Monthly Archives: December 2009

Quantitative Zooarchaeology Blog

Posted on December 8, 2009 | Leave a comment

killer, qmackie, and archaeomath: three people who like fish (maybe just a little too much).

It’s a niche blog for sure, but at archaeomath someone is writing a series of highly detailed posts on quantitative zooarchaeology, with an emphasis on fish bone.  The posts on inference of net gauge, intensification of fishing practice, and estimation of MNI are particularly interesting and definitely relevant to the Northwest Coast.  Anyone who can introduce their blog with: “The purpose of this blog is to share my experiences using various mathematical tools to address archeological problems that interest me. Mathematical models, when done well, make assumptions explicit and clarify how processes operate” has my admiration and appreciation.  Anonymous Faunal Analyst with your Geospatially Ambiguous Shell Midden and Bones of Unspecified Taxa: we salute you!

Leave a comment

Posted in Archaeology

Tagged , ,

Tlingit, Dene and Eskimo Metallurgy (1969)

Posted on December 7, 2009 | Leave a comment

Tlingit dagger hafts, Kluckwan, Alaska. Purchased by George Gordon from Louis Shotridge at the Portland Fair, 1905. Penn Museum Objects NA1288a/b.

From the excellent University of Pennsylvannia Museum website, you can download back issues of their magazine “Expedition”, including this article on aboriginal metallurgy in Northwest North America (PDF).  The caption below is from that article: the two astonishing daggers being described are shown above.  Seriously, this is metalwork of the highest order, reminiscent of, say, Mycenaean pieces.

1969 caption describing the two daggers, above.

Leave a comment

Posted in alaska, anthropology, archives, Technology

Tagged , , , , ,

Peavies, pickaroons, hookaroons and skid tongs

Posted on December 6, 2009 | 4 comments

Double-bitted axes, available by the case.

It’s pretty common to run into historic industrial equipment when doing archaeological work in BC, especially logging equipment.  The Vancouver City archives has put the entire McLennan, McFeely & Co. Ltd Catalogue 1908-14 online, albeit in a somewhat awkward format (hey guys, why not just post a single PDF as well?) (edit: see comments below).  This catalogue would have been the ordering bible for many remote logging, mining and cannery outfits up and down the coast, the remains of which are often lying atop shell middens or strewn in the intertidal zone.  Altogether, the Vancouver City Archives and the Burnaby Village Museum have put  more than 1,500 pages of historic merchandise, as well as ordering and shipping information and price lists. Click on an image and it brings up a legible PDF of that single page.

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Archaeology, archives, history, Technology

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Death of Richard Antoun

Posted on December 5, 2009 | 1 comment

Professor Richard Antoun. via ZeroAnthropology.

It was very disturbing to hear of the violent death of SUNY-Binghamton Anthropology Professor Emeritus Richard Antoun yesterday.  Professor Antoun was stabbed in his office by a graduate student, apparently one who had done poorly on their candidacy exams.  I’ve known some tightly wrapped graduate students, but the idea one of them could pull out a knife and stab me to death is, uh, “worrisome”.  Professor Antoun was a close friend of my current boss, and my heart goes out to her as well.  There is a pretty full roundup of this terrible news and an euology from a former student over at ZeroAnthropology.

1 Comment

Posted in anthropology

Tagged ,

New Westminster, 1903

Posted on December 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

Aboriginal women at New Westminster, 1903.

There is something about the above picture that is so evocative: Native women washing clothes or getting water while in the background the first construction of the Fraser River Bridge at New Westminster rises.  With a different caption this could be the Ganges River, or the Colorado: always women, always squatting, always the back turned to the viewer and the colonial future in the background.

From the idiosyncratic New Westminster online photo archives – this uses the LoC system so you have to search for, say, “Indians” rather than “First Nations”.

New Westminster, ca. 1865

Leave a comment

Posted in anthropology, archives, First Nations, Lower Mainland, Northwest Coast, pics

Tagged , , , ,

Somenos Creek: Update

Posted on December 4, 2009 | Leave a comment

Somenos Creek site. Picture this with 20 houses on it. Photo credit: anonymous.

Further to my post below, here is another news item on the Somenos Creek (Cowichan Valley) situation.  It mostly rehashes the Times-Colonist piece but does have new comments from Eric and from the developer, notably:

Schmidt, who has tried but failed to have the six-acre site, known as Lot B, rezoned for development, said it would be worth up to $3 million if it weren’t for the presence of the artifacts and burial site.

Timbercrest has built about 300 homes on the land so far and would like to put up another 20 on Lot B.

So, lets see 20/300 = 6.7% of the 100 acres.  The 100 acres was bought in the 1970s.  I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that much less than 1 million was paid for the 100 acres back then.  The current valuation of these six acres would value the entire parcel at 45 million.  Let’s halve that:m 22 million.

So this developer has turned a one million dollar piece of land into a 20 million dollar piece of land.  A 2000% return.  And he wants financial consideration and compensation from the public because he happens to have a legally-protected (and morally protected, I might add) site of the highest archaeological significance on the residual piece?

This is the 21st century: Greed is no longer good, Timbercrest Estates Ltd.  Give the land up, get a tax writeoff, and count your blessings you live in a country that is so extremely friendly to rampant development of land, enabling fortunes to to be made.

Leave a comment

Posted in Archaeology, Cultural Resource Management, First Nations, Northwest Coast, Vancouver Island

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Mechanical representation in a Haida Pipe

Posted on December 3, 2009 | 1 comment

Haida Pipes, 1837. From U. Washington Collection.

I don’t know much about these early historic Haida argillite pipes.  These ones are illustrated in Edward Belcher’s Narrative of a voyage round the world, 1843, v.1, p. 309.  The lower one captured my attention, with its representation of a conveyor belt (?!) – or, more likely, a block-and-tackle/pulley setup.  The playful seriousness of these pipes is astounding – as can be seen in my earlier post on the SS Beaver pipe.  I would like to see a photograph of this one but I have no idea where it may have ended up.

The image is via the superb University of Washington Digital NW collections.

1 Comment

Posted in anthropology, archives, Haida Gwaii, Northwest Coast

Tagged , , ,

MacLeans: Natives and Suits vs. Environmentalists

Posted on December 3, 2009 | 2 comments

Catface (left) and Lone Cone, Clayoquot Sound. Village of Opitsaht in the foreground, Tofino to the right. Source: flickr.

MacLean’s is a magazine that is well past its “use by” date and true to that form they have put up a remarkably provocative and axe-grindy article on economic development in First Nations territories.  Mind you, I think it is entirely true that First Nations want meaningful economic opportunities and I hope they get them.  Some environmentalists seem to think that aboriginal people are noble savages who will play the role of wildlife in parkland.  Leaving aside the MacLeans implicit question of why the hell should they be au naturale when settlers have raped all the rest of the land, the fracture lines between the First Nations and Environmental groups have been clear to me since  I worked on the Meares Island case 20 years ago.  Anyone working on that project could see that the envirnmental movement and the First Nations were going to have a trainwreck at some point in the future.  A balance of park land and economic use is what we should expect on settlement lands.  What right do we have to hold the First Nations to a higher standard than to ourselves? Are the Squamish Nation’s billboards less lovely than Surrey, or North Vancouver, let alone the wasteland that is Squamish itself?  But MacLean’s magazine: way to completely ignore longstanding, demonstrated First Nations stewardship of the land.  That article is a complete waste of 10 minutes of my life, but I am linking to it anyway.

2 Comments

Posted in First Nations, Miscellaneous

Tagged , ,

Heather Pringle: Dogs for the Dead

Posted on December 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

Smell a corpse, not smell like one, Arbuthnot.

B.C.’s own Heather Pringle has a new blog these days, and her recent post on the use of forensic dogs to detect archaeological sites and human remains in particular, in Washington State, is worth a read:

According to the staff at the Institute for Canine Forensics, dogs can smell human remains that are buried as much as nine feet below the surface.  And they can detect remains as old as 2000 years.  ”Human remains have a scent that never,  ever goes away,  especially a bone,  even after it dries out,” one of the institute’s staff members told The Peninsula Daily News.

Leave a comment

Posted in Archaeology, Miscellaneous, Technology

Tagged , , , , , ,

dSpace: The Indian History Film Project

Posted on December 1, 2009 | 3 comments

Haida Town of Chaatl. Source: NMC

There is an interesting archive of interview transcripts housed in dSpace at the University of Regina.  Most of the interviews were by CBC Radio’s Imbert Orchard and so share the flaws of Journalism and Anthropology.   The preamble says,

The original intent of The Indian History Film Project was to conduct interviews with First Nations elders across Canada and to produce a television series portraying Canadian history from a First Nations’ perspective.

The Indian History Film Project was an initiative of Direction Films and was conceived and developed by Tony Snowsill. The project leaders were Tony Snowsill and Christine Welsh. The project evolved over time, and eventually it was decided to access libraries and archives across the country to incorporate existing interviews with First Nations elders. All interviews, whether original or archival, were cross indexed by word and theme and housed in the C.P.R.C [Canadian Plains Research Centre].

A number of these interviews are with Haida people, notably Solomon Wilson and Florence Edenshaw, who discussed her arranged marriage, the meaning of Tow Hill, and the artistic tradition of her family, the Edenshaws and Davidsons.  It appears tapes of these are also available through the BC Archives, but not online.

Note: anytime you see (Indian) it means that a Haida word was not transcribed — an eerie effect.  Searching for British Columbia brings up 91 documents.

The following excerpt from an interview with Solomon Wilson of Skidegate sees him relating a tale of smallpox blankets:

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in anthropology, archives, dSpace, First Nations, Northwest Interior, Northwest Coast

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,