CMT Archaeology in British Columbia: The Meares Island Studies

Abstract

An emergent theme in archaeological resource management and research in the 1980s in British Columbia was aboriginal forest use, exemplified by the culturally modified tree (CMT).In this paper, we review the history of CMT studies in British Columbia, and focus on two CMT studies carried out in the 1980s on Meares Island off the west coast of Vancouver Island.The results of a number of other CMT studies are also discussed.A CMT DEFINITION The term "CMT" is usually used to refer to "a tree which has been intentionally altered by Native people participating in the traditional utilization of the forest" (Areas Associates 1984: 1 ).This definition was adopted as a working definition at a CMT workshop in 1991 attended by archaeologists, forest industry personnel, archaeological resource managers, and other interested persons (Charlton 1991).Non-native people have, of course, intentionally altered trees in British Columbia since their arrival, and there is nothing inherent in the term which necessarily excludes such trees.In some cases, the study of non-native forest use may be of historical or other value, but no such studies have yet been conducted in British Columbia, and in this paper the term is used as defined above.* The authors thank the following for their support and assistance in the 1985 Meares Island study: the hereditary chiefs, elders and people of the Ahousaht and Tlay-oqui-aht Tribes; the Ahousaht Indian Band Council; the Tlay-o-qui-aht First Nations Council; the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council; the lay firms of Rosenberg and Rosenberg (Vancouver), and Woodward and Company (Victoria); and the many Nuuchah-nulth people who gave of their time and knowledge during the study.We also thank MacMillan Bloedel Limited for their financial support of the 1984 Meares Island study and the Newcastle Block study, and the Archaeology Branch of the Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture for initiating the 1984 study.We note that it was the recognition, by MacMillan Bloedel and the Archaeology Branch, of the importance of CMTs, and the need for large-area CMT research, that led to the 1984 Meares Island study.The archaeological field work at DiRi-24 was sponsored by the Ministry of Transportation and Highways.Computer drafting by Clinton Coates (figures 8, 9, 11 and 12) and Karen Preckel (figures 1 and 10).HISTORY OF CMT STUDIES IN B.C.The existence of CMTs in the Northwest Coast was noted by some of the earliest European explorers.Alexander Mackenzie, for instance, noted in 1793 that in the Bella Coola valley hemlock cambium was processed, dried, and stored on a large scale and that "this discovery satisfied me respecting the many Hemlock-trees which I had observed stripped of their bark" (Mackenzie, in Anderson 1925: 135).The ethnographic use of tree cambium as a food and medicine, the technological use of inner cedar bark, and the importance of cedar wood to the peoples of coastal British Columbia are well recorded in the ethnographic and historical literature (A.Eldridge 1982), but the resulting scarred trees and remains of logged trees have generally been ignored by ethnographers, archaeologists, and foresters (although see Johnson 1969: 74).The earliest study of CMTs was undertaken by a forester, Thain White, who noted culturally bark-stripped pine trees in Shoshone and Kootenai territory in western Montana.White published a paper (White 1954) describing the scars along with forty-seven dendrochronological dates from bark-stripped pine trees near Flathead Lake.He suggested that the high number of scars dating to World War I was the result of rationing and sugar shortages as pine inner bark has a high sugar content.White's study contained many of the ideas and methods used in later CMT studies, but his work fell into oblivion and has only recently been rediscovered.The application of White's ideas to formal CMT studies has only taken place within the last two decades.The first CMT investigation following White's pioneering work was carried out in the mid 1970s by Russel Hicks (1976).Hicks recorded bark-stripped cedars and various types of cedar logging features in several locations on the British Columbia coast.In addition, he used direct tree-ring counts on wedges cut from scar lobes to date approximately fifty bark strip scars.Although the results of his work were not published until the mid 1980s (Hicks 1984, 1985), other researchers began to collect CMT data in the early 1980s.Archaeological site inventories of areas scheduled for development started to include CMTs as a site type (Archer and Bernick 1983; M. Eldridge 1982;

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