Expertise
I received my B.A. in anthropology from the University of Washington (UW) and my M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology at Washington State University (WSU), staying in-State for economy. I did my Ph.D. dissertation research on basketry and cordage artifacts from the Ozette Village wet site, a Makah Indian site that was covered by a massive mudslide 300 years ago and preserved through waterlogging--often referred to as the Pompeii of North America (my updated Ozette Basketry dissertation is now published, with beautiful pen & ink basketry illustrations, in Amazon (2019) and updated and illustrated Cordage and Knots on the Northwest Coast in Amazon (2021)). I conducted post-doctoral research with the Makah Tribal Nation at the 3,000 year old Hoko River wet site, preserving hundreds of baskets, fishhooks, and other perishables (in Amazon 1995), and the Hoko Rockshelter shell midden, the largest such habitation rockshelter on the Northwest Coast (in Amazon 2005). I directed the first-ever archaeological excavations at the National Historic Landmark wet site of Sunken Village, Portland, OR, with the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Indians (2009). And I co-directed excavations of the Mud Bay/Qwu?gwes wet and dry site with the Squaxin Island Tribe near Olympia Washington (2013).
I recently completed a summary of all this work, 50 years of working on waterlogged/wet archaeological sites and ancient basketry, with Ed Carriere, Suquamish Elder and Master Basketmaker, summarizing, in first person, his 50 years of cultural training in Salishan basketry and canoe carving (in Amazon 2018). This complete history, a synergy of science and culture, is in our new Memoir 15 of the Journal for Northwest Anthropology (JONA). In this memoir we highlight our work together analyzing and replicating the 2,000 year old Biderbost wet site basketry housed at the UW Burke Museum. We call our new approach Generationally-Linked Archaeology and proudly announce that this well illustrated memoir is now available on Amazon and Generationally-Linked Archaeology is explained in articles in this Research Exchange.
In large part from Ed Carriere’s work in replicating archaeological baskets from northwest museums, he recently was awarded one of four national Community Spirit Awards (2022) from the Native American-based First Peoples Fund program. Ed also was given a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) 2023 National Heritage Fellowship (see Ed receiving the award and his speech at the National Archives in Washington DC 16 minutes into the program). On the science side, Ed and I received the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) 2023 Award for Excellence in Archaeological Analysis.
These national awards demonstrate that the synergy of Culture and Science produces much more than either one separately.