Decorated antler?, and a worked sea lion tooth from the Elchuk collection, Mill Hill.
I just came across this interesting document from 1999 by Liz Crocker (PDF) which is a cultural history of three CRD Parks: Mill Hill, Francis/King and Thetis Lake. While I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in the archaeological component of this report, there are at least two notations of considerable interest.
The first is the documentation of an unrecorded shell midden at Mill Hill, not DcRu-70 but another site, including a sketch map of the location which is about 2 to 3 kilometres inland. There are also reports of unrecorded inland shell middens at Thetis Lake Park. Since such sites are rare and poorly know, then this is something worth following up. Indeed, I wish the CRD took their stewardship role seriously enough to commission an intensive, comprehensive, and professional inventory of the archaeological heritage of all their Parks. This kind of baseline information is so essential that I honestly don’t understand how they think they can discharge their duties without it.
The other point of interest in Crocker’s report is the documentation of a fairly large private collection, also from Mill Hill and also well inland. Included in this collection are Locarno-style artifacts as well as more recent ones such as a flat-topped handmaul. Appendix 2 of the linked report includes some snapshots of this collection. Despite the poor quality, it is great to see private collections being documented. The small decorative piece shown above is interesting and unusual, and the abundance of organic remains suggests again that these were collected from or near a shell midden. Again, something to follow up. If only there were a Ph.D. student at UVIC, say, who was interested in inland shell middens…..
Sketch map of reported but unrecorded inland shell midden patches at Mill Hill.
Northwest Coast Archaeology 