Oregon Archaeology

Chapter One: Archaeology, Ethnology, Ecology, and Human History on the Millennial Scale

13 Chapter One Archaeology, Ethnology, Ecology, and Human History on the Millennial Scale Oregon’s archaeological history begins with the traces of its earliest currently known human occupants, which are dated to about 14,500 years ago at the Paisley Caves near Summer Lake, in the desert country east of the Cascades. This chapter introduces some of the main research approaches that have helped reveal the archaeological stories to follow, and concludes with some background notes on the Old World antecedents of the first Americans. As is well known, the human kind spread throughout the world long before the development of writing and documentary history. Texts pertaining to the American continents began to appear somewhat before 2,000 years ago in temple inscriptions of Mexico and Central America, and for the lands farther north only about 500 years ago in the handwritten navigational logs, diaries, and business records of European mariners. Mentions of Oregon itself are found in the notations of mariners, traders, trappers, missionaries, settlers, miners, and soldiers who began arriving about 300 years ago to seek their fortunes in the region. Fortunately, however, many connections to the human past reach back vastly farther than written histories. First of all, it is no mere platitude that the past lives on in the present. The great body of knowledge shared today within the human family was gained through experience and accumulated over countless generations, as the elder members of every household passed on what they knew to the younger ones by both example and direct instruction. Traditional knowledge and belief, much of it truly ancient, is embedded and carried forward in living stories, songs, art, dances, and the learned skills and productions of artisans and specialists of every kind. In our modern world, many traditional products and values are carefully preserved in museum collections of tools, clothing, and art objects that were made and used long ago by various peoples, while many oral traditions passed down 14 OREGON ARCHAEOLOGY through the generations have been captured and made immutable in written texts. It is often said that learning about the past is a key to better understanding the present; the converse is also true: the present offers innumerable clues to human life and activity in the past. Archaeological research itself begins from the fact that many of the artifacts , houses, and other cultural features that people created long ago still exist, buried in the earth or surviving in the open. In such sites are found the actual bones of animals and residues of plants that people ate as food, and manufactures of myriad kinds, made by humans out of available natural materials. From ancient objects, complete or fragmentary, we can learn much about human history that may have dropped out of our shared body of knowledge over time, for certainly not everything in the busy lives of people is remembered and passed down in descriptive detail. Even within the period of early written history in North America, the lives of ordinary people like farmers, herders, road builders, merchants, miners, loggers, and soldiers tend to be little described in the written texts of their times or fully preserved in oral tradition. These people too had stories that can be illuminated by the objects and structures they left behind. Ethnology and Archaeological Interpretation An archaeologist in training learns to identify and interpret artifacts, structures , and other specimens from the past by studying the knowledge and experience of people who made and used such items in times still remembered . In Oregon as elsewhere, much about traditional technology, language, and customs has been recorded in recent historical times from the testimony of Native people who still practiced or remembered the traditional way of life. Such records are deemed ethnohistory if they stem from the incidental inquiries and observations of early visitors such as traders, trappers, or settlers . If they stem from interviews and observations among traditional Native groups conducted by later scholars (anthropologists, historians, linguists, and others) they are called ethnography, while comparative studies based on such information are termed ethnology. In all cases the key point is to learn about a people’s traditional way of life through their own testimony and/or direct observation of their actions. Native scholars have also published their own memoirs and studies, a trend that began in the later nineteenth century and is growing rapidly today. ARCHAEOLOGY, ETHNOLOGY, ECOLOGY, AND HUMAN HISTORY 15 Ancient flaked-stone...