ANCIENT NORTHWEST
Jack Linthicum
Artifacts from the Cascades give scientists a window on human activity
in the area thousands of years ago
ANCIENT NORTHWEST BY JEFFREY P. MAYOR THE NEWS TRIBUNE | • Published
November 15, 2009
Archaeological digs in two Washington national parks continue to
reveal artifacts that debunk the myth that indigenous people didn’t
gather food and plants from the upper reaches of the
A dig near Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park has revealed
evidence that humans used that area 9,600 years ago. At Mount Rainier
National Park, a site on the northern slope of the mountain has
produced artifacts dating back 7,600 years.
“It documents, for the first time, human use at upper elevations
dating that far back,” said Greg Burtchard, Mount Rainier’s
archaeologist.
“One thing it does, it helps us understand the early time period.
Getting back to 9,600 years ago, that’s a time period for which we
know almost nothing,” said Bob Mierendorf, archaeologist at North
Cascades.
For years, people believed prehistoric Indians lived in lowland areas.
The argument was that the elevation, unpredictable weather and rugged
terrain made places such as Mount Rainier a poor option for food-
gathering and settlement, Burtchard said.
But these sites are helping researchers refine theories on where, when
and why Indians traveled through the mountains.
Among the discoveries at the two sites – both about 5,400 feet in
elevation – are small stone blades used to make knives, sharp-edge
stones used to scrape animal hides, projectile points, stones from
fire rings, and animal bones and teeth.
“One of the big misconceptions is people don’t realize there were
Native American populations moving around in the highlands,” said
Bradford Andrews, visiting assistant professor of anthropology at
Pacific Lutheran University. “Wherever there are people today, there
were people in the past. Although today it’s more recreational, in the
past they were more worried about finding food to eat.”
“It really broadens our understanding of human use of the mountain
quite a bit,” Randy King, acting superintendent at Mount Rainier, said
of the discoveries.
“I think there is a fundamental need to understand people have been
part of this landscape for a long, long time,” King said. “You can go
to when this park was started in 1899 and think that is the start of
the human connection, but it isn’t.”
ESTABLISHING CONNECTIONS
A piece of white translucent stone no bigger than an adult’s
thumbnail, discovered in 2007, has become one of the most important
artifacts to come from the Mount Rainier site. The piece of
chalcedony, a silica mineral, is one of thousands of artifacts and
pieces of debris found by Burtchard and his team at a site near Buck
Lake.
It is the artifact that dates back 7,600 years, the oldest known
evidence of human use on the mountain. The previous oldest artifact
dates to 5,600 years ago.
An ancient Indian flaked off sharp pieces of the chalcedony from what
Burtchard described as a microblade core. Those razor-edged pieces
were glued to wood or bone with tree resin to make a knife.
“There is no doubt that the Indian people living around the mountain
today, that these were their ancestors,” Burtchard said.
The Buck Lake site was likely used by ancestors of today’s Muckleshoot
Indian Tribe and other local tribes, Burtchard said. The Muckleshoots
supported the Buck Lake research by supplying manpower, material and
use of a helicopter. Muckleshoot officials would not comment for this
story.
Evidence indicates that the Buck Lake site was used seasonally for
gathering plants and animals for food, Burtchard said. The Indians
likely lived in woven mat-and-wood frame structures or bark slab
structures. There is no evidence of permanent structures.
The seasonal-use theory is based on Mount Rainier’s weather.
“The best season for (gathering food) starts when the snow cover is
off in late June and July, to when the snow flies again in October,”
Burtchard said. “We have such heavy snowload that it made it a
seasonal use area.”
Burtchard said it is likely that small bands of Indians – men, women
and children – came to the mountain from lowland settlements near
Enumclaw, Greenwater and Packwood, along the Puyallup River and at the
confluence of the Nisqually and Mashel rivers. As the weather warmed,
the groups passed through the relatively resource-poor lower forests
heading for the upper meadows.
“I always assumed the primary use was resource acquisition, opposed to
sacred meanings,” Burtchard said of the 95 known archaeological sites
on the mountain.
Several factors led Indians to use a place like Buck Lake for
thousands of years before Europeans arrived in the Northwest,
Burtchard said.
The trees provided protection from the elements. An eastern exposure
allows the sun to provide warmth in the morning.
With meadows immediately above the area, Indians had easy access to
plants and berries – such as elderberries, huckleberries and avalanche
lilies – and animals.
“The subalpine meadows, if you were interested in eating in the
summer, they were the place to be,” Burtchard said.
The site also is near ridges that lead up and around the mountain. The
ridges served as streets for Indians, allowing them to move up and
around the mountain to hunt for elk, mountain beaver, bear, grouse,
mountain goats and marmots.
“The ridges made it easy to carry animals back to the site,” Burtchard
said. “This was possibly a base camp, maybe a mixed age- and gender-
group setting, based on the volume and type of tools we found.”
Not every site was a base camp. Burtchard believes a site near Sunrise
was used to process game, because they have found more tools for
cutting and scrapping rather than projectile points.
“At a base camp setting you would expect a wider variety of tools,” he
said.
As he traces the site’s evolution, Burtchard said it is likely the
earliest Indians, those living in the area 10,000 to about 4,500 years
ago, were more nomadic rather than settling along the mountain’s
salmon-bearing rivers.
“They didn’t need to because they didn’t have that many people to
feed. So they could travel around the region, moving as the resources
allowed,” he said. “Later, when populations get high, they had to look
for food sources that could be mass harvested, which is salmon.”
Even then, Buck Lake was used by generations of Indians.
“At Buck Lake, we have the early use,” Burtchard said, “but at 4,500
years ago that use increased until populations were reduced in the
1700s because of European diseases like smallpox, measles, whooping
cough.”
WHAT THE ARTIFACTS REVEAL
It takes a practiced eye to realize the value of the items found at
Buck Lake and other archaeological sites on the mountain. The vast
majority of the nearly 20,000 Buck Lake artifacts are not flashy
museum pieces. Most is debitage, the rocky chips and flakes left over
when creating stone tools.
“The problem is when people see the Christmas tree shaped stone of an
arrow point, it goes into their pocket 99 out of 100 times,” Burtchard
said.
While it might not look like much, that debris still tells an
important story.
“That tells us how the stone tools were made, where the stone was
coming from. That tells us how far they moved around or who they
traded with,” Andrews said. He studied the Buck Lake artifacts with
the PLU team for three years. Andrews is trying to detect any changes
in technology over time.
“That will help tell us how these people changed over time. Societies
are never static. We can see that in our own society. Things changed
in the past, albeit much slower,” Andrews said.
One thing that has surprised Andrews about the Buck Lake site has been
the sheer volume of material discovered. He has been to two other
sites on the mountain, and they contain maybe 5 percent of what has
been found at Buck Lake.
Andrews has focused his research on projectile points, including
atlatl, or spear-throwers, and arrow points, plus two-edged tools used
for chopping, tools used for scraping hides and processing plant
foods. They are made from material such as flint and obsidian.
He said the obsidian, a volcanic glass, was probably brought in from
another area by trading with other Indians bands. The nearest regional
sources are in southern Washington and Oregon.
“That tells us about trade patterns and the distance people were
moving in their annual rounds,” he said.
In addition to studying the artifacts, Andrews crafts his own stone
tools, a form of experimental archaeology.
“I make them so I can look at the flakes I produced and look at how
they pattern out. Then I compare them to the artifacts,” he said. “No
one makes flake stone tools anymore, so we have to become the modern
analogy. And then we can make some educated guesses about what we
find.”
CLUES AND TIMELINES
While there are other archaeological sites around the mountain – 95 at
last count –Buck Lake is unique because of the lake itself. The lake
is fed by melt water and has no outlet stream, so anything that has
fallen into the lake has settled to the bottom, including pollen from
plants that grew in the area over the ages.
Examining lake bottom core samples almost 15.5 feet deep, Burtchard
and his crew have tracked environmental changes that might have
affected human use of the area. After two major volcanic eruptions,
the core samples show pollen levels dropped immediately afterwards as
plants were smothered in ash.
“You can tell when there were fires and changes in vegetation,”
Burtchard said.
Seeing the volcanic history unfold as archaeologists dug deeper adds
to the site’s unique character.
Looking at the pit walls, one can see layers of dirt interspersed with
six lighter layers, markers as if the wall were a timeline.
One near the surface is the volcanic deposit left behind when Mount
St. Helens erupted about 4,200 years ago. Until three years ago, all
the artifacts found at Buck Lake were above this layer.
A deeper layer was created by the eruption of ancient Mount Mazama in
Oregon, the event that led to the creation of Crater Lake about 7,400
years ago.
It was beneath the Mazama layer that the small microblade core was
discovered two years ago. Given the time frame of the Mazama deposit,
Burtchard knew they had made a significant find.
“You can get precise time control because you have these volcanic
events that you can date,” he said. “They create a timeline from which
you can gauge finds.”
A site near Sunrise has deposits from seven major events, including
the Osceola lahar about 5,700 years ago.
The North Cascades site also has volcanic layers, ash deposited from
eruptions at Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens, Glacier Peak and Mount
Mazama.
The site has also produced other ash evidence, coming from cooking
pits.
“They’re small and not elaborate, but pretty clearly they were cooking
with hot stones. But I don’t know what they were cooking,” Mierendorf
said. “That implies more than just traveling through the area.
“These are repeatedly used, including one individual pit used and
reused for all 9,600 years. I’ve never seen anything like that in 40
years of professional archaeology.”
Burtchard has the same reaction as he and his team continue to find
evidence of people living and gathering food on Mount Rainier so long
ago.
“It is one of the most important sites I’ve worked on. It allows us to
rebuild 8,000 years of environmental changes side by side with human
use.”
“It’s just a tremendous sense of discovery,” he said. “It’s been
sitting there 7,600 years and you were fortunate enough to find it.
“Finding the item is a great discovery, but also what it means, that
people have been using that area for 7,600 years.”
Tom McDonald
to Usenet -- I see them in Thunderbird. This is the only one I see in
GG.
Any idea what's up wit' dat?
On Nov 15, 9:24 am, Jack Linthicum <jacklinthi...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
Jack Linthicum
> Jack, this try *did* post to GG. All of your previous attempts posted
> to Usenet -- I see them in Thunderbird. This is the only one I see in
> GG.
>
> Any idea what's up wit' dat?
>
>
I am completely baffled. I have seen some of my posts answered but as
originals. Something up there doesn't like me or else I haven't paid
my dues. I really think this article is important and want to see any
follow up. Also someone else could possibly see aspects of these
artifacts better than I am able to. I am somewhat familiar with the
area, I drove through the Cascades in September.
Tom McDonald
>
> Artifacts from the Cascades give scientists a window on human activity
> in the area thousands of years ago
>
> November 15, 2009
>
>
> Archaeological digs in two Washington national parks continue to
> gather food and plants from the upper reaches of the
> A dig near Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park has revealed
> evidence that humans used that area 9,600 years ago. At Mount Rainier
> National Park, a site on the northern slope of the mountain has
> produced artifacts dating back 7,600 years.
<snip>
> The North Cascades site also has volcanic layers, ash deposited from
> eruptions at Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens, Glacier Peak and Mount
> Mazama.
>
> The site has also produced other ash evidence, coming from cooking
> pits.
>
> �They�re small and not elaborate, but pretty clearly they were cooking
> with hot stones. But I don�t know what they were cooking,� Mierendorf
> said. �That implies more than just traveling through the area.
>
> �These are repeatedly used, including one individual pit used and
> reused for all 9,600 years. I�ve never seen anything like that in 40
> years of professional archaeology.�
This struck me. I wonder if Mierendorf is saying that the pit is
still in use, or was until recently.
I also wonder whether they have found any stones that might have
been used to heat food. AIUI, heating food with rocks can involve
dropping small, hot stones into containers along with liquid and
bits of food. The stones brought the food to boiling.
Other uses of hot stones for cooking involve cooking directly on
larger rocks, or burying the food and stones together in a lined pit.
Most of the cooking uses of hot stones would, ISTM, wind up
leaving food residue on the stones. I wonder whether food residue
might have stayed on some of the stones?
<snip>
--
Tom
When Tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing;
When friends rejoice, both far and near,
How can I keep from singing.
Jack Linthicum
> Jack Linthicum wrote:
>
> > Artifacts from the Cascades give scientists a window on human activity
> > in the area thousands of years ago
>
> > November 15, 2009
>
> > Archaeological digs in two Washington national parks continue to
> > gather food and plants from the upper reaches of the
> > A dig near Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park has revealed
> > evidence that humans used that area 9,600 years ago. At Mount Rainier
> > National Park, a site on the northern slope of the mountain has
> > produced artifacts dating back 7,600 years.
>
> <snip>
>
> > The North Cascades site also has volcanic layers, ash deposited from
> > eruptions at Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens, Glacier Peak and Mount
> > Mazama.
>
> > The site has also produced other ash evidence, coming from cooking
> > pits.
>
> > with hot stones. But I don’t know what they were cooking,” Mierendorf
> > said. “That implies more than just traveling through the area.
>
> > “These are repeatedly used, including one individual pit used and
> > reused for all 9,600 years. I’ve never seen anything like that in 40
> > years of professional archaeology.”
>
> This struck me. I wonder if Mierendorf is saying that the pit is
> still in use, or was until recently.
>
> I also wonder whether they have found any stones that might have
> been used to heat food. AIUI, heating food with rocks can involve
> dropping small, hot stones into containers along with liquid and
> bits of food. The stones brought the food to boiling.
>
> Other uses of hot stones for cooking involve cooking directly on
> larger rocks, or burying the food and stones together in a lined pit.
>
> Most of the cooking uses of hot stones would, ISTM, wind up
> leaving food residue on the stones. I wonder whether food residue
> might have stayed on some of the stones?
>
> <snip>
>
> --
> Tom
>
> When Tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
> And hear their death-knell ringing;
> When friends rejoice, both far and near,
> How can I keep from singing.
There is a long report, part of which is here, about the archaeology
and history of archaeology in the Cascades area.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/mora/ncrd/archaeology/contents.htm
George
> Most of the cooking uses of hot stones would, ISTM, wind up
> leaving food residue on the stones. I wonder whether food residue
> might have stayed on some of the stones?
Probably not.
Throughout New Zealand the method of cooking until the arrival of the
European was by the method you describe which we call the Umu (earth
oven.
The stones are heated in a fire before being placed into the Umu and
the food placed on top before being covered by fern branches and dirt.
The heating by fire cleans the stones off so the only chance of food
remains on cooking stones would be if they were thrown away.
Back home those stones were very prized and of a fair age.
Jack Linthicum
The American Indians used hot rocks, but the food was usually wrapped
to avoid burning. There was a restaurant in Savannah (Mary's) that
made filet mignon on a hot rock. You could cook it yourself or take it
the way it came.
Lee Olsen
wrote:
> Artifacts from the Cascades give scientists a window on human activity
> in the area thousands of years ago
>
> ANCIENT NORTHWEST BY JEFFREY P. MAYOR THE NEWS TRIBUNE | • Published
> November 15, 2009
Old News, I'm afraid the public has been duped again by
a media-hype article.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/mora/ncrd/archaeology/chap3b.htm
In 2005 online. See Judd Peak and Layser Cave 14C dates.
http://www.nps.gov/history/aad/kennewick/ames6.htm
Scroll down to heading 'Microblades'and notice
Judd Peak and Layser Cave cited in about 2000.
Cascade points, Mahkin, aileron types, and micro blades
are found together in only certain areas of Washington.
Mahkin and Cascade, for instance, can be found together,
but not necessarily with microblades. The association
where all are found together are on both sides the Cascades,
implying a cultural connection of some type. This means
it has been known for over 50 years at least travel over
the Cascade Mountains by early Native Americans has been
known.
It certainly is not surprising microblades have been found
at other high elevation sites recently. But that is not
new news.
The only assemblage I can find online that shows most of
the types together would be here:
http://tinyurl.com/yarkgnb
The Olcott points and Cascade points in this photo are
identical to the ones at the site of Ryegrass Coulee
in Eastern Washington mentioned in the NPS Ames report.
I might also mention that two Clovis points were found
near the top of Snoqualmie Pass, but not in situ.
It's possible even the Clovis people were using this
high mountain pass to get from one side of the state
to the other, as were the Cascade Phase people.
Jack Linthicum
The 2007 discovery of the chalcedony doesn't count?
"A piece of white translucent stone no bigger than an adult’s
thumbnail, discovered in 2007, has become one of the most important
artifacts to come from the Mount Rainier site. The piece of
chalcedony, a silica mineral, is one of thousands of artifacts and
pieces of debris found by Burtchard and his team at a site near Buck
Lake.
It is the artifact that dates back 7,600 years, the oldest known
evidence of human use on the mountain. The previous oldest artifact
dates to 5,600 years ago."
It would seem to to postdate 2000 and any of the Parks reports.
Lee Olsen
> in the area thousands of years ago
>
> ANCIENT NORTHWEST BY JEFFREY P. MAYOR THE NEWS TRIBUNE | • Published
> November 15, 2009
>
> Archaeological digs in two Washington national parks continue to
> reveal artifacts that debunk the myth that indigenous people didn’t
> gather food and plants from the upper reaches of the
There has never been a myth that the upper reaches NW Coastal Range
weren't utilized and far earlier and at equal elevations given
in this report. The report's claims would only be true if
Washington's
mountains were the only mountains in it.
The Coastal Mountains are the Coastal Mountains and the Cascade Phase
is the Cascade Phase and 5400 foot elevation is 5400 foot elevation
wherever
one goes, Native Americans knew nothing of today's National Park
boundaries.
The Muckleshoots weren't the first tribe in these mountains (although
I
agree their distant ancestors probably were).
The dates given in this sleeze report are corrected, and are not even
old
relative to the 14C dates that demonstrate high mountain use elsewhere
in the coastal mountains. High mountain use is nothing new; the
report
suffers from a bad case of tunnel vision.
Mount Edziza's, in British Columbia, obsidian has been utilized
continuously
for over 11,000 years. Cascade Phase artifacts are found at high
elevations
in the Blue Mountains and the latest in situ Clovis find, in Oregon,
is
also in mountainous country at about 5300 foot in elevation. The claim
that
high mountain areas weren't untilized early and continuously is just
plain silly.
Elk and mountain sheep are found a high as 10,000 feet, so it wouldn't
surprise me at all if Cascade artifacts are eventually found at even
at
higher elevations than 5400 feet.
This report is simply another in the long list of reports trying to
generate
news were there isn't any, but, they do sell newspapers I guess.
Jack Linthicum
That doesn't answer my question. You know and I know that news of this
kind seldom comes out coincident with the discovery. Someone might be
sitting on a paper or waiting for more data. Two years is pretty good
for a single archaeological item to be in the news.
Lee Olsen
That's the problem, leaking to the media first is nothing
more than press-release archaeology. There can and usually is
a big difference between what archaeologists say to the press
and what they say to their peers in papers.
I'll give you a good recent example of the damage this does.
Huge announcement to the media by Dr. Goodyear that he thinks
he may have found a 50 k fire pit at Topper. The public
thinks, this guy is a PhD expert, this must be true. Later, after
he does the tests, he realizes he was wrong. Is there an equal
spash in the headlines for the retraction? No, most never hear
of the issue again and think the original blurb was correct.
Did you notice some of the comments to the Mayor article?
Case in point, one poor woman, because of the all the
media hype, still thinks Kennewick Man is some big deal,
not bothering to read the final reports. She will probably go to
her grave brainwashed by all the Caucasian crap issued by
initial reports from NYT etc.
>Two years is pretty good
> for a single archaeological item to be in the news.
>
> The 2007 discovery of the chalcedony doesn't count?
Count for what?
Jack Linthicum
You keep evading the post where you said this was all old stuff and
cited a 2000 article as "proof". I have asked you twice if that means
the 2007 discovery of the chalcedony as described in the article was
important enough to be the basis for a new article.
Is it important?
Lee Olsen
Oh, the Ryegrass Coulee (1968) site and the Olcott points, Mahkin,
Cascade
points, and microblades found on *both* sides of the Cascades means
they were
utilizing the high mountain areas and this has been known for fifty
years (or more).
> I have asked you twice if that means
> the 2007 discovery of the chalcedony as described in the article was
> important enough to be the basis for a new article.
>
> Is it important?
Not very news worthy, since microblades have been known to be
associated
with the mentioned artifacts. If they do find something besides waste
flakes,
it will be a no-brainer to predict those are the types of artifacts
that will be
found with them.
The exception would be if some other unknown type for the area, ah,
like Folsom
points, were found at Buck Lake....now that would be headline news
IMO. But really,
this type stuff should be run through the peer-review process first.