Kul Kah Han Native Plant Garden: The Complex History of Chemakum & S'Klallam Tribal Presence on the Olympic Peninsula (original) (raw)
Related papers
Makahs, Quileutes, and the Precontact History of the Northwestern Olympic Peninsula, Washington
Journal of Northwest Anthropology, 2019
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.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
Geoarchaeological analysis at Čḯx w icən, an ancestral Klallam village near Port Angeles in northwestern Washington State, U.S.A., highlights the resilience of coastal foragers and their connection to place. Ancestral Klallam peoples occupied ever-changing beach and spit landforms growing within the shelter of Ediz Hook on the Strait of Juan de Fuca (SJDF) for 2700 years. Geoarchaeological methods were employed to define seven chronostratigraphic zones that chronologically structure the cultural deposits and allow them to be correlated to a sequence of beach development and to markers for tsunami that overtopped the site. Initial habitation prior to 1750 BP utilized a narrow beach against the bluff, then expanded with the prograding beach ridges, which grew north to create a lagoon. Stabilization of beach ridges after 1300 and 1000 BP was followed in each case by construction of a plankhouse, one of which was occupied for 800 years, and the other for 500 years. Inundation of the site, as indicated by erosional channels, backwash deposits, and structural collapse, occurred five times, and can be correlated with documented Cascadia Subduction Zone plate boundary megathrust earthquake events. The resilience of the households, who re-occupied the houses soon after the events, is striking, particularly the rebuilding of one house after it collapsed around 600 BP.
Journal of Archaeological Science , 2022
Indigenous peoples' legacies of plant cultivation and management can have profound effects on contemporary forest structure and species composition long after cultivation has ceased. Despite rich ethnographic accounts of practices like orcharding and fruit tree management in the Pacific Northwest, archaeological and ecological research documenting these practises have been lacking. To investigate ancient and historical land-use and cultivation in Nuchatlaht (Nuu-chah-nulth) territory, we undertook a multidisciplinary study combining archaeological surveys on Nootka Island and ecological analyses of seven anomalous plant communities found adjacent to former village sites. Fifty-seven archaeological sites were inventoried, and 16 previously recorded sites were updated, including six notable village sites. Intensive botanical surveys were subject to indicator species analysis, NMDS, and ANOSIM analysis, which suggest that three putative orchard sites were highly enriched for culturally important and edible fruit and root plants, such as Pacific crabapple (Malus fusca), saskatoon berry (Amelanchier alnifolia), salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis), and wild rice root (Fritillaria camschatcensis), and are highly distinctive compared to nearby sites and regional floristic patterns. Four shell midden sites were characterized by plant communities distinct from both orchard sites and control sites. Our archaeological and ecological analyses, alongside ethnohistorical data, strongly suggest a pattern of ancient and/or historical cultural landscape modification by Nuchatlaht peoples to produce food-bearing plant communities in their territories. This compliments findings in other literature, and what Indigenous peoples have long told researchers, that plant resources were routinely encouraged and harvested across their inhabited landscapes.
A Search for Hawaiian Cultural Persistence at the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Vancouver
2016
Hawaiian laborers were present over the entire course of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s tenure at Fort Vancouver, from 1824 to 1860, a period that began just 46 years after Captain James Cook first opened sustained non-Polynesian contact with the islands. Historical evidence has suggested that Hawaiians hired by the Hudson’s Bay Company to work at Fort Vancouver would not have had their culture entirely supplanted by Europeans or others. This thesis uses theories of acculturation/transculturation, colonialism, and domestic planning and architecture to look for evidence of Hawaiian cultural persistence in novel aspects of life at Fort Vancouver. Specifically, I use the results of a recent pollen study to argue that Hawaiians may have propagated and used Hibiscus tiliaceus for medicines, and Hawaiian species of Acacia for tools or furniture. Hawaiians may also have brought, or taken shipments of, the oyster Pinctada margaritifera for use in a craft fishhook industry. Finally, I use archaeological reports spanning the last 50 years of excavations in the Kanaka Village to discuss the case of Operation 14 and two other Village houses built in architectural styles which are uncommon for the region and bear some similarities to traditional Hawaiian architecture. I also describe excavations that took place in the summer of 2015 at the suspected home of a Hawaiian cooper, and discuss possible reasons for why convincing archaeological evidence of Hawaiian culture at Fort Vancouver has been elusive thus far.
"Their Markers as they Go": Modified Trees as Waypoints in the Dena'ina Cultural Landscape, Alaska
Human Ecology, 2020
The Inland Dena'ina, an Athabaskan people of south-central Alaska, produce and value Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) in myriad ways. Ethnographic interviews and field visits conducted with Inland Dena'ina residents of the village of Nondalton, Alaska, reveal the centrality of CMTs in the creation and valuation of an Indigenous cultural landscape. CMTs serve as waypoints along trails, as Dena'ina people travel across vast distances to hunt wide-ranging caribou herds and fish salmon ascending rivers from Bristol Bay. CMTs also provide bark and sap used in Dena'ina material culture and medicines, leaving signature marks upon the spruce, birch, and other trees found in the sprawling taiga forest of the region. Dena'ina travelers value these markers as gifts from their elders and ancestors, helping modern-day people to orient themselves geographically, culturally, and spiritually. Today, with industrial-scale resource extraction proposed for Dena'ina traditional lands, including extensive open-pit mines, there is new urgency in demonstrating the geographical presence and extent of potentially affected Dena'ina people. CMTs have been overlooked in existing literatures in spite of their ubiquity and their cultural importance. Our research draws from the first-hand accounts of Dena'ina elders and survey across the landscapes of the Lake Clark core of the Dena'ina homeland.
The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2019
Research at Shin-yvslh-sri (CADNO-14), a pre-contact Tolowa village and shell midden site on the north coast of California, involves an innovative collaborative historical ecology approach-an explicitly multidisciplinary cooperative effort between Tribal communities, a Federal agency, cultural resource management practitioners, and academic researchers. Multiple lines of evidence-including ethno-historic, oral history, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) data, documentation of past archaeological research, analysis of varied scales of (micro and macro) archaeological data from both recent fieldwork and legacy collections-give a more complete picture of the historical ecology of the northern California coast. Results indicate that plank house village life emerged at Shin-yvslh-sri$ approximately 1,000 years ago, and that people pursued a wide array of marine and terrestrial taxa throughout its occupation. Archaeological data provide new evidence, as well as support for oral histories indicating the critical importance of mass captured smelt, as well as salmon, shellfish, and marine mammals. In addition to providing important data on coastal human-environmental systems, the project provides a case study