Tikchik village: a nineteenth century riverine community in ... - Cluster

VANSTONE: TIKCHIK VILLAGE 349could, of course, have been supported during the summer at the timeof the salmon runs, but this larger number would then have had todisperse in order to carry out the subsistence activities characteristicof a woodland riverine environment.It so happens that there are a number of indications evident inthe Tikchik collections and in the physical settlement itself whichsuggest an age differential for the houses even within the relativelyshort span of total occupation. The following criteria were used asa means of determining tentatively the chronological relationship ofthe ten house pits to each other: 1) Distinctness of the house pit beforeremoval of the sod. It was realized that a shallow, indistinctappearance is by no means an infallible indication of antiquity, butin combination with the other criteria, this seemed to be a reasonablecharacteristic of greater age at Tikchik; 2) Wood preservation. Againthis would not be a satisfactory criterion alone, particularly since somany of the houses had been robbed of at least some logs prior tocollapse. Judgment here was based more on the condition of thewood rather than the amount. Generally speaking, those houses inwhich the wood present was pulpy and badly distintegrated were consideredto be the oldest; 3) Prevalence of locally manufactured pottery.Those houses containing the most pottery were considered tobe the oldest; 4) Prevalence of indications of flint working. Again,those dwellings with the most flint chips and tools were consideredas oldest; 5) Prevalence of metal containers, tools, and worked fragments.Those dwellings containing the smallest amount of metalartifacts and rejectage were considered to be of the greatest age;6) Depth of excavation. In combination with the other criteria, thedepth of excavation of the dwellings appeared to be significant.shallow excavation was thought to be an indication of age, while themore recent houses were built into fairly deep excavations. This is arelative matter, of course, since none of the structures on the site,with the exception of the kashgees, were really deeply excavated.It will be noted that no attempt isAmade here to include a criterioninvolving relative age of the artifacts recovered from varioushouses. As stated previously, no artifacts could be identified as belongingsolely to the period of Russian contact and those that docorrespond to types mentioned in the Russian sources are too few innumber and too widely distributed throughout the site to be significantas a possible indication of the age of any structure.On the basis of the above mentioned criteria, it appears thathouses 7 and 8 are the most recent on the site, with perhaps house .7