dating have enabled reexaminations of questions of population dynamism in the Salish Sea. This study expands on Taylor et al. 2011 using Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) and an expanded data set of 538 radiocarbon dates from academic and cultural resource management...
Assessing the Potential for a Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Occupation at the Tahkenitch Landing Site (35DO130), Siuslaw National Forest, Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology from Western North America" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While archaeologists hypothesize that early peoples initially migrated into the Americas along the Pacific coast, environmental changes associated with postglacial sea-level rise may have destroyed or obscured such early sites. In coastal areas currently above sea level, early sites are difficult to find due to terrestrial processes of landscape...
Avifaunal Remains from the Palmrose Site (35CT47): Establishing Seasonality and Investigating Endangered Species (2018)
Avifaunal remains have great potential to improve archaeological understanding of the economy and subsistence of peoples who lived in the past, as well as to yield information about local ecology, environmental change, and past bird species distribution. The large assemblage of faunal remains from the three archaeological sites comprising the Seaside Collection from Seaside, OR, contains significant quantities of bird bone. Previous analyses of vertebrate remains (including birds) by Greenspan...
The Bark Canada, a Gold Rush Legacy at Risk (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The bark Canada was a cargo ship that was grounded near Skagway, Alaska, in 1898. The site has been a local tourist destination for over a century but has suffered over time from repeated exposure at low tides and altering environmental conditions. The purpose of the current project was to plot the history of the ship’s degradation, identify specific areas...
Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Assays from the Late Paleoindian Sentinel Gap Site (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Bayesian analysis of eight calibrated radiocarbon dates from the Sentinel Gap site (central Washington) are presented. Application of a Bayesian framework provides a method of reassessing uncertainty in the age-range provided by this suite of assays. The Bayesian chronology generated through this analysis establishes a higher resolution temporal placement for...
Bayesian Models for the Occupational History of Complex Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Communities in the Interior Pacific Northwest (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interior Pacific Northwest landscape contains a system of waterways that coalesce to form three major drainages with outlets in the Pacific Ocean. Substantial evidence has been provided that complex hunter-gatherer-fisher communities occupied sites in these river drainages during the late Holocene. Some chronological frameworks...