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

VANSTONE: TIKCHIK VILLAGE 233kashgees is situated. This was by far the largest structure in thesettlement and its prominent location on the highest point in thegeneral area adds to its impressiveness.The village was situated so as to afford a good view down theriver toward Tikchik Lake. Behind and at some distance from thesettlement the land again rises gently but almost immediately TikchikMountain begins and eventually rises to a height of more than800 m. This spectacular feature gains in impressiveness because it isthe only really high ground in the immediate vicinity.Vegetationin the area of the Tikchik site consists for the most part of spruce,birch, willows, and alders. The latter two virtually surround the site ;even along the river bank a small stand of willows is growing up.Behind the willows around most of the site is an extensive stand ofspruce which, at the time the settlement was occupied, may havebeen thicker and more extensive than it is at present. The trees,which extend back to the base of Tikchik Mountain, are widelyspaced and there is even growth. But the forest is not of uniformdensity. In places there are open meadow-like areas, particularly tothe southeast of the site, which in summer are marshes where watercontinually stands. Birch are not plentiful in the vicinity of the sitetoday, there being only an occasional small tree in the spruce forest,notably on the higher ground.Both willows and spruce are slowly encroaching on the site. Thewillows come first and behind them are small spruce trees. Willowsare very close to the largest kashgee (K-2) and there is a large clumpbetween houses 2 and 3 and house 9. Sixty-five years after abandonment,this willow-spruce encroachment has made no real progress,and yet it is not difficult to imagine that within another 200 yearsor so, the site may be completely covered with these trees.The purpose of the 1965 field season was to excavate the site asfully as possible. The first step was to strip the sod layer from eachof the ten house pits and the two kashgees. An obvious midden depositwas found in front of K-2 and here the sod was stripped froman area measuring 9 m. by 3 m. In addition, five test pits, four ofthem in front of houses, were opened up at various times during thesummer for the purpose of locating, if possible, additional middenmaterial and to determine the maximum thickness of the culturaldebris at several places on the site.The HousesExcavation of the houses posed none of the problems that sometimesconfront archaeologists who work in arctic and subarctic re-