Environment, Prehistory & Archaeology of Mount Rainier National Park, Washington
Greg C. Burtchard

Chapter 2:
ENVIRONMENT AND LAND-USE ON MOUNT RAINIER & IN THE SOUTHERN WASHINGTON CASCADES
(continued)

ENVIRONMENT, HUMAN USE AND MOUNT RAINIER'S ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD

The intent of this chapter has been to draw attention not so much to Mount Rainier's environmental characteristics per se, but rather to emphasize their critical role in 1) conditioning the manner in which Park landscapes were used during the prehistoric past; and 2) transforming, obscuring, or obliterating the archaeological record of that use. The former issue largely concerns why, when, where and to a certain extent how the Park was used, and what effect such use can be expected to have had on the archeological record. The latter issue affects our ability to understand those land-use patterns through the physical remains left behind.

The second issue–post-depositional impacts to the archaeological record–is the more straightforward of the two. At Mount Rainier, the physical character of prehistoric remains have been altered or obscured most significantly through both destructive and depositional volcanic events and, perhaps, from major lahars. Lesser, more spatially localized disturbances result from such sediment disturbing events as tree fall, rodent burrowing, landslides and frost heaving. The primary concern here has been directed toward major impacts to the archaeological record resulting from Holocene volcanism–particularly Mount Rainier's summit collapse circa 4,700 years ago, and the summit rebuilding Mount Rainier series C eruptions of circa 2,400 years ago. The former event would have destroyed much of the early archeological record in the Park's northeast quadrant. The rebuilding eruptions served to hide what remained of the early to mid-Holocene record across much of the same quadrant as shown in Figure 2.3.

Important as physical alteration of the landscape may be to transforming the archaeological record, our primary interest here lies with the first of the two issues–the relationship between environmental patterns and prehistoric use of Mount Rainier. Accordingly, various sections of the chapter have sought to describe environmental parameters, and to draw attention to the causal relationship between geology, ecology and patterned human use of the mountain and its surrounding terrain. Below, issues developed in the text are summarized in terms of constraints Mount Rainier's environment posed to prehistoric human use.

Implicit to the discussion has been the notion that seasonal availability of economically important resources constitutes the primary reason that prehistoric humans used Mount Rainier. [13] I have argued that, because the most useful of these resources (e.g., goats, elk, deer, marmots, bears, game birds and huckleberries) are not evenly or randomly distributed, successful populations were those that fit their hunting and gathering strategies to the distribution patterns of the resources sought. In essence, this perspective views humans as intelligent predators focusing on a finite suite plant and animal species. If we hope to understand systematic human predation patterns then it is necessary for us to understand the behavior and patterned distribution of its most important prey. Once such links are established, corresponding patterns in the archaeological record can be predicted. Validity of the predictions become a test for the model and its economic premise.

Operating from these assumptions, and provided we can reasonably reconstruct environmental and resource history of a place, it is possible to derive basic expectations as to how people are likely to have organized their behavior in regard to that place. We have taken some time to establish the environmental resource history of Mount Rainier in order to build expectations that can be taken to the archaeological record for evaluation and rejection or refinement. Several basic sets of environmentally derived land-use and archaeological expectations close the chapter following the why, when, where and how metaphors introduced above.

Why Did Hunter-Gatherers Use Mount Rainier?

Perhaps the most basic question regarding prehistoric use of Mount Rainier is why a seemingly remote, difficult-to-access place with severe winters would have been used by prehistoric people all. It was not long ago that high montane environments were assumed by many to be poorly suited to human use during prehistoric times; at least in other than the most cursory manner or as barriers to be crossed on the way to somewhere else. Ethnographic evidence to the contrary (Smith 1964), presumed unimportance of high elevation landscapes was implicit in the river valley emphasis of the Park's first formal archaeological survey (Daugherty 1963) and lingered into the mid-1970s as witnessed by statements alluding to the Park's limited potential for archaeological remains (Bohannon 1974, 1975).

To understand why mountains were important to prehistoric hunter-gatherers, we must recognize that such places were not particularly remote to early Holocene foragers whose mobility options were not restricted by ties to lowland villages. Most archaeologists now accept basic tenets of Binford's (1980) forager/collector model as modified and elaborated in the Pacific Northwest. [14] Working from that perspective, the annual round of early Holocene, small foraging groups would have been determined largely by the seasonal availability and productivity of locally obtainable subsistence and maintenance resources. Population density and competition for available food was low. The relatively few foraging groups in the region were free to move to new hunting and gathering places in a reasonably unencumbered fashion in accordance with changes in the availability of the most important resources. Storage needs were minimal and residential moves and could be made by the entire social unit.

For early Holocene foragers, subalpine and alpine habitats were used simply because they were among the best available places to acquire useful plants and animals during the summer and early autumn. Mountains remained useful so long as resource competition was low, and people were mobile enough to move into them during the productive summer season and move away to new locations when winter returned.

During the mid to late Holocene, the economic draw of montane habitats is less clear. Assuming increasing regional population density and elevated resource competition, unfettered use of upland habitats by small, autonomous groups would at some point have had to become unreliable. With or without environmental changes, a time had to come when there simply were too many people competing for too few resources in too little space. Such conditions provide economic stimulus for a shift to more intensive use of lowland resources–especially salmon; relying on mass harvest and storage (rather than group relocation) to bridge seasonal short-falls. Group sizes become larger and movement restricted by labor and storage requirements of the new economy. In essence, mobile foragers become semisedentary collectors with late summer harvest responsibilities focused on lowland rivers rather than subalpine meadows.

Schalk (1988) presents the clearest arguments for decreased mid to late Holocene use of upland environments in his study on the Evolution and Diversification of Native Land Use Systems on the Olympic Peninsula. As suggested above, he argues that salmon acquisition, processing and storage conflicts with summer use of the mountains, decreasing the resource value of the uplands and increasing logistical difficulty in their exploitation. Rather, it made better sense to allow elk and deer to fatten safely in subalpine summer habitats, to be hunted in the winter after they migrated back to lower elevation grazing areas.

The strength of these arguments not withstanding, presence of archaeological materials atop Mount Rainier-C tephra suggests that use of Mount Rainier's subalpine habitats continued into the late Holocene. [15] Three logical possibilities accommodate these data: 1) lowland-based communities continued to dispatch groups to the mountains to collect high-value commodities despite logistic difficulty and high labor costs relative to return; 2) the mid-Holocene shift to collector economies was not perfect, leaving marginal forager groups free to continue summer use of montane habitats despite reduced reliability; and/or 3) collector systems extended territorial boundaries into upland habitats and dispatched groups for limited collection tasks while guarding against summer poachers. In all cases, some use of the upland habitats continues, but in a manner consistent with increasingly complex logistic and political mechanisms required to fit elevated population density to a finite resource base.

In sum, there is ample resource-based reason to expect use of Mount Rainier to have begun early in the prehistoric period and to have continued, perhaps in a per capita reduced and redirected fashion, throughout the Holocene. The extant archaeological record amply demonstrates prehistoric use of Mount Rainier and the Cascades generally. If the arguments presented here have utility, we can expect continued archaeological research to demonstrate an extended temporal period for such use, and if the data are adequate, changing land-use strategies in the middle Holocene.

When Did Hunter-Gatherers Use the Mountain?

Temporal issues regrding use of Mount Rainier include seasonality, onset of earliest human activity and potential variation in use intensity through time. The first two of these issues are imbedded in the discussion above. Clearly, seasonal use of subalpine and higher landscapes on Mount Rainier is constrained primarily to summer and early autumn by severe winter weather and heavy snow cover. Generally, snowpack has melted and brows have greened sufficiently to support upward ungulate movement in June. The warmest, most predictable weather occurs in August and early September. Subalpine habitats can remain open into October. Accordingly, we would expect human use to have been biased toward these seasons during the prehistoric past much as it is in the present.

Human use of Mount Rainier and the Cascades probably began in the early Holocene coincident with retreat of Fraser glacial ice, dispersal of adequate exploitable plant and animal habitat, and presence of mobile human hunter-gatherers in the vicinity. Available paleoenvironmental data suggest that post-glacial open forest and tundra habitat was established in the Puget Lowlands and Columbia Plateau east of the Cascades as early as 13,500 years ago. With final wasting of the Sumas stade, similar habitat should have been established on Mount Rainier in sufficient area to support ungulate populations about 8,500 years ago. Human presence has also been established in the greater Pacific Northwest by this time. Accordingly, it is possible that earliest human use of the Park dates to approximately this period. The probability for significant human use of Mount Rainier rises sharply after circa 5,000 to 4,500 years ago as Hypsithermal climatic effects weakened and forest retreated to form the modern subalpine pattern.

Variation in human land-use intensity attributable to Holocene environmental causes is more difficult to predict. Events that can be expected to have affected exploitable plant and animal productivity include Holocene glacial episodes, volcanism, and forest encroachment during the Hypsithermal Interval. It is likely that the impact of both glacial and volcanic events was limited to short-term or localized habitat disruption with only marginal impact on human use. It is unlikely that either of these sources would have been sufficient to have caused a land-use hiatus of sufficient magnitude to be visible in the archaeological record. Rather, use patterns are expected to have shifted temporarily to remnant productive zones away from the source of disruption. Holocene glacial advances are expected to have lowered subalpine habitat several hundred feet in elevation. Given sufficient temporal and spatial control, the archaeological record may show a comparable downward shift during prolonged glacial advances at about 2,400 and again at about 600 years ago.

Where Did Montane Hunting and Gathering Activities Take Place?

Much of the discussion in this chapter has been dedicated to developing ecological concepts that would allow us to predict which mountain landscapes, or more properly environmental zones, are expected to be associated with most frequent prehistoric human use. Building on arguments linking edible resource productivity to repressed forest maturity, I have argued that human use, and hence the archaeological record, should demonstrate a consistent bias toward upper forest, subalpine and alpine tundra environmental zones. These are the places in which the most critical floral and faunal species – especially mountain goats, elk, deer, marmots, bear, ptarmigan and huckleberries–tend to occur in greatest density. If these resources are the primary attractors to prehistoric human use of the mountain, then the archaeological record should display a corresponding distribution pattern. While fire and other sources of forest perturbation may open roughly comparable habitat at lower elevation, these areas tend to reforest quickly and, hence, are less likely to experience continued use. Accordingly, over the longterm, I expect most use to have concentrated at or near the more permanently immature subalpine to alpine habitats. Available archaeological site distribution data presented in Chapter 3 and visible in Figures 2.10 through 2.13 are consistent with these expectations.

The expected location of sites at the upper forest margin warrants special comment. Sites here could be explained either 1) by reference to retreating tree line during Holocene glacial episodes; and/or 2) because such locations minimized distance to subalpine hunting grounds in a relatively stormprotected setting. I suggest that forest margin sites may have served as base camps from which subalpine and alpine hunting and gathering forays were staged (cf., Baxter 1986). These upper midelevation residential camps may have been particularly desirable for mid to late Holocene collectors, logistically tethered to lowland villages; though their protected location may well have made them desirable places to early Holocene foragers as well. If these concepts have merit, we should find a higher fraction of larger, multi-functional residential site concentrations among the forest fringe sites when compared with those in the subalpine and alpine zones. At least three presently documented sites–FS 95-10 below Mt. Ararat, FS 90-01 on the southern flank of Sunrise Ridge, and FS 71-01 near Buck Lake–appear to meet these criteria.

Some economically important resources, of course, are found outside subalpine and alpine habitats. Lithic sources, for example, reflect exposure rather than habitat considerations. Local tool stone is important because it reduces the need to carry elaborate, and heavy, tool kits to the mountain. Several suitable exposures of micro and cryptocrystalline silicate stone (cherts and jaspers) are located on Mount Rainier. One, in a forested setting on Tum Tum mountain in the Park's southeast quadrant, is a documented lithic procurement site (FS 90-04). Another presently unverified outcrop is reported near Mt. Fremont (Dalle-Molle 1988). While not quarry sites per se, what appear to be locally procured flakes are documented at sites near Mother Mountain (FS 95-06) and Windy Gap (FS 90-03 and FS 95-07). Additional lithic sources undoubtedly exist on the mountain as well. If found in reasonable association with use areas or trails to such areas, we can expect a good chance of finding evidence of quarrying and primary lithic reduction activities at these places. The link to resource zones emphasized here cannot be discounted altogether, but is necessarily secondary to the location of the sources themselves.

It is likely that some prehistoric/early historic effort was given to collecting cedar bark in valleys and on Mount Rainier's wetter slopes. Fibrous cedar bark was used historically for making, among other things, expedient containers for huckleberry collection and transport (see Mack 1996). Western red cedar (Thuja plicata) is limited to low elevation wet forests, but Alaska yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis) grows higher on the nearer potential berry sources. A copse of peeled cedars has been reported in the Park adjacent to Shaw Creek (Carl Fabiani pers. com. 1995). Two additional peeled cedars have been reported on Mount Rainier's southern boundary (Liddle, pers. com. 1996). It is likely that more sites will be found as surveys continue. The location and age of culturally modified tree sites, of course will be limited by habitat (especially that of Alaska yellow cedar) and the survival age of the trees (several hundred years).

Pedestrian and equestrian trails provided ingress and egress from Mount Rainier's resource zones. Sections of a trail most plausibly linking Sunrise Ridge to the Yakama Nation east of the Park have been reported in the vicinity of site FS 90-01 (Jack Morrison and Carl Fabiani pers. com. 1995, and Roger Drake pers. com 1996). There is no doubt that a network of trails extended into and across Mount Rainier during the prehistoric past. Unfortunately, trails tend to be poorly represented as archaeological sites because, where not documented historically, they tend to be invisible to archaeological scrutiny. Even so, historical documentation and early maps (e.g., USGS 1915) may be consulted for additional insight into trail location in the more recent past.

Ceremonial sites may or may not be associated with subalpine and alpine habitats. Ceremonial use frequently is ascribed to stacked rock and talus pit features common to the Cascades (see Winthrop et al. 1995). Elsewhere, I have suggested that many, perhaps most, of these features functioned as hunting blinds whose locations were keyed to the spatial association of rocky scree slopes with broad visual exposures (Burtchard and Keeler 1991:86) and hence are explainable by reference to the general resource driven model employed here. The validity of these arguments notwithstanding, ritual use of Mount Rainier cannot be discounted altogether. As yet no stacked rock or other arguably ritual features have been identified in the Park. However, the probability that such sites will ultimately will be documented is high. At that time, renewed effort should be made to establish function and investigate spatial patterns.

How Did Regional Settlement Systems and Montane Environments Affect Site Distribution Patterns?

Hunting and gathering patterns on Mount Rainier are constrained by the particular suite of resources available, their tendency to aggregate in upper elevation habitats, and their strictly seasonal availability. I have suggested that montane resources are integrated differently into the seasonal round of early Holocene foragers compared with mid to late Holocene collectors tethered to villages in major lowland river valleys. For foragers, we expect small, mixed age and sex residential groups to move as a unit to the near vicinity of the resources sought during the season in which they could be exploited most effectively. Foragers are expected to relocate when economic return degrades through local overexploitation or seasonal change. Collector based economies support higher population densities operating out of permanent to semi-permanent villages. Resource collection trips are made to and from the village with composition of the collecting group dictated by the character of the task.

In either case, once on Mount Rainier, ungulate and other faunal resources probably were acquired in a roughly similar manner. Because of exposed habitat, unpredictable weather and occasionally rugged terrain, upland game are most effectively hunted by small task-specific parties capable of rapid place to place movement with short-term stays at any given point. Since such characteristics are not common to mixed residential groups, it is possible that both foragers and collectors on Mount Rainier employed a two-part settlement pattern with hunting parties operating out of and returning to somewhat larger residential base camps–the latter perhaps situated at the forest fringe.

Whether collected and dried for return to lowland villages or foraged for immediate consumption, huckleberries were probably the single most important floral resource on Mount Rainier. Acquisition requirements for huckleberries are quite different than those for game animals. Traditionally, huckleberries are collected by predominantly women and children and returned to a central location for consumption and processing. For early Holocene foragers, the optimal strategy overall would be to locate a base camp in a setting intermediate to berrying and hunting grounds that allowed access to both. Assuming huckleberries were valuable enough to warrant mass harvest, transport and storage, mixed sex hunting and gathering groups probably continued to use Mount Rainier through the mid to late Holocene. A dual residential gathering and task-specific hunting strategy appears to be the most optimal means to access both resource classes simultaneously.

Despite very different ways in which montane resources were integrated into broader subsistence systems through time, the manner in which they were most effectively exploited on Mount Rainier may have resulted is similar archaeological signatures. That is, for both early Holocene foragers and later Holocene collectors, the best way to hunt and gather mountain resources was to establish moderate-term residential base camps at the forest/subalpine ecotone in support of taskspecific procurement locations in subalpine, alpine and perhaps low glacial settings. Although limited, present site distribution patterns on Mount Rainier are consistent with these expectations. As shown on the fold out maps and discussed in subsequent chapters, prehistoric sites are strongly oriented toward subalpine to alpine contexts. Most of these most sites appear to be low density, probably task-specific, lithic scatters. Larger, ostensibly more functionally diverse sites, are set at somewhat lower forest/subalpine ecotonal settings.