PORT ANGELES – Preliminary information from an archaeological survey shows a medium to high statistical probability that Native American artifacts or remains are present under half of the Port Angeles waterfront.
The early information from a survey that will be completed next year shows only general areas of potential archaeological interest, city archaeologist Derek Beery said Friday.
So although the probability can be calcuated, nobody knows where such deposits might exist, what they might contain, or their extent.
The study area encompasses 872 acres and stretches about three miles from Ediz Hook through downtown and to and including the abandoned Rayonier mill site, Beery said.
Roughly 15 percent of the survey area has a high probability for deposits and 35 percent a medium probability, Beery said.
Half has low probability
“My ballpark guess is, about 50 percent has a low probability,” Beery said.
“At its core level, it’s a map that segregates out areas of low, medium and high statistical probability that an archaeological site may still remain,” Beery said, calling it “an archaeological predictive model.”
Beery said the survey, which will be completed “early next year,” does not yet include field work nor a written report, but will include a management plan and a soils study.
Under state and federal law, the presence of archaeological deposits can require a higher level of review when property is to be developed, often including separate and detailed archaeological surveys.
Port Angeles Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Russ Veenema said he wasn’t worried about the potential presence of archaeological deposits, or any effect they might have on waterfront development.
“I can’t say it’s surprising,” he said.
“That’s why they hired the archaeologist and are working with the tribe to pinpoint areas. We can’t jump to conclusions.
“We have to proceed and continue to dialogue. We have to wait for the reports to come out and wait and see what happens.”
No specific areas
Beery would not say where the deposits might exist, saying their locations were protected by law and that the map did not show any specifically defined areas of archaeological interest.
“The model is a planning tool, a risk assessment,” Beery said.
“It’s not trying to set out to say, yes, archaeological deposits are here and here and here. It’s trying to give regulatory people and people in the planning stages of a project an idea of the level of study that may need to be undertaken.”
The survey is not public because it is in working draft-form, he said.
Beery, hired in October 2007 as part of a settlement agreement over the unearthed Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen, also accompanies city workers when they dig, clear or grade property.
He’s there when power poles are dug and sewer and stormwater lines trenched.
“Any time the city digs in the settlement area [from Ediz Hook to Rayonier] I am there,” he said.
Found some artifacts
While monitoring, Beery has not found intact archaeological sites or human remains, but has found “isolated artifacts,” he said.
“They are hard to describe,” he said. “I call them small, utilitarian tools. There aren’t that many, no more than a handful.”
Beery discussed his survey findings in January with the Port of Port Angeles, the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe and the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.
Interim Port Director Bill James said Friday that Bob McChesney, port director at the time, was the only member of the port staff to discuss the survey with Beery.
McChesney said Friday in a telephone interview that Beery had “reviewed with the port” the preliminary model.
“It was really more in the form of a show-and-tell as opposed to anything substantive having to do with future land-use decisions or projects,” said McChesney, now executive director of the Port of Edmonds.
“It was preliminary and conceptual, not conclusive. At the time, it was still a work in progress.”
McChesney would not comment on the location of the areas of low, medium and high probability for archaeological deposits.
Tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles did not return calls for comment.
Working from maps
Beery said he built his model overlaying maps that contained historical information and read studies and other written material on the development of Port Angeles Harbor from prehistory to the present.
He used digital maps, an 1853 U.S. Coast Survey map that showed three Native American villages on the harbor’s shoreline, and other maps that indicate changes in the shoreline, noting where fill was deposited for industrial and commercial development, which constitutes a large portion of the study area, including downtown Port Angeles.
Beery also is saying where archaeological deposits might be located by predicting human behavior based on environmental situations, such as proximity to water, steepness of slopes and abundance of year-round sunlight.
The 1853 map shows a village in the Marine Drive area west of downtown Port Angeles where, in 2003, Tse-whit-zen and a village burial site was unearthed, and along with it, thousands of artifacts, bones and more than 300 complete skeletal remains of Native Americans who lived there dating back to 700 B.C.
Tse-whit-zen was uncovered at the outset of a 2003 state Department of Transportation project to build a giant drydock for pontoons and anchors for the now-completed Hood Canal Bridge eastern-half replacement project.
That project was abandoned in 2004 at a cost of more than $90 million to the state Department of Transportation.
After the tribe sued Transportation, the agency signed a 2006 settlement agreement under which the city was paid $7.5 million for economic development for jobs lost because of the project’s failure, $500,000 to attract and keep businesses, and $480,000 to hire a staff archaeologist — Beery — to conduct the survey, write the management plan and monitor waterfront development.
Also as pat of the agreement, the tribe received 11 acres at the site to rebury its ancestors and $2.5 million for reburial expenses and to build a museum.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
