Washington Archaeology

New work on Vashon Island:  http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/vashon/vib/lifestyle/99346609.html

Click here for website.

The Wenas Creek Mammoth Field School will focus on excavation of a 16,000 year old mammoth and associated materials from June 21 through August 13, 2010. (A shorter season is also available.) With methods from archaeology, paleontology, and geography, the sixth season of this project will recover Ice Age faunas, and perhaps artifacts, in context. Thus far there have been two artifacts recovered slightly above the mammoth bones. A flyer is attached.

The field school was featured briefly in the History Channel’s “Journey to 10,000 B.C.” Application materials and more information are available from the Participate! link at

http://www.cwu.edu/~mammoth/

Click here for flyer!2010-mammothFlyer

A great conference is coming up in June. The Leadership Summit will be June 7-8, 2010, at the Suquamish Tribe’s Kiana Lodge near Poulsbo. The theme is “Linking Cultural Resource Protection to Land Use: Understanding the Broader Context.”

Here is a link to a list of the 50 best archaeology blogs. At least some of them look relevant to Washington (though maybe not the Viking Archaeology Blog).

Fort Vancouver – Public Archaeology Field School

Portland State University, Washington State University Vancouver, the National Park Service, Northwest Cultural Resources Institute, and the Fort Vancouver National Trust are pleased to announce a field school in historical archaeology at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and Lava Beds National Monument.

The program will introduce the methods and theories of fieldwork in historical archaeology. Students will participate in all aspects of field and laboratory work: laying out units, excavation by shovel and trowel, mapping, drawing, photography, and cleaning, identifying, and analyzing artifacts. The season will also include lectures by guest speakers and staff.

The National Park Service and its partners are committed to sharing cultural resources and preservation values with the public. On a rotating basis, students will discuss the field school activities with visitors, interpreting the significance of the site and the educational purposes of the project.

Fort Vancouver National Historic Site is an unparalleled archaeological laboratory, comprising the remains of Fort Vancouver, the ca.1825-1860 regional headquarters and supply depot for the Hudson’s Bay Company, and Vancouver Barracks, the first (ca. 1849-2010) permanent U.S. Army post and command center in the Pacific Northwest.

This year’s field school will explore Fort Vancouver’s multicultural Village (also known as “Kanaka Village”).  This colonial village was the largest settlement in the Pacific Northwest in the 1830s and 1840s.  It contained people from all over the world and the Pacific Northwest, including Native Hawaiians, African Americans, the Métis, and people of many different American Indian tribes.  The field school will provide a means to recapture the history of this multicultural worker’s village and to engage the modern Portland/Vancouver area in the unique history of their closest National Park site.

In the latter portion of the course, the school will move to Lava Beds National Monument to assist in the NPS survey of Modoc Indian War fortifications at Captain Jack’s Stronghold in northern California.

This 1872-1873 war was the longest and most expensive nineteenth century military conflict in California.  Field trips may be taken to other sites in Oregon or Washington.

Tse-whit-zen artifacts languish in storage

New book recounts Tse-whit-zen history, spreads the blame

More treasures of Tse-whit-zen uncovered on Port Angeles waterfront

Ancestral skeletons dig up emotions

Tse-whit-zen artifact recovery comes to an end

Detailed work sifting through soil honors ancestors, workers say

Specially trained dogs to be used in Port Angeles archaeological survey

Doors closed on archaeological dogs sniffing for Native American remains on Port Angeles waterfront

Article from the Seattle PI about Old Man House.

If the link is broken, click here for the PDF.

Article on recent archaeological investigations on Mt. Rainier.

If the link is broken, click here for the PDF.

Article from the website Crosscut

If the link is broken, click on the PDF.