Wet-Site Excavation at Sunken Village Site on the Columbia River

The extensive in situ acorn pits are the most remarkable fea­tures at this landmark site. During surface exposure and mapping, all such pits contained remnants of whole acorns. Also wood and fiber artifacts were observed in and around these pits, including a shredded cedar bark cape/skirt fragment, a broken wooden wedge, wooden arrow shafts, and a well-preserved basket distinctive of the region's fine basket work. The basket piece was found with intact base and sides (no rim remained) all carefully cross-warp twined of split cedar root (identified by Bud Lane, master weaver, Siletz, and Patricia Gold, master Wasco weaver, Warm Springs; Figures 5 and 6). The style of this basket is definitely from this region and demonstrates an ancient continuity of this style of basketry. Baskets found from northern ancient wet sites are of a very different style, and themselves demonstrate at least 3,000 years of basketry cultural continuity in Salish, Makah, and Tsimshian traditional territories. For full final report on two summer's of explorations, second one sponsored by Japanese Archaeology program, see: Croes, Dale R., John L. Fagan and Maureen Newman Zehendner 2009 Sunken Village, Sauvie Island, Oregon, USA, A Report on the 2006-2007 Investigations of National Historic Landmark Site 35MU4. Journal of Wetland Archaeology Special Edition 9, 1-216. Available on Amazo

The 2006 and 2007 Field Seasons at Sunken Village

As mentioned, the 2005 erosion of the dike placed on the natural levee facing the intertidal waterlogged portion of the Sunken Village site had threatened the residents of the island, initiating a proposal by the Sauvie Island Drainage Improvement Company (SIDIC) to place protective rip-rap rock along the face of the bank. Since the site is on navigational waters under the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, field evaluation of this National Historic Landmark archaeological wet site was required to assess the potential effects of placing protective rip rap rock on the channel bank in order to comply with U.S. Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (Croes et al. 2006)

Ecofacts – Plant and Animal Analyses

Wet sites, due to reduced oxygen, provide excellent preservation of both plant and animal remains. Due to the clear importance of Sunken Village as an acorn leaching and processing location – largely because of the aquifer streaming through this approximately 100–125 m of intertidal beach – the focus in Section 4 is on the leaching pits and acorn remains. First we begin with a look at identifying the actual plant materials and fuels used at this site, requiring both visual observations of the plant remains and also cellular analysis of the wood, fibers and charcoal. Many of the perishable artifacts are introduced in this section while identifying their wood and fiber construction materials. Second we report the abundant acorns and acorn leaching pit features, so numerous at Sunken Village. Third, seed retrieval is explored, comparing the results of flotation techniques and fine wet screening. And finally, the faunal analysis reflects the use of these animal resources in a secondary position, and probably to support the group while managing the acorn leaching pits from this site. The obvious contrast here to other Northwest Coast and Columbia River sites is the reduced focus on fisheries from this location

The Physical and Cultural Background

The Sunken Village wet site (35MU4) is on one of the most important river junctures on the Northwest Coast of North America – where the Columbia River drainage of British Columbia, Canada and Washington State, U.S.A. is joined by the Willamette River flowing through much of western Oregon State, U.S.A. (Figure 2.1). The site is on Sauvie Island, where a major aquifer pumps under the natural levee into Multnomah Channel, providing a unique 125 m wide beach area where acorns placed in shallow hemlock bough-lined pits were leached in huge numbers by ancient Multnomah Peoples (Figure 2.2)

Artifact Analyses

Over 50 years of collecting and intentional vandalism at the Sunken Village wet site has demonstrated the potential material culture data preservation at this waterlogged site, and finally we can report a systematic characterization of the overall material culture – both debitage and examples of discrete artifacts. The previously and unprofessionally collected basketry, cordage and wooden artifacts reflected the wealth of wood and fiber artifacts thanks to the waterlogged preservation of the site, however collecting is very selective. The analytical power of the basketry was noted over twenty years ago, reflecting a distinct Chinookan style (Croes 1987). As reported next, this artifact analysis may even have a much broader implications for a North Pacific cultural sharing, both in the use of acorn pit processing and distinct basketry styles, factors never perceived before these initial professional explorations

Local Land-Use Planning and Natural Hazards in Coastal North Carolina

The North Carolina Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) of 1974 was designed to protect coastal resources. This legislation required local governments in the coastal region to develop land-use plans to guide development. While many saw a strong need to control growth in the region, few local governments managed land use. Proponents of the law believed that local land-use planning could protect the environment from unwise growth, while still allowing local control of development. To determine CAMA's impact after more than a decade, we interviewed thirty local governments in North Carolina. This research was part of a larger National Science Foundation-sponsored study of land-use planning in North Carolina and four other states. The results from these interviews and additional surveys indicate that CAMA has played a critical role in shaping land-use planning in the coastal region. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that, while the mandate is still necessary to ensure local land-use planning in most communities, CAMA has increased support for planning and may be playing a long-term educational role. In this article, we provide a brief history of CAMA and its land-use planning requirements, particularly those related to natural hazards. We then examine the findings from our interviews and their implications for the future

The Role of Scientific Evidence in Canada\u27s West Coast Energy Conflicts

With salience, credibility, and legitimacy as organizing themes, we investigated how opposing communities engaged with scientific information for two contentious proposed energy projects in western Canada, and how their perceptions of science influenced its use in decision-making. The Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, to carry diluted bitumen from northern Alberta’s oil sands to tankers on British Columbia’s (BC) south coast, was expected to adversely impact biodiversity and contribute to climate change. The Bute Inlet hydroelectric project, a large renewable energy project planned for BC’s Central Coast, was anticipated to impact biodiversity but was largely seen as climate-friendly. Based on surveys and interviews with 68 participants who had made one or more personal or professional decisions pertaining to the projects, we discovered that values, cultural cognition, and media effects permeated all aspects of using scientific evidence—from commissioning scientific research to selecting, assessing, and weighing it with other forms of information. As a result, science was developed and used to support positions rather than to inform decisions. We discuss ways to improve the use of science in environmental assessments and other planning and development processes where engaged communities are divided by oppositional positions. We hope this research will lead to community-university partnerships that identify broadly salient, credible, and legitimate sources of information about energy and climate issues, and foster knowledge mobilization across conflict divides

Spatio-temporal dynamics and laterality effects of face inversion, feature presence and configuration, and face outline

Although a crucial role of the fusiform gyrus (FG) in face processing has been demonstrated with a variety of methods, converging evidence suggests that face processing involves an interactive and overlapping processing cascade in distributed brain areas. Here we examine the spatio-temporal stages and their functional tuning to face inversion, presence and configuration of inner features, and face contour in healthy subjects during passive viewing. Anatomically-constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) combines high-density whole-head MEG recordings and distributed source modeling with high-resolution structural MRI. Each person's reconstructed cortical surface served to constrain noise-normalized minimum norm inverse source estimates. The earliest activity was estimated to the occipital cortex at ~100 ms after stimulus onset and was sensitive to an initial coarse level visual analysis. Activity in the right-lateralized ventral temporal area (inclusive of the FG) peaked at ~160 ms and was largest to inverted faces. Images containing facial features in the veridical and rearranged configuration irrespective of the facial outline elicited intermediate level activity. The M160 stage may provide structural representations necessary for downstream distributed areas to process identity and emotional expression. However, inverted faces additionally engaged the left ventral temporal area at ~180 ms and were uniquely subserved by bilateral processing. This observation is consistent with the dual route model and spared processing of inverted faces in prosopagnosia. The subsequent deflection, peaking at ~240 ms in the anterior temporal areas bilaterally, was largest to normal, upright faces. It may reflect initial engagement of the distributed network subserving individuation and familiarity. These results support dynamic models suggesting that processing of unfamiliar faces in the absence of a cognitive task is subserved by a distributed and interactive neural circuit

Spatio-temporal dynamics and laterality effects of face inversion, feature presence and configuration, and face outline

Although a crucial role of the fusiform gyrus (FG) in face processing has been demonstrated with a variety of methods, converging evidence suggests that face processing involves an interactive and overlapping processing cascade in distributed brain areas. Here we examine the spatio-temporal stages and their functional tuning to face inversion, presence and configuration of inner features, and face contour in healthy subjects during passive viewing. Anatomically-constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) combines high-density whole-head MEG recordings and distributed source modeling with high-resolution structural MRI. Each person's reconstructed cortical surface served to constrain noise-normalized minimum norm inverse source estimates. The earliest activity was estimated to the occipital cortex at ~100 ms after stimulus onset and was sensitive to an initial coarse level visual analysis. Activity in the right-lateralized ventral temporal area (inclusive of the FG) peaked at ~160 ms and was largest to inverted faces. Images containing facial features in the veridical and rearranged configuration irrespective of the facial outline elicited intermediate level activity. The M160 stage may provide structural representations necessary for downstream distributed areas to process identity and emotional expression. However, inverted faces additionally engaged the left ventral temporal area at ~180 ms and were uniquely subserved by bilateral processing. This observation is consistent with the dual route model and spared processing of inverted faces in prosopagnosia. The subsequent deflection, peaking at ~240 ms in the anterior temporal areas bilaterally, was largest to normal, upright faces. It may reflect initial engagement of the distributed network subserving individuation and familiarity. These results support dynamic models suggesting that processing of unfamiliar faces in the absence of a cognitive task is subserved by a distributed and interactive neural circuit

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Modality-Specific and Supramodal Word Processing

AbstractThe ability of written and spoken words to access the same semantic meaning provides a test case for the multimodal convergence of information from sensory to associative areas. Using anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG), the present study investigated the stages of word comprehension in real time in the auditory and visual modalities, as subjects participated in a semantic judgment task. Activity spread from the primary sensory areas along the respective ventral processing streams and converged in anterior temporal and inferior prefrontal regions, primarily on the left at around 400 ms. Comparison of response patterns during repetition priming between the two modalities suggest that they are initiated by modality-specific memory systems, but that they are eventually elaborated mainly in supramodal areas