This article describes the recent identification, documentation, and preservation of a large wood... more This article describes the recent identification, documentation, and preservation of a large wooden lattice-work panel recovered from a wet-site trap complex located in Comox Harbour on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This project was the result of Indigenous community members proactively taking control of their heritage for protection and conservation. Based on the research of the contributors, this panel appears to be the largest and most intact example of a fish trap panel from an archaeological context on the Northwest Coast. This paper provides data and interpretations to better understand Indigenous fisheries and the technology of the extensive systems of wooden fish traps that once spanned most of Comox Harbour.
Nephrite/jade is rather different from all the other toolstones discussed in this volume, as it w... more Nephrite/jade is rather different from all the other toolstones discussed in this volume, as it was exclusively used for making ground, rather than flaked stone artifacts in the Pacific Northwest. While most toolstone was selected for its property of being able to fracture it in a controlled manner, nephrite was selected for the exact opposite reason – namely it is exceedingly difficult to fracture at all. Because of its extreme toughness, nephrite was a very desirable material for the production of stone celts (adzes, chisels, and axes). Nephrite from the Pacific Northwest is dominated by shades of green, but can occur in a myriad of colors. Being a semiprecious gemstone, polished nephrite also has remarkable aesthetic qualities – namely translucency and luster. The combination of incredible toughness, durability and unique aesthetic properties make nephrite a remarkably singular toolstone. Besides celts, there are very few other artifact types aside from production debris (e.g., k...
Introduction Archaeologists have long regarded ground stone celts as important artifacts in the N... more Introduction Archaeologists have long regarded ground stone celts as important artifacts in the Northwest Coast culture area. These distinctive stone tools have figured prominently in culture histories (Borden 1968; Matson and Coupland 1995; Mitchell 1971), they are considered to be direct evidence for intensive woodworking traditions (Borden 1954, 1968, 1970; Carlson 1996), and regarded as an important valuable commodity acquired and widely distributed through interregional trade and exchange (Blake 2004; Burley 1980, 1981, 1989; Grier 2003; Mackie 1995) (Figure 1). It seems appropriate then, given the significance of these three issues to the later prehistory of the Lower Fraser River, to have a firm understanding of the morphological and mineralogical variation, and the spatial distribution of ground stone celts and production debris resulting from their manufacture. This chapter presents an overview of recent research regarding production and use of celts, with implications for ...
Research into broad patterns of trade and exchange in precontact British Columbia, Canada, has be... more Research into broad patterns of trade and exchange in precontact British Columbia, Canada, has been very limited. This paper addresses that shortcoming by presenting the results of a mineralogical study of 1,374 stone celts and 131 sawn cores from which celts were manufactured from 196 archaeological sites across British Columbia. These artifacts were an integral part of the woodworking toolkits of aboriginal peoples in this region from ca. 3500 B.P. to around contact at about 180 B.P. The mineralogy of these artifacts was determined using a portable near-infrared spectrometer, and the resulting data mapped using Geographic Information Systems. The results of this study indicate that celt production and exchange largely occurred within five discrete celt stone regions. For two of these celt stone regions—the Salish Sea and the Canadian Plateau—1 argue that these represent interaction spheres. Only in the Salish Sea were considerable numbers of celts imported from another region. For...
The purpose of this paper is to describe the patterns of ground stone celt production in pre-cont... more The purpose of this paper is to describe the patterns of ground stone celt production in pre-contact southwestern British Columbia (3500 BP–ad 1770) and to offer hypotheses to explain those patterns derived from Coast and Interior Salish ethnographies. The mineralogy of celt production debris and celts was determined using a portable near-infrared spectrometer, and the resulting data mapped using GIS. The spatial distribution of such artifacts clearly indicates that celt production was a highly localized activity in a few centers along the Fraser River, with very little evidence of celt production anywhere else in the Salish British Columbia. Based on this evidence, it is clear that celts were exported in large numbers from very few communities and supplied a market of many hundreds of communities. The patterns evident in such data provide further resolution to the directionality and volume of exchange between celt producing and celt receiving communities. A number of avenues for increasing the volume of production of nephrite celts are explored against the archaeological record. I suggest that elites in nephrite source areas were well-positioned to sponsor or intensify the production of stone celts for export to distant exchange partners.
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 12, 2011
Recent studies have suggested that the decisions that hunter-gatherers make about the diversity a... more Recent studies have suggested that the decisions that hunter-gatherers make about the diversity and complexity of their subsistence toolkits are strongly affected by risk of resource failure. However, the risk proxies and samples employed in these studies are potentially problematic. With this in mind, we retested the risk hypothesis with data from hunter-gatherer populations who lived in the northwest coast and plateau regions of the Pacific Northwest during the early contact period. We focused on these populations partly because the northwest coast and plateau differ in ways that can be expected to lead to differences in risk, and partly because of the availability of data for a wide range of risk-relevant variables. Our analyses suggest that the plateau was a more risky environment than the northwest coast. However, the predicted differences in the number and complexity of the populations' subsistence tools were not observed. The discrepancy between our results and those of ...
U.S. Bureau of Land Management; Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Washing... more U.S. Bureau of Land Management; Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Washington State University Department of Anthropology; University of British Columbia
Abstract Geib has recently argued that there are major differences between the ways that Archaic ... more Abstract Geib has recently argued that there are major differences between the ways that Archaic and Basketmaker II (BM II) peoples made projectile points, namely that BM II peoples used indirect punches and wide compound pressure flakers to produce very thin, broad bifaces. We build on this analysis by measuring six attributes related to flake scar morphology on samples of Archaic and BM II bifaces from Cedar Mesa, Utah. The differences between the two groups for each variable are strongly statistically significant. Metric multidimensional scaling of these attributes reveals clear differences between Archaic and BM II bifaces based on flake scars and also allows us to detect previously misclassified artifacts. We suggest that the BM II tradition of making bifaces and points with indirect punches and compound flakers is an example of enculturated style.
This article argues that the red-ocher paintings (pictographs) in Coast Salish Tsleil-Waututh ter... more This article argues that the red-ocher paintings (pictographs) in Coast Salish Tsleil-Waututh territory in Indian Arm, British Columbia, were made around the time of contact in specific response to demographic collapse caused by smallpox. Tsleil-Waututh people selected fifteen distinctive geological features along the shoreline of Indian Arm for marking. It is suggested that these locations were highly significant places to past Tsleil-Waututh people because they were physical embodiments of oral traditions (sxwoxwyiam) and associated with underwater-dwelling supernatural creatures (stl’aleqem). Relying on local oral traditions, regional archaeology, and local ethnographies, the article argues that these specific locations had very ancient roots in Tsleil-Waututh history but were marked in the early contact period with red paint by Tsleil-Waututh ritualists (shxwla:m, “Indian Doctor”). They did this to connect with supernatural powers in these locations, to preserve oral histories a...
Above: (Figure 5) Excavations at ST 109 (Photo by Jon Sheppard). With the primary goal of trainin... more Above: (Figure 5) Excavations at ST 109 (Photo by Jon Sheppard). With the primary goal of training students in archaeological field techniques, we had four primary projects 1) mapping the McKay Creek site, 2) digitally mapping the Keatley Creek site 3) exploring some of the cultural depressions on Terrace I, and 4) excavating structure 109 (hereafter ST I 09). Each of these projects is discussed below.
Keatley Creek (EeRl 7) is a prehistoric large pithouse village site on the Fraser River north of ... more Keatley Creek (EeRl 7) is a prehistoric large pithouse village site on the Fraser River north of Lillooet, and it had an estimated population of 1200-1500 at its zenith, with the Classic Lillooet occupation (2,300-1, 100 BP ), although the extent and development of this and other large communities is currently much debated (Hayden 2005, Prentiss et al2005, Kuijt and Prentiss 2004) (Figures 2 and 3). It has been a focus of considerable archaeological investigation, nearly continuously from 1985 to present, and provides almost certainly the largest body of comparative data on household variability (especially living floors) from a single site in the Pacific Northwest (with 7 completely and 15 partially excavated pithouses of all sizes and primarily of Plateau, Kamloops, and Protohistoric Horizons) (Hayden 2000a and 2000b, 2004). It is probably not reasonable to assume all 120 of the housepits at Keatley Creek are the collapsed remains of domestic winter pithouses. We suggest that rece...
Cet ouvrage presente les resultats et les interpretations d'une etude experimentale portant s... more Cet ouvrage presente les resultats et les interpretations d'une etude experimentale portant sur la preparation du saumon utilisant des technologies prehistoriques de la Cote du Nord-Ouest. Cinq types d'outils ethnographiques ou prehistoriques (le couteau bifacial, l'eclat de galet, le couteau en ardoise polie, le couteau poli en coquillage de moule et le microeclat emmanche) ont ete repliques et utilises pour la preparation de grandes quantites de saumon afin de les secher et conserver. Le cadre de la theorie du design est utilise en conjonction avec des methodes experimentales dans une tentative de comprendre et d'expliquer les differentes contraintes qui peuvent influencer la dominance de chaque type d'outil dans une region particuliere. L'hypothese proposee suggere que certains outils servent seulement pour une ou un petit nombre des tâches discretes requises lors d'une bonne preparation de saumon et que des combinaisons de tels outils ont ete utilisee...
Des documents ethnographiques et archeologiques attestent d'un ensemble complexe de reseaux s... more Des documents ethnographiques et archeologiques attestent d'un ensemble complexe de reseaux socio-economiques et religieux parmi les communautes Coast Salish. Si ces documents favorisent une comprehension globale des interactions entre certains groupes Coast Salish, notre connaissance des relations sociales entre groupes specifiques demeure inegale. Plus particulierement, nous savons peu de choses sur les interactions sociales entre les populations du Haut Detroit de Burrard et celles du Detroit d'Indian Arm ("Region du Detroit"). Nous avons analyse des restes fauniques, vegetaux, et lithiques associes a des depots de la Phase Recente (∼1200-250 BP) au site d'habitation de Say-Umiton, et compare ces resultats aux donnees des sites Tum-tu-may-whueton (Belcarra Park) et Whey-Ah-Wichen (Cates Park), fouilles anterieurement. Plus particulierement, la source et l'abondance des vestiges archeologiques nous ont servi de barometre pour determiner le degre d'int...
This article describes the recent identification, documentation, and preservation of a large wood... more This article describes the recent identification, documentation, and preservation of a large wooden lattice-work panel recovered from a wet-site trap complex located in Comox Harbour on the east coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This project was the result of Indigenous community members proactively taking control of their heritage for protection and conservation. Based on the research of the contributors, this panel appears to be the largest and most intact example of a fish trap panel from an archaeological context on the Northwest Coast. This paper provides data and interpretations to better understand Indigenous fisheries and the technology of the extensive systems of wooden fish traps that once spanned most of Comox Harbour.
Nephrite/jade is rather different from all the other toolstones discussed in this volume, as it w... more Nephrite/jade is rather different from all the other toolstones discussed in this volume, as it was exclusively used for making ground, rather than flaked stone artifacts in the Pacific Northwest. While most toolstone was selected for its property of being able to fracture it in a controlled manner, nephrite was selected for the exact opposite reason – namely it is exceedingly difficult to fracture at all. Because of its extreme toughness, nephrite was a very desirable material for the production of stone celts (adzes, chisels, and axes). Nephrite from the Pacific Northwest is dominated by shades of green, but can occur in a myriad of colors. Being a semiprecious gemstone, polished nephrite also has remarkable aesthetic qualities – namely translucency and luster. The combination of incredible toughness, durability and unique aesthetic properties make nephrite a remarkably singular toolstone. Besides celts, there are very few other artifact types aside from production debris (e.g., k...
Introduction Archaeologists have long regarded ground stone celts as important artifacts in the N... more Introduction Archaeologists have long regarded ground stone celts as important artifacts in the Northwest Coast culture area. These distinctive stone tools have figured prominently in culture histories (Borden 1968; Matson and Coupland 1995; Mitchell 1971), they are considered to be direct evidence for intensive woodworking traditions (Borden 1954, 1968, 1970; Carlson 1996), and regarded as an important valuable commodity acquired and widely distributed through interregional trade and exchange (Blake 2004; Burley 1980, 1981, 1989; Grier 2003; Mackie 1995) (Figure 1). It seems appropriate then, given the significance of these three issues to the later prehistory of the Lower Fraser River, to have a firm understanding of the morphological and mineralogical variation, and the spatial distribution of ground stone celts and production debris resulting from their manufacture. This chapter presents an overview of recent research regarding production and use of celts, with implications for ...
Research into broad patterns of trade and exchange in precontact British Columbia, Canada, has be... more Research into broad patterns of trade and exchange in precontact British Columbia, Canada, has been very limited. This paper addresses that shortcoming by presenting the results of a mineralogical study of 1,374 stone celts and 131 sawn cores from which celts were manufactured from 196 archaeological sites across British Columbia. These artifacts were an integral part of the woodworking toolkits of aboriginal peoples in this region from ca. 3500 B.P. to around contact at about 180 B.P. The mineralogy of these artifacts was determined using a portable near-infrared spectrometer, and the resulting data mapped using Geographic Information Systems. The results of this study indicate that celt production and exchange largely occurred within five discrete celt stone regions. For two of these celt stone regions—the Salish Sea and the Canadian Plateau—1 argue that these represent interaction spheres. Only in the Salish Sea were considerable numbers of celts imported from another region. For...
The purpose of this paper is to describe the patterns of ground stone celt production in pre-cont... more The purpose of this paper is to describe the patterns of ground stone celt production in pre-contact southwestern British Columbia (3500 BP–ad 1770) and to offer hypotheses to explain those patterns derived from Coast and Interior Salish ethnographies. The mineralogy of celt production debris and celts was determined using a portable near-infrared spectrometer, and the resulting data mapped using GIS. The spatial distribution of such artifacts clearly indicates that celt production was a highly localized activity in a few centers along the Fraser River, with very little evidence of celt production anywhere else in the Salish British Columbia. Based on this evidence, it is clear that celts were exported in large numbers from very few communities and supplied a market of many hundreds of communities. The patterns evident in such data provide further resolution to the directionality and volume of exchange between celt producing and celt receiving communities. A number of avenues for increasing the volume of production of nephrite celts are explored against the archaeological record. I suggest that elites in nephrite source areas were well-positioned to sponsor or intensify the production of stone celts for export to distant exchange partners.
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jan 12, 2011
Recent studies have suggested that the decisions that hunter-gatherers make about the diversity a... more Recent studies have suggested that the decisions that hunter-gatherers make about the diversity and complexity of their subsistence toolkits are strongly affected by risk of resource failure. However, the risk proxies and samples employed in these studies are potentially problematic. With this in mind, we retested the risk hypothesis with data from hunter-gatherer populations who lived in the northwest coast and plateau regions of the Pacific Northwest during the early contact period. We focused on these populations partly because the northwest coast and plateau differ in ways that can be expected to lead to differences in risk, and partly because of the availability of data for a wide range of risk-relevant variables. Our analyses suggest that the plateau was a more risky environment than the northwest coast. However, the predicted differences in the number and complexity of the populations' subsistence tools were not observed. The discrepancy between our results and those of ...
U.S. Bureau of Land Management; Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Washing... more U.S. Bureau of Land Management; Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; Washington State University Department of Anthropology; University of British Columbia
Abstract Geib has recently argued that there are major differences between the ways that Archaic ... more Abstract Geib has recently argued that there are major differences between the ways that Archaic and Basketmaker II (BM II) peoples made projectile points, namely that BM II peoples used indirect punches and wide compound pressure flakers to produce very thin, broad bifaces. We build on this analysis by measuring six attributes related to flake scar morphology on samples of Archaic and BM II bifaces from Cedar Mesa, Utah. The differences between the two groups for each variable are strongly statistically significant. Metric multidimensional scaling of these attributes reveals clear differences between Archaic and BM II bifaces based on flake scars and also allows us to detect previously misclassified artifacts. We suggest that the BM II tradition of making bifaces and points with indirect punches and compound flakers is an example of enculturated style.
This article argues that the red-ocher paintings (pictographs) in Coast Salish Tsleil-Waututh ter... more This article argues that the red-ocher paintings (pictographs) in Coast Salish Tsleil-Waututh territory in Indian Arm, British Columbia, were made around the time of contact in specific response to demographic collapse caused by smallpox. Tsleil-Waututh people selected fifteen distinctive geological features along the shoreline of Indian Arm for marking. It is suggested that these locations were highly significant places to past Tsleil-Waututh people because they were physical embodiments of oral traditions (sxwoxwyiam) and associated with underwater-dwelling supernatural creatures (stl’aleqem). Relying on local oral traditions, regional archaeology, and local ethnographies, the article argues that these specific locations had very ancient roots in Tsleil-Waututh history but were marked in the early contact period with red paint by Tsleil-Waututh ritualists (shxwla:m, “Indian Doctor”). They did this to connect with supernatural powers in these locations, to preserve oral histories a...
Above: (Figure 5) Excavations at ST 109 (Photo by Jon Sheppard). With the primary goal of trainin... more Above: (Figure 5) Excavations at ST 109 (Photo by Jon Sheppard). With the primary goal of training students in archaeological field techniques, we had four primary projects 1) mapping the McKay Creek site, 2) digitally mapping the Keatley Creek site 3) exploring some of the cultural depressions on Terrace I, and 4) excavating structure 109 (hereafter ST I 09). Each of these projects is discussed below.
Keatley Creek (EeRl 7) is a prehistoric large pithouse village site on the Fraser River north of ... more Keatley Creek (EeRl 7) is a prehistoric large pithouse village site on the Fraser River north of Lillooet, and it had an estimated population of 1200-1500 at its zenith, with the Classic Lillooet occupation (2,300-1, 100 BP ), although the extent and development of this and other large communities is currently much debated (Hayden 2005, Prentiss et al2005, Kuijt and Prentiss 2004) (Figures 2 and 3). It has been a focus of considerable archaeological investigation, nearly continuously from 1985 to present, and provides almost certainly the largest body of comparative data on household variability (especially living floors) from a single site in the Pacific Northwest (with 7 completely and 15 partially excavated pithouses of all sizes and primarily of Plateau, Kamloops, and Protohistoric Horizons) (Hayden 2000a and 2000b, 2004). It is probably not reasonable to assume all 120 of the housepits at Keatley Creek are the collapsed remains of domestic winter pithouses. We suggest that rece...
Cet ouvrage presente les resultats et les interpretations d'une etude experimentale portant s... more Cet ouvrage presente les resultats et les interpretations d'une etude experimentale portant sur la preparation du saumon utilisant des technologies prehistoriques de la Cote du Nord-Ouest. Cinq types d'outils ethnographiques ou prehistoriques (le couteau bifacial, l'eclat de galet, le couteau en ardoise polie, le couteau poli en coquillage de moule et le microeclat emmanche) ont ete repliques et utilises pour la preparation de grandes quantites de saumon afin de les secher et conserver. Le cadre de la theorie du design est utilise en conjonction avec des methodes experimentales dans une tentative de comprendre et d'expliquer les differentes contraintes qui peuvent influencer la dominance de chaque type d'outil dans une region particuliere. L'hypothese proposee suggere que certains outils servent seulement pour une ou un petit nombre des tâches discretes requises lors d'une bonne preparation de saumon et que des combinaisons de tels outils ont ete utilisee...
Des documents ethnographiques et archeologiques attestent d'un ensemble complexe de reseaux s... more Des documents ethnographiques et archeologiques attestent d'un ensemble complexe de reseaux socio-economiques et religieux parmi les communautes Coast Salish. Si ces documents favorisent une comprehension globale des interactions entre certains groupes Coast Salish, notre connaissance des relations sociales entre groupes specifiques demeure inegale. Plus particulierement, nous savons peu de choses sur les interactions sociales entre les populations du Haut Detroit de Burrard et celles du Detroit d'Indian Arm ("Region du Detroit"). Nous avons analyse des restes fauniques, vegetaux, et lithiques associes a des depots de la Phase Recente (∼1200-250 BP) au site d'habitation de Say-Umiton, et compare ces resultats aux donnees des sites Tum-tu-may-whueton (Belcarra Park) et Whey-Ah-Wichen (Cates Park), fouilles anterieurement. Plus particulierement, la source et l'abondance des vestiges archeologiques nous ont servi de barometre pour determiner le degre d'int...
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