Video
2015 Ohanapecosh Archaeology Project
Transcript
Transcripts of 2015 Ohanapecosh Archaeology Project
[Greg Burtchard] 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.
[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.
Description
Mount Rainier is a well known symbol in the Washington landscape. But how far back does people's relationship with Mount Rainier go? An archaeology project in 2015 at Ohanapecosh campground found evidence that native people have been traveling to and living around Mount Rainier for thousands of years.
Duration
8 minutes, 32 seconds
Credit
NPS
Date Created
09/30/2016
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