South American Archaeology: The Archaic Period in the Northwest

The Archaic Period in the Northwest

Northwest Coast 8,000-2,000 Years Ago
1. Ames and Maschner, Early and Middle Pacific Period (4,400 BC-AD 200) about 6.5-2 KYA
2. Regional trends
  1. Significant changes over earlier "Paleo-Indian" period
  2. Thought to be "in-place changes," not migration of new people
  3. Most post Ice Age sea level adjustments (isostatic rebound) complete
  4. Tectonic processes still on-going
3. Regional environmental trends
  1. Rain forest beginning to develop
  2. Increased estuary and delta resources
    1. Sea mammals
  3. Increase littoral resources
    1. Shellfish and shell middens
      1. Early middens small, area and thickness, discontinuous
      2. Tell us not only that people were eating lots of shellfish, but also that they were staying on one place long enough for midden to accumulate, and that during the early shell midden times occupation may have been intermittent, but they kept coming back to the same places
      3. More common on the B.C. coast at this time than on the Washington or Oregon coasts
        
        Probably because of coastal formation processes/timing
      4. Shell middens are very alkaline
        
        Good for preservation of bone and antler
        
        Poor for preservation of wood and other plants, except at wet sites
      5. Shellfish important, but probably not as important as sea mammals and fish, shellfish generate most waste
4. Technological changes
  1. Micro blade technology from northern NWC disappears
  2. Wide spread occurrence of ground and polished stone tools
  3. Chipped stone technologies continue
  4. But bone replaces stone as the primary raw material for hunting tools
  5. Explosion in numbers of types of tools, including barbed harpoons, projectile points, awls, large needles, mauls, celts and wedges (wood working tools)
5. +/1 4-3 KYA, first plank houses
  1. More permanent settlements
  2. Storage based economy
  3. Social stratification?
  4. Warfare?
  5. Emerging art styles
    1. Bent wood boxes
  6. New technological innovations
    1. Composite toggling harpoon
      1. Parts could be used as many different tools
        
        Ex. bone bipoints
        
        Harpoon part
        
        Fish hook barbs
        
        Herring and shell rakes
    2. Technological suggestion for increased use of salmon
      1. Net weights and wooden weirs
6. Most well known Washington Site Hoko River wet site (Hoko rockshelter site younger)
  1. On Crown Zellerbach forest lands
  2. 1967 foresters found site eroding from bank, contacted Daugherty, working at Ozette
  3. Daugherty did some test excavations
    1. Found
      1. Basketry
      2. Wood working tools
      3. Fishing equipment
  4. Most efforts still being expended at Ozette, but one of the Phd students, Dale Croes
    1. 1973 tested more at Hoko started writing grants
    2. 1977 money from, Washington SHPO, Crown Zellerbach M.J. Murdock Trust
    3. Excavated summers until 1989
    4. Wet/Dry site
    5. Special excavation and preservation conditions
  5. Wet part of site
    1. Well preserved textiles
      1. Baskets
      2. Mats
      3. Shredded bark clothing
      4. Hats
      5. Cordage
    2. Faunal materials
    3. Floral remains
    4. Bone and wooden artifacts
      1. Lots of fish hooks
        
        Bent wood and composite
      2. Wooden wedges
      3. Wooden points and shafts
      4. Wooden atlatls
      5. Wooden garment pins
      6. Wooden matting needles
    5. Stone artifacts
      1. Microlith knives
      2. Ground stone adzes
      3. Ground and chipped projectile points
    6. Faunal remains
      1. Offshore fish
        
        Flat fish 41% (of total assemblage)
        
        Rockfish 15%
        
        Cod 13%
      2. Off and near shore fish
      3. Birds 12%
      4. Mammals 1%
        
        Mostly sea mammals
        
        Land mammals .04%
    7. Plant remains
      1. Mostly environmental, not much dietary
      2. Did find coprolites
        
        Thimble berries
        
        Salmon berries
        
        Huckleberries
  6. Site interpretation
    1. Fishing camp
    2. Successive occupations
    3. Spring and summer
    4. Off shore hook and line fishing
    5. Probably caught, processed (filet and dry) and packed back to winter village
    6. Some evidence of differentiation in social organization, knob topped and non-knob toped hats
  7. Drying fish on Northwest Coast not an easy job
    1. Replicative experiments
      1. Smudge fires
      2. Drying racks
      3. Found they need constant attention to keep ravens away
      4. Stored in "smoke house" at night
        
        Temporary pole and mat structure
The Middle Period in the Interior
1. Principle cultural historical synthetic model Leonhardy and Rice 1970
  1. Still most widely used
  2. Probably inappropriately applied to too large a geographic area
  3. Worked primarily with data from Windust Cave, Marmes, and Granite Point
  4. First relative and absolute chronology representing long period of time for southern Plateau region
2. Their intent was to order archaeological manifestations in the lower Snake River Region of eastern Washington
  1. Territory adjoining the course of the Snake River between the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers and the confluence of the Snake and Columbia rivers
  2. Three different districts reflecting different physiographic areas and site cluster areas within river canyon
    1. Ice Harbor—Pasco to Windust
      1. Central lowlands physiographic area
      2. Wide canyon, less steeply sided
      3. Broad terraces
    2. Lower Monumental—Windust to Central Ferry
      1. Part central lowlands, part Palouse hills physiographic ara
      2. Moderately wide, moderately steep sided canyon
    3. Lower Granite—Central Ferry to Lewiston
      1. Palouse hills physiographic area
      2. Narrow canyon
      3. Steeply sided
      4. Steep narrow side drainages
  3. Six phases
    1. Windust 10-9KYA (discussed earlier under early period)
    2. Cascade 8-5KYA
      1. Two sub-phases
        
        Without large "Cold Springs" side-notched points (pre-Mazama)
        
        With large "Cold Springs" side-notched points (post-Mazama)
      2. May be an adaptive response to the Mazama ash fall; degraded aquatic habitat, increased emphasis on upland hunting-earlier similar forms found in southern Idaho/northern great basin where hunting more important than fishing
      3. Other wise similar artifacts
        
        Cascade points
        
        Well made lanceolate and triangular knives
        
        Tabular and keel end-scrapers common
        
        Atlatl weights occur, but rare
        
        Large utilized flakes common
        
        Cobble tools including large scraper-like implements
        
        Pounding stones, grinding stones, edge ground cobbles (hallmark)
        
        Suggest seed processing
        
        Prismatic blades
      4. Bone tools more common than before
        
        Atlatl spurs
        
        Splinter awls
        
        Split metapodial awls
        
        Needles of various sizes
        
        Fragments of large and small "shafts," function unclear
      5. Olivella shell beads
        
        A warm water marine shell, implications for trade
      6. Associated fauna
        
        Still elk, deer, pronghorn, rabbits, and beaver but also some bison, salmon and steelhead
        
        Salmonids may be being used for the first time
        
        Appears that, as with Windust deer and elk are being hunted in the canyon thickets, antelope in the uplands
      7. Flexed interments, cairns, grave goods
    3. Tucannon 5-2.5 KYA
      1. End of Cascade beginning of Tucannon not clearly defined
      2. Artifacts
        
        Two kinds of projectile points
        
        Short blade, shoulders of varying prominence, and a contracting stem
        
        notched low on the side or at the corner to produce an expanding stem
        
        Small side and end scrapers
        
        Numerous scraper-like cobble tools
        
        Utilized cobble spalls
        
        Pounding stones
        
        Net sinkers
        
        Hopper morter bases
        
        Pestles
        
        Well formed knives are virtually absent
        
        Fewer utilized flakes
      3. In general lithic tools not as well made as earlier (or later) phases
      4. Basalt used more that than chert
      5. Bone and antler tools include
        
        Splinter and split metapodial awls
        
        Antler wedges
        
        Bone shuttle (net making)
      6. Associated fauna
        
        Still deer, elk, pronghorn, and rabbits, but also Mountian Sheep
        
        Fish still important
        
        Musselshells appear to be more significant food resource than earlier or later
      7. The Tucannon Phase is the primary phase of the Middle Period
      8. Origins of Tucannon subject to discussion
        
        Leonhardy and Rice say no hints of precursors in the Cascade Phase and so speculated that Tucannon might represent a new group of people moving into the area
        
        Other researchers emphasize changes, either in-place evolution or in-migration as a result of the unsuitability of the Cascade phase life ways to environmental changes during the period
        
        End of Cascade times wetter and cooler conditions than earlier
        
        Greatest period of post-glacial\post Mazama erosion
        
        Reactivation of small and large side streams (that had lots of Mazama ash in their formerly dry beds)
        
        Increased erosion of ash rich deposits changed character of river water (dirtier)
        
        Period of degradation of aquatic habitats that began with fall of ash continued with somewhat later increased erosion of ash rich sediment
        
        Seems inconsistent with highest use of Musselshell, but not necessarily so,
        
        Micro-habitats might have been good for shell while general river habitat bad for fish
        
        May have again looked to greater hunting relative to fishing or some have suggested that the emphasis on fishing of the Cascade Phase was replaced with an emphasis on plant resources
        
        Hopper mortar bases and pestles/root crops
        
        Fire cracked rock, roasting ovens
      9. Tucannon sites relatively rare in Leonhardy and Rice's study area
        
        Post 1970 work has found more Tucannon age sites in Leonhardy and Rice's study area as well as adjacent areas upstream and down
        
        But still fewer than other phases
        
        Moved to uplands?
        
        Congregated into fewer sites at better locations?
        
        Most significantly some of these later sites had evidence for house pits
        
        One or two at a time, not the big villages of later times
        
        Incipient semi-sedentism may be resulted from an upland focus, difficult to live/hunt there year round so start processing food for winter storage?
    4. Harder Phase 2.5-A.D. 1300
    5. Piquinin A.D. 1300-A.D. 1700
    6. Numipu A.D. 1700-A.D. 1900
      1. Late Period and Historic Phases to be discussed later.