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Well my name is Greg Burtchard. I'm the archaeologist here at Mount Rainier National Park.
I also coordinate Indian relations with the park. We're standing here at
Ohanapecosh Campground, at the southeast corner of Mount Rainier National Park, which we've got
an archaeological site that I think is of some importance to the park.
So we've got about 110 archaeological properties documented all around the mountain, dating to
as early as 9,000 years ago. So we've got - this is a site map
a working site map of Ohanapecosh Campground, southeast corner
of Mount Rainier National Park. In 2014, we were
fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do archaeological testing
in advance of the new utility line route that was
replacing an older one that was about 40 or 50 years old, that's aging.
In advance of that route, we were excavated Constant Volume Samples --
The system we call Constant Volume Sampling, which essentially uses a special
in-curved handled post hole digger, that allows us to dig
30 centimeter diameter holes at a consistent diameter, perfectly nice
cylinders down to about a meter and a half.
-- along that route, every where you see a red dot on this map.
Along the road line, around the road-
- campground road loops and into the campground facilities, restroom areas, power boxes,
things like that. This by the way is the Ohanapecosh River and these are
the various campground loops in the campground.
In the process of doing that we located our first four
low elevation archaeological sites, pre-contact archaeological sites, ever recorded at
Mount Rainier. So finding four sites, intact, in situ, at a low
elevation place where none had ever been documented before, nor was there any indication
of a presence here on the surface at that time was a big deal.
And so working off of that success from last year, the park has authorized
us to sample the landscape now more broadly to see if the pattern
that we observed in the utility lines is general to the landscape as a whole.
So what we did in that process was set up a grid system. Every where there is a cross was
an excavation point for where we did constant volume sampling and in the process of doing
that, isolated a series of about 20 more positive
units that had chip stone tool remains at varying depths.
One reason that this works is that tool stone-
stone tools for piercing and cutting and scraping work well. It makes a fine sharp edge.
The problem is they break a lot. It's very fragile, it's brittle. So for us
that's handy, because in the process of repairing and refurbishing
these tools, which has to be done daily, people in the past generate a rain
or a deposit of this chip stone tool remains where they've been
repaired and even though the tools themselves are saved and taken away,
they still leave behind enough of the repair material that we can identify
where people sat in the past and did these things.
So what we do then in these samples is - sampling system- is to
separate the intact sediment, the in situ sediments, from tool stone
materials. These are cherts and obsidians, things like that.
[Eric Gleason] So here at this area of the site, what we
initially did is we opened up that little constant volume sample
in the corner and when that turned out to be positive
after doing several others in the area, we decided to expand on that area.
So first we excavated a 1-meter by 1-meter square unit
which Cory is standing in at this time
and we had pretty good results from that. The recovery of pretty much
matched what we had found in the constant volume sample and we also
recovered one tool from there. We also noticed
as we excavated that the stratigraphic layers, the layers
of different ash falls that have built over time to form this
campground, were fairly intact, had not been disturbed too much
by the forest that has grown up here over the last thousands of years and
so that made us really want to expand on that unit
because the less disturbance we have, the better idea we have of
exactly where in that profile of
different ash layers that artifacts are coming from and we have a better
chance of finding them kind of where they were dropped at that time.
[Corrine Michel] So what I'm doing now is I'm just skimming a real thin amount
of dirt off the test unit at a time and we
skim just really small amounts so that hopefully we can find artifacts in place and then
that gives us more information as to the time frame that they came from.
After I skim the dirt off we
bucket it and go sift the dirt in the screening area over there.
and then anything
that's found in the screen is bagged for this particular level that we're in.
[Greg Burtchard] And we're testing a number of the locations
across the Ohanapecosh area in which we had positive results. So this is another
test unit. [shifting sounds]
[shifting sounds]
[dirt/rocks scraping]
[Jacqueline Cheung] These are flakes we found today and then
sometimes we collect rocks that kind of look
like they might be flakes and we can look at those more closely later.
So we're getting maybe about
like 12 to 20 flakes per level.
[Eric Gleason] What happened was right above that Mount Mazama ash we found
a diagnostic artifact, a temporally diagnostic artifact,
which was pretty exciting. So this is
what would have been the base of a spear or dart-sized point and
a similar one was found at an archaeological site not far from here
and this is about where it would fit on that complete point.
So it's just the base, the hefting element, of the point.
This style of point is generally associated with earlier occupations
in this area and finding this point style
helps us kind of more firmly establish
that this is an early site. All of these points are from a
fairly early site that was excavated nearby
probably with an age range somewhere
between 7,300 and 7,900 years old.
[Greg Burtchard] So right now our working interpretation is that folks
moved seasonally up into high elevation landscapes along various routes into
Mount Rainier, with this being one of them. Making short term stops along the river
on their way up to higher elevation ground where
folks were seasonally gathering resources of use to them.
Huckleberries, marmots, mountain beaver, glacier lily,
elk, mountain goats- mountain goats perhaps foremost of all.
Things that aren't available at low elevations landscapes and bringing them back.
The modern representatives of people who have been in this area for a very long period
of time are still here. They have different names. They have names that
were applied by treaties, but they include such groups around Mount Rainier as
the Nisqually Indian Tribe, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe,
the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Cowlitz Indian Tribe,
Squaxin Island Indian Tribe, and others, that reside in this vicinity
that were signatories to various treaties, and some didin't sign treaties,
but those folks are still here. And their ancestors were here before them and
I hope this helps make people aware that Native American people
aren't just an artifact of the
last two hundred years or of their treaties. That they have a past that goes on for
a very long period of time and they used landscapes like Mount Rainier
through much of that period of time, for at least 9,000 years.
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