S moke S ignals
AUGUST 1, 2015
15
'Archaeology isn’t just moving dirt'
ARCHAEOLOGY continued
from page 14
that would tell us more about the
activities that happened there?,’ ”
says Harrelson.
These next generation archaeol-
ogists have been working the old
school site together. They started by
walking the perimeter and seeing
what they could see before using
ground penetrating radar to obtain a
little deeper picture of the landscape.
The first step in the process was
creating a detailed map and find-
ing the outlines of the demolished
school house. The students pored
over aerial photographs and de-
cades-old maps as well as pictures
from a drone before flagging a doz-
en or so 5-meter square plots. They
then removed the topsoil and began
to see what they could find.
“We peel back the sod to get a
sense of what artifacts are at the
surface of the site,” says Gonzalez.
“That can give you a much better
understanding of what is below the
surface. Once we do the surface
collection, we analyze everything
and then we put it back into the
ground exactly where we found it.”
Gonzalez says that in the past ar-
chaeologists would have just taken
everything.
Tribal member Sharrah McKen-
zie, a senior archaeology student at
Portland State University, who has
joined the group for the summer
dig, found a piece of glass that she
was eager to show Gonzalez before
placing it in a brown paper bag
labeled on the outside.
Gonzalez says the small piece of
clear, ribbed-glass was most likely
“Depression” glass or “penny” glass
that was widely used in the 1920s
and ’30s. Gonzalez says it could
have been a jelly jar or possibly a
lighting cover.
“Sweet,” says McKenzie as she
returned to the sifter.
Reducing the impact on the land
and finding answers to the ques-
tions that are most important to
the community are extremely im-
TЭnas
Intervention
Services to be provided to babies &
moms-to-be:
Checkups
Cleanings, if applicable
Injection-free fillings, if needed and
appropriate
Cavity prevention treatment
Age-appropriate goodie bags
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Confederated Tribes
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Dental Clinic
Photo by Michelle Alaimo
This piece of brick was unearthed while Sharrah McKenzie and her digging partner, Scott Adams, a University of
Washington anthropology student, were digging.
portant to Gonzalez and the Tribal
Historic Preservation staff.
“It’s equally important to remem-
ber exactly what was lost when
people came here,” says Gonzalez.
“That is a period in history, espe-
cially in archaeology, that there
really isn’t a lot of knowledge about.
For archaeologists, Native Amer-
icans ceased to exist in the early
20th century.”
Graduate student and teaching
assistant Ian Kretzler found a piece
of chalk that most likely came from
one of the classrooms that used to
be on the site.
Kretzler has been working with
Edwards on a mapping project
since last August.
“I feel very lucky to be a part of
this group and this project,” says
Kretzler. “It’s a unique opportunity
to interact with and teach students
a way of doing archaeology that is
not often what they see in archae-
Pregnant women
and babies under 2
Tribal members: pregnant women or
0-2 year olds (teeth or no teeth!)
who come in for a scheduled dental
checkup or other appointment will
be entered in a
raffle for a baby
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ology classes.”
Gonzalez says she wants all the
students to come away from the
field school with a larger under-
standing of what it means to con-
duct archaeology in modern times.
“Archaeology isn’t just moving
dirt,” says Gonzalez. “It’s working
with people and it is understanding
the local history in a really nuanced
way. That is the goal that I have for
them above and beyond anything
else. It’s a really big shift. We can
keep doing archaeology the way it
has been done or we can do it in a
way that makes it relevant to Trib-
al communities.”
As a Tribal member, Harrelson
says the best part of this collabo-
ration is that it fits into a “deep”
connection to place.
“We, as Tribal people, are in-
heritors to that,” says Harrelson.
“There is a sense of belonging and
connection to place that is in unto
itself medicine.” n