The Čḯxʷicən Marine Invertebrate Project

Banner photo credit: Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe on Canoe Journey, 2019, photo used with permission by Keri Ellis and LEKT

Overview

The Čḯxʷicən site is a Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe (LEKT) village in Port Angeles, WA, U.S.A., at the base of Ediz Hook on the south shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca that was occupied for the past 2,700 years (Larson 2006). In 2004, Larson Anthropological Archaeological Services (LAAS) and LEKT members excavated the site with large open blocks of 1 x 1 m units by finely defined stratigraphic layers (Reetz et al. 2006). In 2012, Sarah Campbell (Western Washington University), Michael Etnier (Western Washington University), Virginia Butler (Portland State University [PSU]), Kristine Bovy (University of Rhode Island), and Sarah Sterling (PSU) initiated a research project focusing on Čḯxʷicən’s faunal remains and geo-archaeological records from the 2004 mitigation. As part of project design, we selected to study excavation areas that were linked to two possible plankhouses, to include interior and extramural deposits.

The Marine Invertebrate Project includes a report describing the sample selection and processing decisions made for marine invertebrate samples, including the sampling to redundancy process for subsampling large samples and criteria for taphonomic and taxonomic identifications; and primary data sets generated from the analysis. The Marine Invertebrate Project is part of a larger zooarchaeological-geoarchaeological project, The Čḯxʷicən Project.

Support

Funding for this project came largely from the National Science Foundation [Grant Number 1219470].