All Categories - PACIFIC NORTHWEST ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Ice Age Migration and Settlement along the Northwest Coast of North America

4/21/2021

PNWAS ZOOM Meeting
Thursday May 6th 2021
starting at 6:30 with program at 7:00 PM
To join the ZOOM Meeting and see the presentation
please become a member today!

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2021

JOIN OR RENEW WITH PAYPAL

Ice Age Migration and Settlement along the Northwest Coast of North America
By Dr. E. James Dixon,
University of New Mexico

Archeological and genetic evidence indicates that people first entered North America from northeast Asia sometime during the last ice age, or late Pleistocene, at least 16,000 years ago, or possibly earlier. During the last glacial maximum (LGM) circa 18,000 years ago, sea level was approximately 120 m (about 390 ft) lower than it is today. As a result, the Bering Land Bridge and continental shelf of the Northwest Coast of North America created a continuous shoreline stretching from Northeast Asia to Southeast Alaska. Geological and archeological evidence suggests that this coastal corridor was ecologically viable and capable of supporting human groups and was the earliest ice-free pathway available for people to colonize the southern regions of the Americas.

Following the LGM the climate changed rapidly resulting in: 1) sea level rise that flooded the Bering Land Bridge and severed the land connection between Asia and North America, 2) sea level rise along Alaska’s Northwest Coast forced a landward retreat of people living along the coast in response to rising sea level, and 3) the newly deglaciated land provided new opportunities for people to move landward and colonize terrain recently exposed by melting glaciers.

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2021

Makahs, Quileutes, and the Precontact History of the Northwestern Olympic Peninsula, Washington

3/5/2021

PNWAS ZOOM Meeting
Thursday March 11th 2021
starting at 6:30 with program at 7:00 PM
To join the ZOOM Meeting and see the presentation
please become a member today!

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2021

JOIN OR RENEW WITH PAYPAL

Makahs, Quileutes, and the Precontact History of the Northwestern Olympic Peninsula, Washington
By Dr. Gary Wessen,
Wesson and Associates, Inc., Port Townsend

Variations on the related ideas that: (a) the Makah people arrived on the northwestern Olympic Peninsula of Washington as recently as 1,000 years ago and (b) they displaced Quileute people who had previously held those lands have appeared on a few occasions during the last century. As offered, such claims rely heavily on ethnographic and linguistic arguments. A detailed examination shows that all of these arguments are flawed. The currently available archaeological data is not sufficient to address these ideas in an unequivocal way but may still offer relevant insights. Doing so, however, requires some ability to recognize these groups in the archaeological record; this possibility is explored using the artifact and faunal assemblages from this region. Preliminary findings suggest that Makahs and/or other Wakashan speakers have been present for at least 3,000 to 4,000 years and that there is no credible evidence for an earlier presence of Quileutes and/or other Chimakuan speakers.

This ZOOM presentation examines some existing ideas about the late precontact culture history of the northwestern Olympic Peninsula of Washington (see map, above). The area under consideration includes the coastal margins of the traditional territories of two neighboring groups: the Makah and Quileute peoples. For the most part, it consists of exposed, steep, rocky shorelines marked by numerous nearshore rocks and small islands (see photos). Low, sandy beaches occur in some places, but they are often small. Terrestrial surfaces farther inland are mostly steep and heavily forested. On the north, a few small coastal river valleys break up this pattern. Farther south, the much larger Quillayute and Hoh Rivers reach the ocean on relatively broad alluvial flats.

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2021

Occupying the American Continent through SW WA.—the Chehalis River Hypothesis (CRH), Or Hey, Where did those First Migrants Go?

12/31/2020

PNWAS ZOOM Meeting
Wednesday, January 6th 2021
starting at 6:30 with program at 7:00 PM

To join the ZOOM Meeting and see the presentation
please become a member today!

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2021

Occupying the American Continent through SW WA.--
the Chehalis River Hypothesis (CRH),
Or Hey, Where did those First Migrants Go?
Animated Video By Victor J. Kucera,
Co-Author, CRH, Arizona

Co-author of the Chehalis River Hypothesis (CRH), Vic Kucera, Author, Arizona, has produced a video discussing our American-Continent-entry hypothesis with animation and narrative. Though done a few years back, it remains up-to-date, and features the work at Paisley Cave, Oregon and aspects of the Chehalis River drainage floods discussed in our recent PNWAS ZOOM programs. Vic particularly explores the Who, When, and particularly HOW people initially moved into the whole American Continent through the ancient Chehalis River Drainage.

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2021

Archaeology and Science at the Paisley Caves, Oregon: Evidence of People in our region 14-15,000 years ago

10/24/2020

Dr. Dennis L. Jenkins, Senior Research Associate II
Director, Northern Great Basin Archaeological Field School,
Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon

PNWAS ZOOM Meeting
Thursday, November 12th,
starting at 6:30 with program at 7 pm

Archaeology and Science at the
Paisley Caves, Oregon:
Evidence of People in our region
14-15,000 years ago
By Dr. Dennis L. Jenkins,
University of Oregon

Listen and ask Dr. Jenkins about his illustrated ZOOM presentation providing evidence for the association of humans and Pleistocene animals more than 14,000 years ago and how this supports our Chehalis River Hypothesis. Dating of artifacts, camel and horse bones, and dried human feces containing Native American DNA, bile acids, sterols, hair, and protein residues between 12,900 and 14,500 years ago indicates that people lived in the SE Oregon caves and consumed mammoth, camel, horse, mountain sheep, deer, pronghorn antelope, rabbit, small mammals, fish, birds, and insects. This colorful slide show takes the audience through the scientific processes involved in proving the case for pre-Clovis (>13,500 years) human occupations at the world-famous Paisley Caves in south-central Oregon.

Dr. Dennis Jenkins Bio

If a current member (2020 and now 2021), you will get an invitation to join the ZOOM meeting through an e-mail shortly before the talk (e-mail dcroes444@gmail.com to see if you are current for 2020 and/or 2021, thanks).

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2021

The Late-glacial Tanwax Flood and Debris Flow—An Ice-Age Flood from the Cascade Range into the Puget Lowland and Likely Source of Sediments for the Mima Mounds

9/16/2020

Hope all going ok in these trying times.

We are changing our PNWAS format and will have presentations on ZOOM in the future. Please be sure your membership is current for 2020 so you get to continue to enjoy these talks from home (see attached membership form and you can pay on PayPal). We are continuing with our theme on the Chehalis River Hypothesis (CRH), proposing the first entrance into the entire American Continent was down the coast until eventually reaching our area and the ice free Chehalis River drainage (I am attaching member Vic Kucera and my publication on this CRH so you can refresh this proposed hypothesis for the talk). Together we can explore testing this hypothesis with different specialists in our region. The foremost Geologist in our region is Professor Pat Pringle, who will present the following presentation the evening of Thursday, September 24 at 7pm. You'll need to provide your own coffee/tea/hot coco/cider (maybe wine/beer) and treats since we sadly will not be at the Mountaineers in Seattle.
If you are an updated member (2020) you will receive an invitation to join us via email in the near future (so signup and help us) and here is a ZOOM tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/hIkCmbvAHQQ?rel=0&autoplay=1&cc_load_policy=1

Here is our first CRH Program (see attachment with color map and description below):

2017 CROES & KUCERA-CHEHALIS RIVER

Thursday, September 24th, at 7 pm, starting PNWAS Meetings on ZOOM

The Late-glacial Tanwax Flood and Debris Flow—An Ice-Age Flood from the Cascade Range into the Puget Lowland and Likely Source of Sediments for the Mima Mounds

By Pat Pringle, Research Geologist,
Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, Centralia College

The Puget Lobe of the Vashon Glacier blocked the Carbon River at the time of the last glacial maximum about 17,000 years ago. A large lake filled the Carbon River and adjoining areas of the ice margin. Sometime later the lake level dropped by more than 50 meters as indicated by the levels of existing kame terraces, releasing a large flood of water that carved into sediments of the Puget Lowland creating and deepening the Tanwax, Ohop, and other valleys. The flood also triggered a number of landslides that transformed into debris flows whose equivalent deposits can be traced more than 100 km flow distance to the west. Equivalent deposits (rich in andesite) can be found in Rocky, Violet, Mima, and Ford Prairies, Tenino, and the Skookumchuck and Chehalis River valleys.

The flood merged with outwash from the Puget Lobe in the Black River Valley and continued downstream in the Chehalis River. Both the flood and discharge from the Puget Lobe into the Chehalis River modified the landscape of the southernmost Puget Lowland and Chehalis River. Although the floods of water would have posed a temporary obstacle to movement of people, the prairie landscapes left behind proved favorable for human use and travel.
[this is based on work Barry Goldstein of University of Puget Sound (UPS) and I have done over the past 20 years]

TANWAX FLOODS IN CHEHALIS RIVER

Future programs will present the result of TESC student, Christina (Jellyfish) Gomez, who got a student grant to visit and record mammoth/mastodon and other megafauna remains at regional museums. Her illustrated presentation will show examples of these megafauna remains in our region. We also have a PNWAS grant through the Squaxin Island Charitable Fund (1%) to C14 date the mammoth/mastodon bones of interest she finds (hopefully with cut marks!).

So we will send an update, inviting members to begin joining us on ZOOM to brainstorm these ideas and test our hypotheses through our Society. Thanks and see you soon [zoom], best to all, Dale

PS if you are not sure if you are up-to-date on membership, let me know, and thanks for help at this time, Dale

PNWAS MEMBERSHIP FORM 2020

Where were all the Villages? Applying Geophysical Prospection to Understand Long-term Household and Community Dynamics in the Salish Sea

2/10/2020

Taking the samples from a long house depression on Galiano Island, Gulf Islands, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Where were all the Villages? Applying Geophysical Prospection to Understand Long-term Household and Community Dynamics in the Salish Sea
By
Dr. Colin Grier, Department of Anthropology,
W.S.U. Vancouver

Despite decades of archaeological survey, CRM work, and targeted excavation inside houses, the sample of documented precontact Salishan house and village plans — and even simply village locations — remains surprisingly limited. As a result, many questions about household and village dynamics over the short and long term remain difficult to address. I outline how geophysics and archaeological ground-truthing can be productively applied to this problem, illustrated primarily by recent and ongoing research in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia. I also lay out some long-standing and emerging hypotheses concerning household and village organization, and how addressing these can serve the goal of restorative justice and reconciliation for Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

As highly perishable wooden constructions, plankhouses appear in the archaeological record of the Northwest Coast primarily through their footprint – as house terraces, platforms and depressions. Few of these house features have been preserved given modern coastal development, but the Dionisio Point site (DgRv-003) on Galiano Island provides an important example of the extent of terraforming that occurred to produce large houses and villages.

At Dionisio Point, at least ﬁve house features were established around 1500 years ago on three terraces that were cut into a sloping hillside. These three terraces measure approximately 60 x 20 m. The middle terrace contained a plankhouse estimated at 40 x 10 m in size, and the upper and lower terraces contain two houses each that measured approximately 20 x 10 m. The houses were laid out in a systematic and regular fashion suggesting an overall plan to the village, and radiocarbon dates indicate contemporaneity of the ﬁve known houses. Houses on the terraces are surrounded by 1 to 3 m high earthen ridges, adding to the engineered design of the village location. Terraforming at Dionisio Point illustrates an impressive and substantial eﬀort to clear trees, excavate terraces, move earth and construct massive plankhouses.

DATE: Friday, February 21st, 2020

TIME: 7 pm to 9 pm

PLACE: Mountaineers Seattle Program Center, 7700 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 in the Cascade Room

COST: FREE to members, $10.00 to non-members, $5.00 for Students (please renew membership for 2019 and these programs at http://www.pnwas.org and now through PayPal)
Refreshments provided (Please bring cookies/snacks to share with the beverages).

Basketry from the Ozette Village Archaeological Site: A book signing and cake on the just released edition!

11/11/2019

A book signing and cake on the just released edition of:
Basketry from the Ozette Village Archaeological Site
By
Dr. Dale R. Croes, W.S.U. and PNWAS Director

From the Editor, Dr. Darby Stapp:

When Dale Croes asked us to consider publishing Basketry from the Ozette Village Archaeological Site: A Technological, Functional, and Comparative Study, the decision was easy. Written 50 years ago to fulfill the dissertation requirement for Dale’s Ph.D. at Washington State University, it was scheduled to be published as Volume IV of the Ozette Archaeological Project Research Reports. But, for various reasons it never did appear, and the basketry information from this important site remained largely inaccessible.

Remarkably, however, for the past 50 years, Dale has continued researching Northwest basketry, building on the incredible dataset that launched his career by excavating and analyzing basketry from wet sites across the Pacific Northwest. The vision he described to us was a document that would keep the integrity of the original dissertation intact, but supplemented with new information—in the form of footnotes—from more than a dozen major wet site excavations conducted in British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. A little awkward perhaps (is there another document in existence with 268 footnotes, 232 figures, 43 tables, and 25 maps?), but in terms of anthropological value, a treasure.

How fortunate are the tribal and archaeological communities to have a major synthesis of Northwest basketry written by one of the few people on earth who could produce such a synthesis. When it comes to anthropological value, it doesn’t get much better than that, so our reply to Dale was an emphatic, “Yes, we would be honored to publish Volume IV of the Ozette Archaeological Project Research Reports.”

DATE: Friday, December 20th, 2019

TIME: 7 pm to 9 pm

PLACE: Mountaineers Seattle Program Center, 7700 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 in the Cascade Room

COST: FREE to members, $10.00 to non-members, $5.00 for Students (please renew membership for 2019 and these programs at http://www.pnwas.org and now through PayPal)
Refreshments provided (Please bring cookies/snacks to share with the beverages).

Aypax-kan-ishchit—The Yakama-Cowlitz Trail: History, Archaeology, and an Approach to Evaluation

10/4/2019

Aypax-kan-ishchit—The Yakama-Cowlitz Trail:
History, Archaeology, and an Approach to Evaluation

By Rick McClure,
Retired U.S. Forest Service Archaeologist

Cross-mountain footpaths were primary avenues for exchange and social interaction between Indigenous people east and west of the Cascade Mountains in pre-contact and historic times. The Aypax-kan-ishchit, or “Yakama Trail,” ranked among the principal routes in the southern Washington Cascades, connecting Taytnapam settlements in the Cowlitz River watershed with Yakama settlements to the east.

Ray Paolella, of the William O. Douglas Trail Foundation, on a section of abandoned trail near Packwood, Wa. in the upper Cowlitz River watershed.

A group of private, non-profit, tribal, and federal partners initiated efforts in 2018 to begin comprehensive mapping and documentation of the Yakama Trail, while developing a cultural/historical context for National Register evaluation and a strategy for assessing the integrity of the resource. This presentation summarizes research completed to date and addresses potential challenges for nomination and listing.
Approximately 140 miles in length, the trail originally extended from Cowlitz Prairie on the west, near present-day Toledo, Washington, to the mouth of the Naches River, near present-day Yakima, Washington, and crossed the Cascades at Cowlitz Pass.

DATE: Friday, October 18th, 2019

TIME: 7 pm to 9 pm

PLACE: Mountaineers Seattle Program Center, 7700 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 in the Cascade Room

COST: FREE to members, $10.00 to non-members, $5.00 for Students (please renew membership for 2019 and these programs at http://www.pnwas.org and now through PayPal)
Refreshments provided (Please bring cookies/snacks to share with the beverages).

Holocene Geochronology and Archaeology at Cascade Pass, Northern Cascade Range, WA

4/21/2019

Holocene Geochronology and Archaeology at Cascade Pass, Northern Cascade Range, WA

By Robert R. Mierendorf, National Park Service
and Franklin F. Foit, Jr., WSU

Indigenous uses of Cascade Pass began by about 9,600 years ago and continues through the present. Cascade Pass is one of many on the northern Cascade Range divide that separates east-flowing from west-flowing rivers (to the Columbia River and Salish Sea, respectively). In the Lushootseed language of Skagit people, Cascade Pass is ᶎʔlu’s which translates as “over the mountain”. Cascade Pass’ traditional importance is further recorded in ethnographic and historic accounts of Salish elders from villages on both sides of the range (Northwest Coast and Plateau culture areas). It became one of the first trans-Cascade routes explored in the contact period and later the area attracted prospectors, photographers, road planners, hikers and campers, and climbers.

In response to overuse from the burgeoning popularity of camping in the Pass meadows, the eroded soils of the early 1970s have been largely returned to native meadow plants. Beginning in 2005, Park archaeologists conducted limited excavations to gather baseline data and determine the significance of the archaeological remains recorded in 1977 as archaeological site 45CH221.

This presentation describes the technical results of the excavations and more generally, the way these contribute to understanding how the site formed (site formation processes) and its state of preservation (taphonomy), how it was used for over nine millennia, and what this new data means in light of current understandings of Pacific Northwest peoples’ traditional occupation of alpine areas in the larger region, and to broader research and conservation issues.

DATE: Friday, May 17th, 2019

TIME: 7 pm to 9 pm

PLACE: Mountaineers Seattle Program Center, 7700 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 in the Cascade Room

COST: FREE to members, $10.00 to non-members, $5.00 for Students (please renew membership for 2019 and these programs at http://www.pnwas.org and now through PayPal)
Refreshments provided (Please bring cookies/snacks to share with the beverages).

Lost Asian Treasure: The Manila Galleon Wrecks of North America

2/6/2019

Scott Williams holds a piece of beeswax that washed up on the Oregon Coast from the Beeswax Shipwreck.

Lost Asian Treasure: The Manila Galleon Wrecks of North America

By Scott S. Williams, Cultural Resources Program Manager, WSDOT

For 250 years, Spanish galleons plied the north Pacific taking the luxury goods of Asia to the European markets of New Spain in Mexico and South America. It was the longest and most arduous ocean trade route in the world, and each year only one or two ships made the voyage.

Many of these galleons were wrecked in the storms and on the reefs of the western Pacific in the treacherous waters around the Philippines, the Marianas, and Japan, but three came to rest on the west coast of North America. Scott Williams will discuss the history of the trade and the 12-year effort to locate the remains of one of these galleons, known as the Beeswax Wreck, in Oregon.

Based on extensive archaeological, geological, and archival investigations, the wreck has been identified as the Santo Cristo de Burgos, which left Manila in 1693. At least some of her crew survived and lived with the Nehalem Indians on the Oregon coast for a time, becoming the first Europeans that Northwest Coast peoples interacted with.

RECENT ARTICLES ABOUT THE BEESWAX WRECK:
HAKAI MAGAZINE: Coastal Job: Maritime Archaeologist
CROSSCUT: 326-year-old beeswax is washing up on Oregon beaches

DATE: Friday, March 1st, 2019

TIME: 7 pm to 9 pm

PLACE: Mountaineers Seattle Program Center, 7700 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115 in the Cascade Room

COST: FREE to members, $10.00 to non-members, $5.00 for Students (please renew membership for 2019 and these programs at http://www.pnwas.org and now through PayPal)
Refreshments provided (Please bring cookies/snacks to share with the beverages).