Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Stoneware And Earthenware From The Beeswax Wreck: Classification Of The Dubé Collection And Discussion Of The Interpretation Of The Materials In Protohistoric Sites, Vanessa Renee Litzenberg

Dissertations and Theses

Over the past three centuries, items from the Beeswax Wreck have been discovered on Oregon's northern coastline near Manzanita, including stoneware and earthenware fragments. While the stoneware and earthenware were not noticed by beachcombers washing ashore until more recently, similar artifacts have been noted within Indigenous sites for decades. While most of the analysis of the artifacts found in protohistoric settings are used to provide proof of a wreck or potentially a marker of the start of the contact period, this study aims to provide some context to the stoneware and earthenware sherds related to the wreck. The goal was …

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Resilience And Persistence In A Klamath Tribal Community, Thomas J. Connolly, Christopher L. Ruiz, Douglas Deur, Perry Chocktoot Jr., Jaime L. Kennedy, Dennis L. Jenkins, Julia A. Knowles

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The process of human culture entails a perpetual negotiation between the familiar and the new. In the Americas, this process was much accelerated and amplified within Native communities by the historical processes of colonization. We use the record of the Beatty Curve archaeological site in south-central Oregon to examine how members of the Klamath Tribes and their ancestors selectively adopted, adapted, or repurposed introduced materials and practices most compatible with traditional lifeways and values while also maintaining many traditional practices, both overtly and covertly. Transformations from pre-contact to reservation life, and through Termination and Restoration in the 20th century, are …

Recovering Salmon: Zooarchaeology And Oral Tradition In The Documentation Of Extirpated Cultural Keystone Species In The Upper Klamath Basin, Douglas Deur, Perry Chocktoot Jr.

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

As this special issue attests, Dr. Virginia Butler and her students have made significant and lasting contributions to the study of human-environment relationships over deep time in the Pacific Northwest. Beyond this, their contributions suggest the potential of archaeological research to engage the public and to address pressing natural resource issues of our time. Their investigations of Pacific salmon harvests in the Klamath River Basin are an important case in point. Applying the methods of zooarchaeology to the study of anadromous fish in the Upper Klamath Basin, Butler and her students provide clear corroboration of Tribal oral tradition. In turn, …

Reflections On The State Of Northwest Archaeology: Essays In Honor Of Virginia Butler: Introduction, Shelby L. Anderson, Jeremy Spoon

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Introduction to the Fall 2021 issue of Journal of Northwest Anthropology. Essays in Honor of Virginia L. Butler, Portland State University.

Bayesian Assessment Of Northern Alaskan Chronological Issues: Implications For Future Research, Thomas J. Brown, Shelby Anderson, Justin Andrew Junge, Jonathan Duelks

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cultural interaction and exchange across the Bering Strait of northern Alaska played a central role in the emergence of Arctic maritime adaptations. Yet poor chronological control limits our ability to explore processes of cultural change over the last 5000years. We address this problem by synthesizing the available radiocarbon record for the region, carrying out Bayesian analysis of a regional radiocarbon database, and analyzing the BAR-1 (Birnirk) site using new dates published in this paper. Our synthesis and our illustrative analysis of the BAR-1 site highlights several intriguing temporal and spatial trends with implications for interaction between cultural groups. Our analysis …

Lidar Predictive Modeling Of Pacific Northwest Mound Sites: A Study Of Willamette Valley Kalapuya Mounds, Oregon (Usa), Tia Rachelle Cody, Shelby Anderson

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Archaeologists need new methods to survey large areas and overcome environmental and archaeological barriers to site discovery in heavily forested regions. LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology is one possible solution to these challenges as LiDAR digitally clears away vegetation, facilitating large-scale remote sensing survey. The Calapooia Watershed, located in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon, is an ideal area to utilize LiDAR. While valley lowlands are cleared for agriculture, riverine areas remain heavily wooded and are known to contain hundreds of low-lying earthwork features created by pre-colonial Kalapuyan people. To assess the potential application of LiDAR in this region, …

"Through A Forest Wilderness:” Native American Environmental Management At Yosemite And Contested Conservation Values In America’S National Parks, Rochelle Bloom, Douglas Deur

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Chapter 9. The philosophies and views of nature prevalent in the 19th century West shaped the early National Park Service, and continue to influence park policy today. Park-builders incorrectly viewed early parks as untouched “wilderness,” even as Native peoples continued to occupy, revere, and actively manage lands and resources on these lands. This misapprehension fostered the creation and enforcement of park regulations meant to protect wild spaces, resulting in the displacement of both Native peoples and the culturally significant habitats that they had helped sustain for millennia. Among these regulations, federally imposed restrictions on burning and other traditional plant community …

Fire, Native Ecological Knowledge, And The Enduring Anthropogenic Landscapes Of Yosemite Valley, Douglas Deur, Rochelle Bloom

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Yosemite Valley is a place with rich and enduring traditions of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge, manifesting in specific management practices that, in turn, leave discernible imprints upon the natural landscape. Historically, the Native American inhabitants of Yosemite Valley have employed a variety of techniques that materially enhance the availability of culturally preferred plant communities. This chapter identifies specific techniques that appear consistently in the oral traditions and written historical accounts of the valley. These methods included anthropogenic burning, pruning and coppicing, clearing underbrush beneath trees, hand eradication (“weeding”) of certain competing species, selective harvesting, smoking, “knocking” of dead wood from the …

Reframing Native Knowledge, Co-Managing Native Landscapes: Ethnographic Data And Tribal Engagement At Yosemite National Park, Rochelle Bloom, Douglas Deur

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Several Native American communities assert traditional ties to Yosemite Valley, and special connections to the exceptional landmarks and natural resources of Yosemite National Park. However, tribal claims relating to this highly visible park with its many competing constituencies—such as tribal assertions of traditional ties to particular landscapes or requests for access to certain plant gathering areas—often require supporting documentation from the written record. Addressing this need, academic researchers, the National Park Service and park-associated tribes collaborated in a multi-year effort to assemble a comprehensive ethnographic database containing most available written accounts of Native American land and resource use in Yosemite …

Archaeologists, The Public, And Collectors: Establishing A Regional Database Of Archaeological Sites On Private Land And Collections With A Process For Professional-Public Archaeological Research In The Portland, Oregon Area, Katherine Louise Tipton

Dissertations and Theses

Over the course of daily life, people engage with archaeology in various ways, including experiences with archaeology on their own land and as part of family collections of archaeological material. As a result, members of the public often hold considerable archaeological knowledge that professionals have historically overlooked. Recent scholarship focuses on the issue of incorporating the public and collectors into archaeological research and ways for capturing that information. Professional-public collaboration is particularly important in the Portland, Oregon area, where many archaeological sites are located on private land and there is a long history of collecting.

The goal of this thesis …

When God Put Daylight On Earth We Had One Voice': Kwakwaka'wakw Perspectives On Sustainability And The Rights Of Nature, Douglas Deur, Kim Recalma-Clutesi, Adam Dick

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this chapter the authors ask: How are the 'Rights of Nature' truly manifested in an indigenous context? We contend that one especially illuminating example can be found in the teaching of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) people of coastal British Columbia. The Kwakwaka'wakw are among the most studied indigenous people in Americas, and are thus a key reference point, providing a rich tradition that is widely known and accessible through accounts of past anthropologists and a handful of living experts.

The authors of this article all speak from deep groundings in Kwakwaka'wakw tradition.

A Community-Based Approach To Archaeological Site Preservation In A Changing Climate: A Proposed Risk Assessment Along The Lower Columbia, Phillip Daily, Virginia L. Butler

Student Research Symposium

Global climate change is an increasing threat to cultural resources, especially in coastal areas. Archaeologists have responded with risk assessments that gauge these threats and create preservation priorities for land managers. However, most assessments do not include input from descendant communities, which limits their potential value and relevance to archaeologists and tribal partners. We are in the initial stages of developing a risk assessment model for the Lower Columbia that includes a process for collaborating with tribes. In addition to incorporating the existing archaeological and ethnohistorical data typically used in risk assessments, our project will also incorporate indigenous stakeholder priorities …

Deriving Lane-Level Insight From Gps Data: Innovations For Traffic & Autonomous Driving, James Fowe

PSU Transportation Seminars

With the on-going disruption of the transportation industry and rapid advancement in ITS technologies; emerging smart cities, navigation systems and autonomous transportation, the need for highly accurate geospatial localization has never been more crucial. These technologies demand that we have more granular location information of vehicles not just on a road, but to a specific lane on the road.

This presentation will give a pedagogical style summary and overview of some of the on-going research work at HERE Technologies and how we have pushed the state-of-the-art in lane-localization of noisy GPS probe data using novel Machine Learning Algorithms and how …

Lidar Predictive Modeling Of Kalapuya Mound Sites In The Calapooia Watershed, Oregon, Tia Rachelle Cody

Dissertations and Theses

Archaeologists grapple with the problematic nature of archaeological discovery. Certain types of sites are difficult to see even in the best environmental conditions (e.g., low-density lithic scatters) and performing traditional archaeological survey is challenging in some environments, such as the dense temperate rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. Archaeologists need another method of survey to assess large areas and overcome environmental and archaeological barriers to site discovery in regions like the Pacific Northwest. LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology, a method for digitally clearing away swaths of vegetation and surveying the landscape, is one possible solution to some of these …

Exploring Ecodynamics Of Coastal Foragers Using Integrated Faunal Records From Čḯxwicən Village (Strait Of Juan De Fuca, Washington, U.S.A.), Virginia L. Butler, Sarah K. Campbell, Kristine M. Bovy, Michael A. Etnier

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Extensive 2004 excavation of Čḯx^wicən (pronounced ch-WHEET-son), traditional home of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe in northwest Washington State, U.S.A., documented human occupation spanning the last 2700 years with fine geostratigraphic control and 102 radiocarbon samples. Remains of multiple plankhouses were documented. Occupation spans large-magnitude earthquakes, periods of climate change, and change in nearshore habitat. Our project began in 2012 as a case study to explore the value of human ecodynamics in explaining change and stability in human-animal relationships on the Northwest Coast through analysis of faunal and geo-archaeological records. Field sampling was explicitly designed to allow for …

Human Ecodynamics: A Perspective For The Study Of Long-Term Change In Socioecological Systems, Ben Fitzhugh, Virginia L. Butler, Kristine M. Bovy, Michael A. Etnier

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Human ecodynamics (H.E.) refers to processes of stability, resilience, and change in socio-ecological relationships or systems. H.E. research involves interdisciplinary study of the human condition as it affects and is affected by the rest of the non-human world. In this paper, we review the intellectual history of the human ecodynamics concept over the past several decades, as it has emerged out of classical ecology, anthropology, behavioral ecology, resilience theory, historical ecology, and related fields, especially with respect to the study of long-term socioecological change. Those who study human ecodynamics reject the notion that humans should be considered external to the …

Building A Landscape History And Occupational Chronology At Čḯxwicən, A Coastal Village On The Strait Of Juan De Fuca, Washington State, U.S.A., Sarah K. Campbell, Sarah L. Sterling, Dennis E. Lewarch

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Geoarchaeological analysis at Čḯxwicən, 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 …

Using Bone Fragmentation Records To Investigate Coastal Human Ecodynamics: A Case Study From Čḯxwicən (Washington State, Usa), Kristine M. Bovy, Michael A. Etnier, Virginia L. Butler, Sarah K. Campbell, Jennie Deo Shaw

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Coastal shell middens are known for their generally excellent preservation and abundant identifiable faunal remains, including delicate fish and bird bones that are often rare or poorly preserved at non-shell midden sites. Thus, when we began our human ecodynamics research project focused on the fauna from Čḯx^wicən (45CA523, pronounced ch-WHEET-son), a large ancestral village of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, located on the shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Port Angeles, Washington (USA), we anticipated generally high levels of bone identifiability. We quickly realized that the mammal bones were more fragmented and less identifiable than we …

The Sablefish (Anoplopoma Fimbria) Of Čḯxwicən: Socioenvironmental Lessons From An Unusually Abundant Species, Reno Nims, Virginia L. Butler

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

We analyzed sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) remains from Čḯx^wicən (pronounced ch-WHEET-son), a 2700 year-old ancestral village of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe in northwest Washington state, U.S.A., to improve understanding of how this species was used by Native American/First Nations peoples in the past. Though sablefish are abundant at Čḯx^wicən, and limited ethnographic accounts indicate they were highly prized in northwestern North America, their remains are rare in regional archaeology. We present a body-size regression model for estimating the fork length (FL) of archaeologically represented sablefish and determining which habitats they were captured from (i.e. shallow, nearshore …

The Čḯxwicən Project Of Northwest Washington State, U.S.A.: Opportunity Lost, Opportunity Found, Virginia L. Butler, Kristine M. Bovy, Sarah K. Campbell, Michael A. Etnier, Sarah L. Sterling

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Čḯx^wicən (pronounced ch-WHEET-son) is a 2700 year-old ancestral village of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe (LEKT), located on the northwest coast of Washington State, U.S.A. The Čḯx^wicən project has scientific values that broadly contribute to research in human ecodynamics and maritime foragers, given the scale of the project, excavation methods, and enormous quantities of faunal materials recovered. The village holds great significance to the LEKT as their traditional village, which includes a sacred burial ground. The project began under challenging circumstances, when the village was inadvertently encountered during a construction project, incurring huge political, social and …

The Radiocarbon Record Of The Western Stemmed Tradition On The Southern Columbia Plateau Of Western North America, Thomas Brown, Daniel Mcgowan Gilmour, Paul S. Solimano, Kenneth Ames

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The late Pleistocene–early Holocene archaeological record of the interior Pacific Northwest is dominated by what has been regionally referred to as the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). While various efforts have attempted to clarify the chronology of this tradition, these have largely focused on data from the Great Basin and have been disproportionately preoccupied with establishing the beginning of the tradition due to its temporal overlap with Clovis materials. Specifically focusing on the Columbia Plateau, we apply a series of Bayesian chronological models to create concise estimates of the most likely beginning, end, and span of the WST. We then further …

Impacts Of Resource Fluctuations And Recurrent Tsunamis On The Occupational History Of Čḯxwicən, A Salishan Village On The Southern Shore Of The Strait Of Juan De Fuca, Washington State, U.S.A, Ian Hutchinson, Virginia L. Butler, Sarah K. Campbell, Sarah L. Sterling, Michael A. Etnier, Kristine M. Bovy

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

A summed probability density function (spdf), generated from the catalog of 101 radiocarbon ages on wood and charcoal from the Čḯxwicən archaeological site (Washington State, USA), serves as a proxy for the site's occupational history over the last 2500 years. Significant differences between spdfs derived from a null model of population growth (a bootstrapped logistic equation) and the observed index suggest relatively less cultural activity at Čḯxwicən between about 1950–1750 cal BP, 1150–950 cal BP, and 650 to 550 cal BP; and increased activity between about 1350–1250 cal BP and 550–500 cal BP. Peaks in the Čḯxwicən spdf are closely …

Human Settlement And Mid-Late Holocene Coastal Environmental Change At Cape Krusenstern, Northwest Alaska, Shelby Anderson, James Jordon, Adam Freeburg

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Archaeologists hypothesize that mid-late Holocene environmental variability played a role in several significant western Arctic cultural developments including population fluctuations, the evolution of Arctic maritime adaptations, and Arctic-wide migrations. Further evaluation of these hypotheses requires higher resolution archaeological and paleoecological datasets than are currently available. In response, we undertook an interdisciplinary study at Cape Krusenstern, a large coastal site complex in northwest Alaska, which was occupied over the last ca. 5000–6000 years. Our goals were to refine local cultural and paleoenvironmental chronologies and to explore the question of how local environmental change may have influenced local settlement history. The resulting …

The Galleon Cargo: Accounts In The Colonial Archives, Cameron La Follette, Douglas Deur, Esther González

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Much of the debris that has washed up on the shores of the northern Oregon coast for centuries were mainstays of Spanish trade carried as cargo across the world on Manila galleons. Both Native people and Euro-Americans have recovered large beeswax chunks, lending to the lore of the “Beeswax Wreck,” as well as Chinese blue-and-white porcelain fragments. In this article, Cameron La Follette and Douglas Deur describe research findings about cargo on the Santo Cristo de Burgos and similar Manila galleons, including the San Francisco Xavier of 1705, the previous favored candidate for the Oregon wreck. La Follette and Deur …

The Mountain Of A Thousand Holes: Shipwreck Traditions And Treasure Hunting On Oregon's North Coast, Cameron La Follette, Dennis Griffin, Douglas Deur

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

“Euro-Americans in coastal communities conflated and amplified Native American oral traditions of shipwrecks in Tillamook County, increasingly focusing on buried treasure,” write authors Cameron La Follette, Dennis Griffin and Douglas Deur. In this article, the authors trace the Euro-American blending of Native oral tradition with romances and adventure tales that helped create the “legends contributing to Neahkahnie [Mountain]'s reputation as Oregon's treasure-seeking haven.” They also examine the history of treasure-seeking in the area and describe the escalating conflict between Oregon's treasure-hunting statute and cultural resources protection laws, which led finally to statutory repeal that ended all treasure-hunting on state lands. …

Oregon's Manila Galleon, Cameron La Follette, Douglas Deur, Dennis Griffin, Scott S. Williams

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

For two centuries, physical evidence of a vast shipwreck, including beeswax and Chinese porcelain, has washed ashore in the Nehalem Spit area on the north coast of Oregon. The story of the wreck has been “shrouded by time, speculation, and surprisingly rich and often contradictory Euro-American folklore.” In this introduction to the Oregon Historical Quarterly's special issue, “Oregon's Manila Galleon,” authors Cameron La Follette, Douglas Deur, Dennis Griffin, and Scott S. Williams summarize the rich archival findings and archaeological evidence that points to the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a Manila galleon owned by the kingdom of Spain and bringing …

The Galleon's Final Journey: Accounts Of Ship, Crew, And Passengers In The Colonial Archives, Cameron La Follette, Douglas Deur, Esther González

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Through archival research, Cameron La Follette and Douglas Deur document the history of the Santo Cristo de Burgos — the ship thought to be the Beeswax Wreck of Oregon — and its crew and passengers. The Santo Cristo “drew together a multiethnic crew of Spanish, Spanish Basque, Philippine, Mexican, and possibly African men in the most sprawling global trade network of their day.” Research conducted in the Archives of the Indies in Seville, Spain, the National Archives of the Philippines in Manila and the Archivo General de la Nación of Mexico in Mexico City shows that the galleon left the …

Views Across The Pacific: The Galleon Trade And Its Traces In Oregon, Cameron La Follette, Douglas Deur

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

From 1565 to 1815, Manila galleons such as the Santo Cristo de Burgos — the ship now thought to be the seventeenth century “Beeswax Wreck” that sank or ran aground near Nehalem Spit in Oregon — followed a 12,000-mile route from the Philippines through the stormy North Pacific, sometimes passing parallel to what is now the north Oregon coast, before reaching their destination in Acapulco, Mexico. The galleons were a central part of Spain's complex international commerce system, transporting people and Asian goods around the world. In this article, Cameron La Follette and Douglas Deur discuss the Spanish empire and …

An Efficient And Reliable Dna-Based Sex Identification Method For Archaeological Pacific Salmonid (Oncorhynchus Spp.) Remains, Thomas C.A. Royle, Dionne Sakhrani, Camilla F. Speller, Virginia L. Butler, Robert H. Devlin, Aubrey Cannon, Dongya Y. Yang

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Pacific salmonid (Oncorhynchus spp.) remains are routinely recovered from archaeological sites in northwestern North America but typically lack sexually dimorphic features, precluding the sex identification of these remains through morphological approaches. Consequently, little is known about the deep history of the sex-selective salmonid fishing strategies practiced by some of the region's Indigenous peoples. Here, we present a DNA-based method for the sex identification of archaeological Pacific salmonid remains that integrates two PCR assays that each co-amplify fragments of the sexually dimorphic on the Y chromosome (sdY) gene and an internal positive control (Clock1a or D-loop). The first assay coamplifies a …

Respect The Land - It’S Like Part Of Us: A Traditional Use Study Of Inland Dena’Ina Ties To The Chulitna River & Sixmile Lake Basins, Lake Clark National Park And Preserve, Douglas Deur, Karen Evanoff, Jamie Hebert

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

For countless generations, Lake Clark has been home to the inland Dena’ina people. This unique and vast fresh-water lake complex sits at the intersection of sprawling tundra, taiga, and jagged cordillera, dotted with villages. Here, village life has been sustained by herds of caribou, shorelines populated by moose and beaver, vast runs of salmon ascending from Bristol Bay, and other natural assets. But the area’s uniqueness extends beyond its abundant natural resources. Also unique is the National Park Service (NPS) unit that has occupied the region known as Lake Clark National Park and Preserve (LACL) in recent decades.

The study …