The Maplebank Site: New Findings and Reinterpretation along the North American Northwest Coast

Summary

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 along the Salish Sea. ‘Islands’ sites lack most Marpole traits, and are characterized as cultural laggards with non-specialised economies, attributed largely to lack of access to perennial salmon runs. However, new faunal data, based on 100,000 animal bones and updated stratigraphic information from Maplebank, a large, stratified Vancouver Island site, indicate that salmon comprised a greater percentage of the fauna than at Marpole and most NWC sites. This finding refutes (again) the link between salmon abundance and developed social and cultural NWC institutions. Further, an enigmatic hiatus in cultural deposition at Maplebank, coinciding with development of Marpole on the mainland, indicates widespread population displacement from Maplebank and other Islands sites. We discuss these and other findings, and their ramifications for change along the Northwest Coast.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16280