Mudflats yield archaeological secrets
By Alistair Taylor -- Nov 15 2006
Initially, I was reluctant to go to last week's presentation at the Museum at Campbell River.
It was a Wednesday night, a long day at work, even longer one the next day, maybe I should just stay home. But my son wanted to go to get some firsthand research for a school project on local First Nations culture, so off we went.
Man am I glad I went along. The presentation was on clam garden and fish trap research being conducted by the Hamatla Treaty Society (HTS). The presentation was done by anthropologist Deidre Cullon with some additional comments by archaeologist Bjorn Simonsen.
During the summer of 2006, the HTS conducted archaeological fieldwork in the Johnstone Strait and Comox areas. Prior to the fieldwork, fish traps had been documented throughout the Johnstone Strait and Comox areas but the HTS believed that there were others that had been overlooked by archaeologists. The HTS also believed that there were hundreds of clam gardens that were yet to be documented. Thus the focus of the fieldwork was the identification of fish traps and clam gardens.
During June and July 2006, when the tides were low, HTS crews and Cullon, Simonsen and geomorphologist John Harper surveyed beaches throughout Johnstone Strait. Dozens of fish trap complexes were identified and more than 100 new clam gardens were identified. The crews recorded the GPS locations of the traps and clam gardens, took photographs and, for the fish traps, collected numerous samples of fish trap stakes for study and radiocarbon dating.
The crews would travel to various sites in the Discovery Islands, usually inlets with mudflats at the mouths of rivers. There they sought out and uncovered the remaining stakes driven into the silt that formed the framework of fish traps used by local First Nations group to harvest salmon and the like. These sites would have hundreds of stakes, many of which were hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years old. When they are pulled out of the mud, they look as fresh as if they were hacked at by a stone axe just months before. Sheared or worn off at the surface, the silt would preserve the remaining base of the post. These posts were as thin as a finger or as thick as a man's leg.
The posts were arranged in such a way that the tide would rise and the fish would swim into the traps which were basically like a corral or fence open at some point to the shore. The tide would go out and the fish swimming merrily inside the enclosure would not get out in time and be stranded inside at low tide. A simple but ingenious harvesting technique.
The surveyers would slosh around these mud flats looking for stakes and then take a GPS reading on every one in order to map it. Some of the flats were strewn with these things. Some were being uncovered by the channel of the river while others had to be dug out. Stakes were sent to Florida for radiocarbon dating and they prove hundreds of years of continuous use. That, of course, is the purpose behind all this; to prove continuous occupation of the areas for land claims. Cullon said that the government's position on land claims is that only land above the high tide mark can be claimed but First Nations lay claim to tidal areas as well because they were used for millennia. The fish traps and the clam gardens prove that -as if it really needs to be proven. It's only the most obvious thing in the world that people living off the "land" around here would harvest clams and other shellfish.
The clam gardens are interesting as well. These are areas of clam beaches where the people would clear the beach rocks away and stack them into a low wall that followed the line of the beach on the water side, often for hundreds of meters. The result was a terrace of beach sand that increased the productivity of the beach in terms of clam production upwards of 400 per cent.
We also got to see in the presentation a little bit of professional competitiveness as well as Simonsen said he was one of the naysayers about clam gardens. He used to feel that the gardens were, if anything, remnants of fish traps. But he now concedes that they were indeed clam gardens.
The oldest stakes the HTS crews dug up and had dated were 1750 years old. Amazing.
It was a fascinating presentation that kept my 14-year-old son rapt with attention. The museum put this event on as part of their ongoing series of lectures. If this is the standard of these events, you'd be well served to check them out.
The original story from the Campbell River Mirror is gone, but can be found at http://www.archaeology.ws/2006-11-21.htm.
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