ABSTRACT
The warrior cache is a clustered assemblage of weaponry and related items 16 pieces in total that was found during excavations at the Boardwalk site, Prince Rupert Harbour, British Columbia, Canada, in 1968. It is one piece of evidence that has stimulated debate on the antiquity and duration of Northwest Coast warfare prior to the time of European contact. On the basis of indirect evidence from radiocarbon-dated human remains nearby, different estimated ages of around 500 BC and AD 200 have been proposed for the warrior cache. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates have obtained directly from the cranium and one of the cedar dowels, and are reported. They define an age of around cal AD 1000 for the deposition of these items, an age that is similarly shown for a clustering of headless skeletons at the Lachane site and two possible decapitations at Garden Island, a third burial site at Prince Rupert Harbour.
