Interpreting Fur Trade Sites: A View from the Pacific Northwest

Summary

Academic partners and volunteers help the National Park Service interpret Fort Vancouver and other fur trade-era sites in the Pacific Northwest through the lens of historical archaeology.  Archaeologists interface directly and indirectly with curators, re-enactors, interpreters, and other supporters of these protected places. Together, specialists, citizen scientists and interpreters represent these colonial spaces to the public.  At Fort Vancouver, historical archaeology has been of particular importance in the reconstruction of buildings, the exploration of technology tied to various industrial activities at the fort, and the study of a very diverse fur trade community and its colonial connections to both indigenous and global peoples. Interpreters and archaeologists have a common purpose to build dialogs with increasingly diverse publics with complex reasons for visiting heritage sites. Historical archaeology has a special role in interpreting material culture to make connections between past practices and modern understandings for all of its constituents. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Interpretation and Presentation of Archaeological and Cultural Heritage Sites: Evolving Horizons   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

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Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 538