Appendix H - Historical Archaeological and ... - CBP.gov

of processed resources such as charred plant material, seeds, or calcined bone and shell. Where
the landscape has undergone the most intensive historic and modern development, most notably
in urban and suburban areas and tilled agricultural land, all that may be left of these sites are
dispersed loci of fire-modified rock and little else to indicate their age or function.
Lithic tools and tool-making debris are often found unassociated with features or cultural
stratigraphy that would otherwise provide ages or contexts to interpret their functions or places in
a particular land use pattern. Such sites are usually referred to as lithic scatters or lithic material
sites. Quarry sites are distinctive lithic material sites in that they have been identified at natural
outcrops of toolstone and consist of dense concentrations of cores and debitage with few if any
finished stone tools. Estimating the age of lithic material sites is also difficult if they lack
temporally diagnostic artifacts such as projectile points. These sites are found on almost every
part of the landscape of Western Washington, from high elevation toolstone outcrops and ideal
vantage points for hunting to the broad lowlands and coast.
Prehistoric Chronological Sequence
Several published culture-historical sequences are important to the identification and
interpretation of the Western Washington archaeological record. All focus on sub-areas within
this portion of the PEIS zone or neighboring regions of British Columbia. The more recently
derived sequences often build on the work of early researchers and share similar age divisions
and characteristics of periods, phases, and other culture-historical units. The designations of
chronological periods, their characteristics, and their implications for the archaeological record
in the PEIS zone are summarized in a very general fashion in this section. The periods used here
include the Paleo-Indian, Early, Middle, and Late Periods. This terminology is similar to some
of the specific sequences cited below; however the divisions between them as conceptualized in
this document follow major environmental changes as well as patterns of human land use: the
end of the Pleistocene epoch and the early Holocene (ca. 10,000 B.P.-5,000 B.P.), middle-late
Holocene (ca. 5,000 B.P.-2,500 B.P.) and late Holocene before Euroamerican contact (ca. 2,500
B.P.-200 B.P.).
The summary below is derived from sequences developed for the Strait of Georgia and San Juan
Islands area (King, 1950); the Fraser Delta area (Borden, 1970); the Skagit River delta
(Thompson, 1978); central and northern Puget Sound (Blukis Onat, 1987; Kidd, 1964; Nelson,
1990); the Cascade Mountains (Burtchard, 2007); and the Olympic Peninsula (Schalk, 1988;
Wessen, 1990). The northern lowlands portion of the PEIS zone centered on the San Juan
Islands and Strait of Georgia has a more fully developed culture historical sequence and
formalized phase system, which is a product of the earliest intensive excavation in the central
Northwest Coast occurring here (Borden, 1950; Carlson, 1960; King, 1950; Stein, 2000). A
comparative schematic of some of these sequences is shown in Figure H-5, which demonstrates
the variability of temporal divisions between culture historical sequences of particular subregions
environmental zones. More general overviews of Northwest Coast prehistory contain
useful summaries of the prehistoric cultural sequences in other areas, broader patterns across the
region, and persistent research questions that have guided research in this region (Ames and
Maschner, 1999; Matson and Coupland, 1995).
Northern Border Activities H-59 July 2012