Northwest Coast (Other Keyword)
1-23 (23 Records)
Household archaeology has a long and fruitful history in Northwest Coast archaeology. Excavation at numerous sites has provided detailed data on living surfaces and activity areas, but the greater dynamics of household and village organization remain elusive. This paper looks at important, but neglected functional constraints of plank-house villages, namely the need for firewood, potable water, and disposal of waste. These factors, which almost certainly informed on the construction and...
Binaries, Landforms, and Clam Gardens on the Northwest Coast of North America (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Political Geologies in the Ancient and Recent Pasts: Ontology, Knowledge, and Affect" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The imposition of colonial authority throughout the Indigenous Northwest Coast of North America brought with it two long-standing western binaries—agricultural/not and natural/anthropogenic. Within these, Northwest Coast peoples were viewed as not agricultural (useful for alienating them from land) and...
The Challenges and Benefits of Comparing Archaeological and Oral Records (2017)
Archaeologists have referenced the oral record throughout the history of their research in Tsimshian territory. In this paper we frame our recent collaboration against this legacy and argue that that a symmetrical relationship is a necessary foundation for any conjunction between these complex datasets. Our collaboration recognizes the common history they represent, but also their different logical frameworks and empirical scope. In our context, the oral record was more complete, detailed, and...
Changing House Forms on the Northwest Coast of North America (2015)
Traditionally, Northwest Coast houses were rectangular, post and beam dwellings. Architectural details varied regionally, ethnically and even locally. It is presently impossible to trace this variation archaeologically beyond a few coarse-grained statements. The earliest structures date to at least ca. 5000 calBP; they are rectilinear and some at least are semisubterranean. The longest continuous sequence of houses is presently documented in the Prince Rupert Harbor region of northern British...
Cultural Forests in Cross Section: The Exposure and Destruction of CMT Chronologies on Vancouver Island’s West Coast. (2017)
Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) bearing the scars of First Nation’s resource use are ubiquitous in British Columbia’s old growth forests, yet remain one of the most endangered archaeological site types due to industrial logging. The majority of CMTs are bark strip features with precise spatial, temporal, and harvesting pattern data that, when viewed on a landscape level, have great informative value related to forest use. However, CMT use in archaeological studies has been infrequent, small...
Cultural Forests of the southern Nuu-chah-nulth: Indigenous bark tending on Vancouver Island (2016)
Culturally Modified Trees are British Columbia Canada's most common archaeological site type. Data related to these indigenous forest management sites have been collected for a few decades now through CRM work in the area, though little research has encorporated this archive. My MA thesis focuses on creating regional chronologies of bark stripping and logging dates for the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, to better understand forest usage and population dynamics around the contact period. In...
Dating Pacific Period Settlement Pattern Dynamics in the Prince Rupert Harbor Region of Northern British Columbia. (2015)
A large regional suite of radiocarbon dates documents changing Pacific Period settlement patterns in the Prince Rupert Harbor region of northern British Columbia. Late Pleistocene/Holocene sea level changes focuses discussion on the last 5000 years. At that time, the settlement pattern appears to be one of small, one to four house communities dispersed across the sea-scape. Non-residential middens are present throughout the Holocene. Larger linear villages appear after 5000 calBP and larger...
Ecological, Archaeological, and Social Perspectives of Northern Coast Salish Marine Resource Management Systems (2017)
Coastal peoples around the world have complex systems of marine management that are situated within and influenced by a myriad of social and ecological actions and contexts. On the Northwest Coast of North America, as elsewhere, understanding the physical and non-tangible aspects of these systems requires using diverse kinds of knowledge and data. In this presentation, we bring together traditional ecological knowledge of Tla’amin First Nation elders with archaeological data to understand the...
Eight years of partnership with Coast Tsimshian First Nations on genomic research (2017)
In 2008 a partnership was established with the Coast Tsimshian to use genomics as a novel avenue of research to learn about the population and evolutionary history of these First Nations. Community based research methods were used as a way to establish research goals that were respectful and mutually beneficial to all parties. Through this partnership we have been able to gain insight into the present-day and ancestral Coast Tsimshian genetic structure. Specifically, we have demonstrated a close...
Exploring Settlement and Mobility Pattern Changes Using Radiocarbon Databses (2015)
Using data from a newly constructed regional 14C database for the Early and Middle-Holocene on the northern Northwest Coast of North America, a combination of Bayesian models, summed probability distributions and spatial analyses are used to evaluate hypotheses regarding the nature and timing for the development of collector strategies on the northern coast. Research and taphonomic biases are accounted for by binning the radiocarbon data, and by applying a general linear model to the data set. I...
In Twos and Threes: Dating Multiple Samples and Materials to Address the Marine Reservoir Effect (2015)
Shell and other marine-derived materials are common in Northwest Coast archaeological sites, particularly shell middens. Yet, uncertainties in the marine reservoir offset have produced a hesitation among some researchers to generate or utilize chronological information derived from marine samples. Clearly. marine-derived dates introduce significant complexities into chronology building that need to be addressed. Here, we present radiocarbon results generated through dating two or three samples...
Least Cost Analysis of Movement Events during the Early Holocene/Late Pleistocene on the Northwest Coast (2016)
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...
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...
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...
Mortuary Archaeology, Burial Practices, and defining the Prehistoric Funerary Landscape on the Sunshine Coast, British Columbia (2017)
The ancestral burial practices among the peoples of the northwest coast of British Columbia have been well studied and documented by academics, heritage resource management professionals, and the First Nation Communities. Recent systematic surveys from archaeological impact assessments within the Sunshine Coast have yielded previously unidentified funerary archaeological features including various funerary petroforms atypical to this region. My aim is to revisit and define the types of...
Navigating Paradigms: Site Location and Settlement Patterns in Watery Environments from the Pacific Northwest Coast and Southern Patagonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reconstructing past seafaring presents major challenges. Beyond the archaeological invisibility of watercraft, a key issue is that theoretical models and archaeological predictions concerning aquatic movement are less developed than for terrestrial cases. We apply an explorative and...
New Insights into Old (and New) Data: Lithic Technological Organization and Evolutionary Archaeology at the St. Mungo Site (DgRr-2), British Columbia, Canada (2017)
Results from excavations at the St. Mungo site by Len Ham and his team in the early 1980’s challenged previously held ideas about the Charles Culture (5000-3300 BP) in the Gulf of Georgia region. Previous research determined the Charles Culture was represented by egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies. Several lines of evidence were cited to support this idea, including both the absence of ground slate knives for intensive fish processing and storage technology which would have allowed people to...
A Tale of Two Villages: Exploring the Role of Villages with Massive Shell Accumulations as Anthropogenic Coastline Modifications in Prince Rupert Harbour (2017)
3D mapping, percussion coring, and radiocarbon dating are used to explore the geoarchaeology and chronology of two villages composed of massive shell deposits in the Prince Rupert Harbour. We map out accumulation and development of these sites through time and demonstrate that they are major anthropogenic coastline modifications, which, with dozens of other large villages in the area, form a substantial built environment. As well as providing well-drained terraformed terraces on which to build...
Timing the Introduction of Arrow Technologies in the Salish Sea (2015)
A substantial amount of recent literature has re-examined the applicability of dart-arrow indices for hafted chipped stone tools from archaeological assemblages ranging from the Columbia Plateau to Californian Coast. As yet, these approaches have not been employed to examine variation in Coast Salish lithic traditions. We critically apply Hildebrandt and King's (2012) recent-dart arrow index and also employ a discriminant function analysis (DFA) to a data set of chipped and ground stone points...
Tracing the World’s Edge:Northwest Coast interactions with the external world (2017)
In this paper, we address the extent to which Northwest Coast societies, and specifically those of the Salish Sea, were engaged in, participated in, or were connected to an external world beyond their own perceived borders. We consider four elements of the problem. First, we examine ethnographic data pertaining to the spatial extent of the known world, and trace its borders. We then consider the flow of exogenous and exotic materials into the Northwest Coast over time, and assess the...
Understanding the Health of the People of Pender Island (B.C.) Through Portable X-ray Fluorescence of Human Remains (2015)
Bioarchaeology has undergone some amazing advancements since the 1970s. Due to ancient DNA and isotopic analysis, we are now able to understand health, ancestry, and diet, among other topics. Unfortunately, these methods of investigation are largely inaccessible to many descendant communities due to prohibitive costs and the destructive nature of many forms of analyses on human remains. Archaeologists are beginning to respond to these concerns, by developing non-destructive analytical tools....
The World of Secret Societies: Dynamics from the Northwest (2015)
Secret societies are one of the most under-theorized and ignored aspects of prehistoric societies in archaeology, yet they may be pivotal in understanding major developments in sociopolitical complexity in the past. Probable prehistoric examples of secret society remains include the elaborately painted caves of Upper Paleolithic France, the communal structures or caves of the Early Near Eastern Neolithic (Gobekli Tepe, Jerf el Ahmar, Nahal Hemar, and others), and the kivas and caves used in the...
"You Have Harmed Us": Structural Violence and the Indian School experience among the Port Gamble S’Kllalam community. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Reckoning with Violence" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 1855, the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Point No Point with the S'Klallam community. In exchange for fishing rights, the S’Klallam ceded 750,000 acres of land and accepted formal education. The Indian education system has enacted both symbolic and structural forms of violence among the S’kllalam, violence that has contributed to the...