ABSTRACT
The importance of an interdisciplinary approach in scientific inquiry is hardly better exemplified than in the relationship between coastal processes and prehistoric maritime cultures. The archeologist may describe the culture of a maritime people and the geomorphologist may interpret the processes that have taken place, but only the two, working in concert, can describe what life was like at the time and how the environment shaped the quality of that life. Five case studies from the Puget Sound-Strait of Georgia region illustrate this thesis.
A dig at the landward terminus of Semiahmoo Spit has uncovered gravel overlain by clay, both containing evidence of early habitation. The sequence suggests occupation of an exposed headland beach followed by activity carried out at a later stage in the sheltered lee of a developing spit. Proceeding down the coast the next embayment, Birch Bay, is a classic example of a log-spiral headland bay beach. Raised terraces inland from the present shoreline have a similar geometry as a result of the same geomorphic processes. Extrapolation from middens near today’s sea level, has led to the discovery of more primitive middens on the older elevated terraces. The stratigraphy in pits dug on a raised terrace at Cherry Point illustrate a succession from cobble beach to well developed soil horizon. The terrace was crossed by early fishermen when it was a beach, much like that which now lies at the foot of the bluff, then reoccupied as a raised terrace in more recent times.
Farther to the south lie the Conway and La Conner sites. Highway interchange excavation on the Skagit delta near Conway recently uncovered a meandering distributary complete with fish-weir and willow-reed mats. La Conner’s Fishtown is a row of summer cabins built on a baymouth bar bordering the Skagit estuary. The cross-section exposed in a dig behind the present bar suggest an earlier inner mid-bay bar, occupied repeatedly between stages of inundation by previous maritime cultures.
