Cordage from the Ozette village archaeological site: A technological, functional, and comparative study

Dale R Croes; Darby C Stapp

A section of a whaling village, with massive cedar plank long-houses, was engulfed by an enormous clay mudslide over three centuries ago at Ozette. Tens of thousands of wood and fiber artifacts were preserved, including thousands of cordage items (often demonstrating knotting techniques), in a waterlogged environment. Washington State University (WSU) archaeologists, working in equal partnership with the Makah Indian Nation, excavated a section of this site. Being the WSU graduate student who undertook the scientific study of ancient basketry and cordage items, I worked directly with Makah Master Weavers at the Neah Bay School. The Makah leadership felt I could not fully understand these materials from Ozette unless I got this cultural training, and they were right. Through this approach a unique synergy of cultural and scientific analysis/synthesis is produced, and from these three levels: First, I define the diverse array of Ozette cordage attributes (modes; including knots) and statistically compares them to the hundreds of ancient cordage examples that occur from all known Northwest Coast wet sites. Second, I combine culturally important cordage attributes, as learned from Makah weavers, into cordage types which also are compared to the diverse types found at all other wet sites; the results indicate a continuity of cordage cultural styles in three regions of the Northwest Coast for 2,000 to 3,000 years. And third, I combine the Ozette cordage types into functional sets, supported by them being archaeologically recovered in their original position in ancient households at the Ozette Village (noting that much of the plank house components were bound together by cordage). I computer mapped positions of cordage types in the Ozette House demonstrating the location of different family units and reflecting the activities of household members. My three-level analysis of cordage from Ozette Village and other archaeological wet sites demonstrates a prominent role for cordage and knotting in the complex maritime adaptations along the Northwest Coast of North America, gaining a new line of evidence for this region’s dynamic archaeological and cultural past. In July 2022, in part because of his replication of ancient Salish Sea archaeological basketry, Ed Carriere was awarded the Native-based Community Spirit Award by the First Peoples Fund, honoring artists who embody their People's cultural assets in their creations and their way of life. In March of 2023, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) honored him as one of its 2023 National Heritage Fellows, recipients of our nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. In February 2023, reflecting the science side of the work, Carriere and Croes were awarded the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Award for Excellence in Archaeological Analysis, demonstrating their synergy of culture and science produces much more than either one does separately. In recognition of these national awards, their book, Re-Awakening Ancient Salish Sea Basketry: Fifty Years of Basketry Studies in Culture and Science, is now issued as a special hard cover edition by JONA. To learn more, please visit the JONA Spotlight page at: https://www.northwestanthropology.com/spotlight/ed-carriere-nea-fellow.

Cordage from the Ozette village archaeological site: A technological, functional, and comparative study

Files and links (2)

Abstract

Metrics

Details