Archaeological work in Huu-ay-aht territory, 2012

Quick note to say that the upcoming February meeting of the Victoria Chapter of the Archaeological Society of B.C.  should be a good one (sadly I am back east at the time):

Coastal Field Archaeology in Huu-ay-aht Territory: Highlights from the 2012 Bamfield Marine Science Centre Archaeological Field School

Tuesday February 19th, 2013, 7:30 pm Pacific Forestry Centre,
506 West Burnside Road. map

Free and Open to the Public

Abstract: In July and August of 2012, the Huu-ay-aht First Nation and the Bamfield Marine Science Centre co-hosted a ‘Coastal Field Archaeology’ course on Huu-ay-aht Government Lands in Barkley Sound on western Vancouver Island. Fifteen anthropology students from UBC, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria participated with the support of two Huu-ay-aht youth, two instructors, and a teaching assistant. This presentation features highlights from the 2012 fieldseason which involved fieldwork at three very different sites strongly connected to recent and ancient Huu-ay-aht history (two coastal villages and one inland canoe manufacturing site). Students participated in survey and mapping, coring, and augering, as well as conventional excavation and column sampling all of which generated an exciting array of archaeological observations, including historic, precontact and nearly contemporary artifacts and house features.

Biographies:

Nicole Smith (MA, UVic) has been working as an archaeologist in coastal BC for the last thirteen years as a graduate student, consultant, researcher, and educator. She presently works from home in Vancouver as a consulting archaeologist and enjoys collaborating on academically driven projects with First Nations and colleagues at UVic, SFU, UBC, and Parks Canada.

Iain McKechnie is a coastal zooarchaeologist and a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at University of British Columbia whose research focuses on Nuu-chah-nulth archaeology on western Vancouver Island. He has an MA from Simon Fraser University and is a former executive member of the Victoria Branch of the ASBC.

Unusual serrated stone tool from Gitwangak area site, perhaps used for cedar processing. Source: CBC

There’s a nice audio interview and slide show from the CBC with Jenny Lewis of Kleanza Consulting archaeologists about a dig going on along the Skeena River near Gitwangak (Kitwanga) in Gitxan Territory.  The project is apparently a CN Rail siding repair and there have been many, many stone tools found, including some in stratified setting with carbon dates associated.

Remarkably, Lewis asserts that they have material dating to around 9,000 years ago, in addition to the more recent finds.  This would certainly make it amongst the oldest, if not the oldest, archaeological material known from the Skeena River area, although it is not specified how the earliest date estimates were arrived at.  The well-known sites in the Kitselas Canyon, for example, are generally all within the last 5,000 years if memory serves me right.

Dig site near Gitwangak. Source: CBC

Lewis also does a nice job of contextualizing the dig in relation to the present day interests and outlook of the Gitxsan, and the CBC’s Betsy Trumpener does a good job of interviewing her.  It’s one of the better archaeology in the media experiences of late – I suppose there may well be underlying tensions about the development project itself and these are not raised, but overall I enjoyed the interview and would like to know more.  The only flaw is that the CBC’s slideshow does not have captions, or, to be precise, it has empty captions.

Anyway, if anyone knows exactly how the 9000 year old estimate is reached, post in the comments!  I got the impression the early date was not from radiocarbon dating, so perhaps stylistic characteristics of artifacts?

Large biface (knife or spear point) from near Gitwangak. Source: CBC

]]> http://qmackie.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/new-finds-from-skeena-river-near-gitwangak/feed/ 9 qmackie Unusual serrated stone tool from Gitwangak area site, perhaps used for cedar processing. Source: CBC Dig site near Gitwangak. Source: CBC Large biface (knife or spear point) from near Gitwangak. Source: CBC http://qmackie.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/northwest-anthropological-conference-2013-portland-march-27-30/ http://qmackie.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/northwest-anthropological-conference-2013-portland-march-27-30/#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2013 19:20:30 +0000 qmackie http://qmackie.wordpress.com/?p=3918 Continue reading →]]>

View of reconstructed Cathlapotle Chinookan Plankhouse relatively close to Portland. Click for source.

The 2013 Northwest Anthropology conference is coming up soon at the end of March, but it’s not too late to submit a symposium proposal (deadline January 28th) or contribute a paper (deadline February 8th).

NWAC is always an excellent conference which draws on Anthropology broadly but with a hefty dose of archaeology, sometimes mostly archaeology.  I’ve noticed in the past it also draws a lot of participation from Tribal and First Nations groups, from consulting and government archaeologists, interested laypeople, as well as academics of all levels from undergrads to retirees.  In that sense it is far more multi-vocal than the “really big conferences” tend to be.  It also has a tradition of very reasonable fees and hotel rates and this year is no exception.  Add on Portland’s status as microbrewery capital of (probably) the entire world and what’s not to like?

The conference is hosted by the excellent Department of Anthropology at Portland State University, with lead organization apparently by occasional blog commenter (and Professor Emeritus) Ken Ames.

The Canadian Archaeological Association conference is also coming up locally in May (at Whistler), so more on that in due course, but just for now, the call for sessions is open until January 31st.

Unusual fish hook fashioned from a canine tooth. Ca. 3000 years old, Burnaby Narrows, Haida Gwaii, 2012. Photo by Jenny Cohen.

Quick note to say there are two forthcoming public talks that might be of interest to residents of Vancouver or Victoria.  The Vancouver one is by Dr. Ken Ames, Professor Emeritus at Portland State University, speaking at UBC on Thursday October 18th at 11.30.  The Victoria one is by yours truly, speaking to the Archaeological Society of BC on Tuesday October 16th at 7.30.  Details are below.

Dr. Ames, the unofficial Dean of NW Coast Archaeology, will be speaking to the topic “Entangled in the Fur Trade: The Archaeology of Contact on the Lower Columbia River”. You can view a poster and abstract for the event here. Incidentally, he has an old-school web page with tons of his extensive and highly influential  publications available for download. The talk is at 11.30 in ANSO 134.  I teach on Thursdays over here, or else I’d schlepp over there.

My talk is on preliminary results of the 2012 field season in Haida Gwaii.  It’ll be spoken in the “Royal We,”  in the usual ASBC place at the Pacific Forestry Centre, 506 West Burnside Road. map.  It’s free and open to the public, as always. The overview is as follows:

The 2012 archaeological research program in Gwaii Haanas had several quite distinct components. In this talk I will review new finds from the 10,700 year old Kilgii Gwaay wet site, where favourable preservation of organic artifacts allows accurate assessment of early period technological capacities. I will also review new finds from the Burnaby Narrows area, where excavation on a series of sites on relict shorelines is helping to fill in gaps in the very poorly known 5000 to 2000 year old time period in Haida Gwaii. Excavation in 2012 focused on testing different terrace heights and establishing chronology, but a number of interesting artifacts were found, including decorated bone, a large chalcedony assemblage, and what appears to be an early appearance of ground stone celts in the middle Holocene period.”

Archaeological Science on Haida Gwaii.

So I’ve never posted job ads here before and I may never do so again, but there are two ones posted right now with a lot of potential for readers of this blog: one is an archaeological position with the Council of the Haida Nation (PDF), the other a tenure track position  in archaeological sciences at Washington State University.

The Haida Nation position is intriguing.  There is a huge opportunity here to help achieve Haida goals of management of the archaeological and heritage record of Haida Gwaii, and I suspect the right candidate could also help encourage and facilitate research oriented projects, including focused inventory.  I’m posting the job here because I know they have had some trouble filling this position and I truly hope they can find the right person – you need to be an experienced archaeologist with a minimum B.A., able to hold a permit, etc.  The bar is actually quite low in many ways.

Believe me I am tempted to apply for this job myself.  It even is rumoured to pay pretty well! I hope they find someone with great experience but here, perhaps, is the kicker — you must be willing to move to Haida Gwaii.

In some ways I wish that moving wasn’t a requirement, that they were willing to accept hiring someone on retainer, say, who would work on the islands for 4 months a year or something.  It may be an impediment  to find successful mid-career professionals who can relocate.  On the other hand, I can fully understand a desire to have the professional position be on the islands, as a form of economic development if nothing else. Maybe there is a constructive compromise — I can think of some absolutely awesome people who could do the job on island as needed, and be on retainer the rest of the time.  The CHN might even save some money or be able to reallocate money if it was less than full-time.  Well, that’s my two cents.  I’d move to Haida Gwaii tomorrow if I didn’t have some serious obligations on the home front.  Read the ad and consider the amazing potential of such a job!

The other job, at WSU, is not limited by geographic area.  They are seeking an archaeological sciences type, so “molecular, earth or environmental sciences, archaeometry, geochemistry, remote sensing methods or quantitative/spatial analysis (GIS)”.

I really hope they hire a NW Coast specialist to complement Colin Grier and carry on the long tradition of WSU excellence in NW Coast archaeology.  Probably they should hire a zooarchaeologist (“environmental sciences”) since that is so core to NW Coast archaeology, and would balance nicely with Colin.  I’d love to have a WSU zooarchaeology colleague who was interested in Haida Gwaii, for example – so much potential to keep working in Gwaii Haanas despite the Parks Canada staff reductions.  Pullman is a great town*, and jobs like this are increasingly scarce.

* Variable definitions of “great” may apply.

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Screenshot of BC Archaeology Forum Website.

It came up in comments a week or so ago on this blog, but the annual wondering where the archaeology forum is over — it’ll be in Cranbrook October 26-28, with the main day of presentations and a dinner/drumming/dancing on Saturday the 27th. Indeed, the evening festivities are scheduled to go until 1.00 a.m., so it should be a good party.  The Sunday field trip will be to a quarry site. The Ktunaxa First Nation will be hosting, for which they deserve all our thanks.

The archaeology forum is the premiere event in BC archaeology, allowing First Nations and consulting, academic and government archaeologists to all get together in fairly informal circumstances and get caught up. It strikes me that this year there is a good chance to drag some of our American colleagues across the border from eastern Washington.

I’ve enjoyed the forums I’ve been too, though the last of those, at Musqueam, was the day before this blog went on hiatus, so there’s some mixed memories there too.  Unfortunately I’m previously committed for that weekend – which brings up my annual moan about couldn’t we set a date a few months in advance, say in May each year?  Nonetheless, thanks are due to the Ktunaxa for stepping up and I am sure it will be a big success.  Also, it looks like there are some special airfare deals referenced here.

Speaking of public events, a reminder that if you are in Victoria, then the ASBC meets tonight (Tuesday) to hear Beth Weathers on bedrock stone bowls, and next Monday noonish there is a talk in UVIC Anthropology by Eric McLay on inland shell middens in the Salish Sea (PDF).  I’ve started updating the “Events” area on the right hand column of this blog so hope to keep up with that — if you know of any relevant events, then let me know.

Stone Bowls in bedrock at Willows Beach, Victoria. Photo courtesy of Beth Weathers.

Investigation into Intertidal Bedrock Bowls at Willows Beach, Victoria.

BETH WEATHERS

Tuesday Sept 18, 2012, 7:30 pm Pacific Forestry Centre,
506 West Burnside Road. map

Free and Open to the Public

Overview (via ASBC): In 2009, Beth Weathers was informed by a local resident that there were some “Indian Bowls” in a bedrock outcrop at Willows Beach in the Oak Bay area of Victoria. Upon investigation, Beth identified and recorded 27 bowls that have been ground into one granite outcrop near the mouth of Bowker Creek. These bowls, and others like them, will eventually became the topic of her MA thesis. Beth will present information and results to date from her studies into these fascinating ancient features.

Bio: Beth Weathers has worked as a professional archaeologist for over a decade, first in Cultural Resource Management consulting, then at the British Columbia Archaeology Branch, where she is still employed. She was also instructor and TA for two semesters at UVic during her spare time.

Note: At the completion of Beth’s presentation a brief period will be devoted to the Annual General Meeting business.

For information, e-mail asbcvictoria@gmail.com

PS: While we’re talking public talks, where is the Archaeology Forum going to be this year?

Sisiutl for Sale

I was browsing to price out some used skiffs, and look what I found – a custom built archaeological research vessel — only $99,000.  (I wonder what she cost to build?) The listing is here, with a PDF backup for posterity here.

I don’t have any memories of the Sisiutl —  never stepped on board — but I know she is close to the hearts of many SFU faculty and former students.

First custom built archaeology research vessel in North America: The Sisiutl.

The picture above is from the journal American Antiquity, which had a short piece on the Sisiutl back in 1973, which includes the following (vol 48(3) p. 495):

BRITISH COLUMBIA. March of 1972 saw the launching of Simon Fraser University’s 40 ft archae- ological research vessel, the Sisiutl (Fig. 1). The diesel-powered boat is of welded aluminum construction. The vessel’s plan includes berths for 12, galley, and shower as well as areas for specimen processing and storage. There is full electronic navigational safety equipment including depth sounder, radio, and radar. The boat can serve as a floating field camp and laboratory for a small excavation or for a survey. In addition, it can transport larger crews or some 4 tons of equipment and supplies to tent camp projects in remote locations. Apparently the Sisiutl is the first boat of its size in North America to be designed and built exclusively for archaeological research.

The boat came up once before on this blog, when I found some early (acerbic) 1970s commentary on coastal archaeology from a First Nations perspective, including this jab at the Sisiutl:

There is money to fund a boat to take archaeology students up and down our coastline to dig up the bones of our grandfathers and sift, sort, and label sacred objects from our burial grounds, but no money for us to treat our heritage with the dignity it. deserves?

The university divested itself of this boat sometime about, I suppose 7 or 8 years ago.  It appears to be listed for sale from somewhere on central Vancouver Island.  I made an image of all the pictures from the listing, showing the interior and exterior of the craft — you can view that here, with some selections below.

As I said, I don’t have any memories of this boat myself, but she served SFU well for decades of estimable central coast research, and it’s sad to think of her being put to any other use.  I thought it would be nice that, if you do have recollections of your time aboard, fond or otherwise, to leave them in the comments section below, and we can make a little informal online book of memories for the Sisiutl. Needless to say, if you have any amusing pics you’d like to share, send them (or a link) along and I can post them too.

Bow of the Sisiutl (they mis-spelled “SeaSlug”) at dock, from the sellers listing.

The Sisiutl’s bridge. I can imagine Roy and Phil up here, drinking coffee or liquid whatever, and scheming their schemish schemes.

Equally I can also imagine generations of students with their heads down the head, wishing they had opted into Prairie Archaeology.

Shell beads from DjRw-14. Large grid is one centimetre, small is one millimetre.  Note the interior diameters of less than one millimetre.   Picture courtesy of Dr. Terry Clark, CMC. Click to enlarge.

The previous post on the remarkable bead-rich burials in shíshálh territory generated a great discussion including contributions from some of the project leaders.  It’d be good to continue that discussion!  But one additional point, as Jesse Morin notes in those comments, and as one of the project leaders Terry Clark raised in an email to me, is the question of, quite simply, how are all these beads getting made?  As you can see in the picture above, these shell beads have a hole diameter of less than one millimetre.  Terry describes some of the holes being not much larger than a human hair!

Detail of above picture, courtesy of Terry Clark. Small squares are 1mm.

We did in face discuss this, ahem, boring issue at some length on this blog in the comments section of this post.  The crux of the issue is, every single one of these beads must have been drilled.  And yet, the kinds of micro-drills required are essentially unknown from the south coast of British Columbia.  So, where are the drills?

Some of the points raised in the previous post comments include:

• nephrite drills are very unlikely
• misclassified bone points, some of which which are actually drills — possible, testable – yet why not noticed yet?
• wooden drill bits (you laugh but it’s possible if abrasive slurry movement was the proximal means of drilling)
• some other organic drill bit (e.g., bird teeth, fish teeth, etc)
• pressure flaked micro-drills (but where are they? cf. Chumash micro-drills, which are hyperabundant)
• sea urchin spines?  Someone has already written a thesis on this topic and they don’t work.  Or do they?
• drift iron (possible, but 4,000 BP examples are less likely to be iron, of course)

Surprisingly, we didn’t resolve the question in the previous comments section.  But I do think it is worth thinking and talking about this some more.  Some kind of tool was used to make hundreds of thousands of sub-mm holes in shell and stone.  Is it, as Jesse suggests, a kind of craft specialization highly concentrated in space at sites as yet unknown?   Is it the result of use of as-yet-unknown technology, especially non-durable technology? Feather drills, anyone?

Future lines of inquiry that occur to me include:

• experimental programmes to define the art of the possible.  Can one perhaps punch a hole through?  The picture above clearly shows mostly bi-conical holes.  However, I’ve also seen a lot with very cylindrical holes.
• more literature review is needed, per Jim’s comment in the previous thread.  This should come from NW Coast but also globally.
• can either the shell or the stone in these beads be sourced or characterized to isolate raw material distributions?  What’s the state of the possible in this regard?
• the beads are not just drilled with tiny holes, they are usually (in my experience), extremely flat.  What kinds of shell are they mad from that allows for this?  Are they also ground on their faces?
• dating a random sample of, say, 10 of the Sechelt beads would be interesting to see if they tightly cluster in time or (perhaps unlikely) they represent several centuries worth of bead making/accumulation.

Small bead manufacture is a several thousand year long tradition in the Gulf of Georgia.  It seems remarkable we know so little about these tiny artifacts with such a large story to tell.  One place to start is with how these beads were made; we also need insight too into how they were worn (blankets? robes?  hair?). Answers to these would promote understanding into how they were deposited, and both of these questions might then also lay a firmer platform for whether we should indeed be interpreting them as evidence for “cultural complexity.”

So brainstorm time, in the comments, everyone welcome!

Examples of typical NW Coast archaeological beads, from B. Thom, reference below.

There have been some exciting finds on the Sunshine Coast (northeastern Strait of Georgia) in shíshálh First Nation territory, including a 4,000 year old burial with over 350,000 beads (!), as this short news item explains (PDF).  This is notable for a bunch of reasons:

Firstly, each bead represents a significant investment of labour.  Even if we conservatively say that you can make a small stone or shell bead in 5 minutes, then at 12 beads per hour, the individual was buried with some 29,000 person hours of labour investment.  That’s about 194 person-months of work, or just over 16 years of full time employment for one person.  (Incidentally, the five minutes is less than half the time UVIC’s own Brian Thom estimates from a brief experiment in Chapter V, here.)  However we may conceptualize the concepts of “work” and “effort” and their relationship to wealth or prestige in the past, we can’t just write off the full time labour of one person for 16 years, or 16 people for one year.  That’s a huge investment of time which could otherwise be used for fishing, hunting, gathering, or creating useful or durable technologies such as houses, canoes, or what have you.  Such measures of labour investment are commonly, if sometimes simplistically,  used to gauge the importance of the deceased individual in both life and death.  Apparently, in addition to this individual, there are other burials, including a young woman buried in a similar manner, from the site (DjRw-14).

Secondly, the burial is very old in relation to its elaboration..  While I haven’t read anything other than the news article, I’ve heard through the grapevine that the dates of around 4,000 years ago are solid.  This is very challenging for some constructions of NW Coast culture history which see something of a slow march of progress towards Marpole at least, if not to the present.  Taken with the amazing, but largely unpublished, finds of Wapato intensification from Pitt Polder, and some other early (also 4,000-ish) elaborately “em-beaded” burials, notably from Tsawwassen and Cowichan Bay, and the  “Charles Phase”, long seen as a generic time interval in which people “waited to become complex”,  is taking on a new character, no?

A third related thought is that it is striking how the investigators, Terence Clark from the National Museum of Civilization and Gary Coupland from University of Toronto, are able to conduct archaeological investigation of human remains in an ancient cemetery.  It speaks very well to their community relations I suspect (see the article) but also highlights the mosaic of indigenous perceptions and reactions to the practice of archaeology within the Salish Sea, many locations in which such a project of deliberate targeting of human burials would be currently unthinkable.

Finally, the article suggests an ambiguous degree of protection for the site, with something called a “map reserve” providing 10 years of protection from development.  I am not at all sure what this is about.  I would have thought that the site itself, protected under the Heritage Conservation Act, presumably with the highest ranking of cultural and scientific significance, would be immune from alteration for that reason alone.  Thoughts? Clarification?

Anyway, these results are very interesting, and pose a welcome challenge to received notions of the trajectories of “cultural complexity” in the Strait of Georgia.  I look forward to seeing more from this exciting project.