WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000 nations who made a make their homes along with the Columbia River and the river, we recognize and honor these past and present indigenous communities and early in a couple reminders if you have a minute first Thursday in a while. 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 A couple reminders if you have a minute first Thursday and while we are, oops, and I need to start the recording. We will shortly be recording the talk. 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.000 Oh, I always do that. 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:09.000 There we go. 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:22.000 We're recording a talk, and that is so you can listen to it again later and you can also access it, you can access it later on the PSU website and share it with folks who couldn't come who might be interested. 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:36.000 And then we also ask that you go ahead and hold your questions till the end we'll have about 10 or 15 minutes for questions. And at that time, you can raise your hand or use the chat function and all help moderate fat for our speaker. 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:43.000 So sit tight, if you're really excited you can write it in the chat and we'll come, we'll get to it at the end of the talk. 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:47.000 If you have a good one. Sometimes it's good to write it down. 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:59.000 So I am so excited to welcome Kimberly Fitzgerald who's the archaeologists the historic preservation officer for the city of Salem and so happy that she had time to come and talk with us. 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:11.000 can really it has been resident of Oregon for almost 30 years. She lives here with her family. She was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and she has a master's degree in city planning and historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania, and 00:01:11.000 --> 00:01:25.000 a master's in archaeology in CRM from Adam state and Colorado, as I said she's currently the historic preservation officer for the city of Salem. Since 2009 so that's what you're going to talk to us about today. 00:01:25.000 --> 00:01:30.000 Thank you so much again for joining us and I'm going to pass it off to you. 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:33.000 Great. Oh, thank you so much. 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:41.000 And I'm going to share. 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:53.000 You should be able to share now. 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:59.000 Oops you muted yourself. There you go. Can you hear me now hilarity Yes, sir. 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:23.000 Thanks for having me here today I'm really excited to be here. And I want to quickly, provide an overview of what I define urban archaeology as So, generally, that's what I do at the city of Salem so my training was in as a Shelby mentioned, it was first 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:39.000 in city planning, as well as Historic Preservation so all the above ground stuff and things, and then honestly because of the challenges we had in the city with public works for most folks always digging up things and getting in trouble with the show 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:56.000 tribes my, my boss told me to go back to school and I was actually super excited to go back to school so I actually went to, to the field school through Portland State of their forte Vancouver so I had a wonderful time and the focus there is really on 00:02:56.000 --> 00:03:13.000 public archaeology so that's near and dear to my heart So after I talk a little bit about what urban archaeology is in the city of Salem, and give you a like a big picture overview of our historic program and how archaeology fits into that then I'm going 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:23.000 to talk about a case study a specific project that we worked on with someone that Shelby knows Ross. 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:23.000 Yeah. 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:31.000 Alright so I'm going to jump in so CRM is the management of our cultural heritage and in this case. 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:48.000 Archaeological resources within the context of local, state, and federal laws and archaeology practice and then Seti I think is a bit more challenging and archaeology practiced in more rural settings just because you have a lot more you have to coordinate 00:03:48.000 --> 00:04:04.000 because you have more, more people, more cars more buildings and then of course lots of asphalt and more densely located utilities that you have to avoid hitting, but that said the process itself i think is pretty much the same whether you're in an urban 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:14.000 environment or rural environment you really want to do what you can to make sure that any redevelopment doesn't impact any known archaeological resources. 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:29.000 And sometimes you don't know what's under the ground so sometimes that everything begins with just doing some testing and basic research about the property which again is the same whether I think you're in a rural area or an urban area. 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:50.000 And then, at least for me, it's really important to coordinate and consult with the interested in tribes, as well as the shadow office, so that when or if known side, we can work together along with the developer to see if we can do redesign work on monitoring 00:04:50.000 --> 00:05:02.000 construction, and then if if avoidance isn't feasible, then we can work together to decide what sort of mitigation measures will work for that for our project. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:13.000 Alright so now I'm going to move on, and I'm going to talk about our archaeology program in general in the context of our larger Historic Preservation Program here in Salem. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:26.000 So city, the city of Salem became what's known as a certified local government. In 1986 we were one of the first in Oregon, it's a national program service. 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:35.000 And because of that we been able to take advantage of the CPG grants that they offer for many, many years. 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:41.000 And we in fact received funding in 2022. 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:57.000 Historic Preservation plan to include a component related to protecting our archaeological resources which is pretty exciting. So this historic preservation plan has been adopted as part of our larger comprehensive plan for the city. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:13.000 It's planning speak for making sure that everyone from our city council down through all the ways as well as contractors anyone who works with our city they're aware that this is a priority for us and. 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:26.000 And then we've been under that umbrella we've worked to establish code and processes that ensure that these resources are protected. 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:29.000 Throughout any redevelopment of a site. 00:06:29.000 --> 00:06:34.000 So in the case study I'm going to be sharing with you here in a minute. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:51.000 The HLC adopted a specific work plan to include implementation of our Jason lead project which is our case study for today, and I'm going to wrap up by sharing we're starting a new project here in a few months. 00:06:51.000 --> 00:07:05.000 A new public archaeology project which is adopting, they're going to adopt as part of their 2022 work plan leader this month, very excited about that a little bit about Salem's archaeological resources. 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:17.000 We have about 250 known archaeological sites in our city right now, they're protected not just by our local code but also by state and federal law. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:29.000 And one of the things I'm most excited about is, we worked for. Oh my gosh, it probably took us three or four years to pull this together to figure out how to do it. 00:07:29.000 --> 00:07:48.000 We have a map that is available to the public to anybody who's interested, where they can look up to see if their property is within what we are calling our cultural resource protection zone which is our protection zone for our archaeological resources. 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:58.000 It includes not only known or. So where there's a high probability of encountering resources during construction. 00:07:58.000 --> 00:08:12.000 The key thing that what took so long, is, is that we needed this map to reveal where sites were located, you know to be in compliance with state law, and federal law. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:25.000 And so that was protecting you know we weren't quite, we really, and even. We worked with the Confederate tribes of the Grand Ron day how to an IT person. 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:32.000 Anyway we landed on a solution, and you can test this map out if you want. I'm just saying. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:45.000 But it doesn't show any boundaries and doesn't show any sites but you can enter an address, or you can click anywhere on the map and it will just, it will show it will tell you whether it's in the CR PC zone or not and then basically to contact me. 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:48.000 So it's actually been working really, really well. 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:52.000 And that's one of the things I'm most excited about. 00:08:52.000 --> 00:09:11.000 So we've been working hard on educational programming over the last few years as well. And we really have realized that it's it's really important with our community and our elected leaders to help them understand why protecting archaeological resources 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:13.000 is important. 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:29.000 So you can see here, poster from a few years ago that was from our pop up exhibit that we did for the artifacts we recovered from the police facility site we have a new police facility now and save them. 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:49.000 And that's a piece of culturally modified glass that we found on the site it's really small but it's super exciting. It shows that the indigenous population using like cast off, we found some ceramics like this to, to, to make tools and other things we 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:55.000 found quite a few of these so that was really exciting to find. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:10:08.000 We've also had the benefit of working with several Willamette University archaeological students. I have an internship program here at City, I have. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:24.000 And we've had quite a few students do their final thesis and and research projects using Salem sites and our collections including artifacts from our Chinese trying project there at the Pioneer seminars, one of the first ones that we did our police facility 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:32.000 site, several sites downtown and then of course our Jason. Jason Lee site. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:48.000 We've also worked really hard to first establish these relationships with the different lives have been interested in our community. I mean I think we're lucky in that, unlike Portland where I think that you have all nine that you need to work with we 00:10:48.000 --> 00:11:04.000 have just three. So, the Confederate tribes of the Grand Ron the Confederate tribes of the selects and the Confederate tribes of Warm Springs interestingly enough because even though they're far away they do have some have some heritage some connection 00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:06.000 with that California. 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:26.000 Here in the Willamette Valley. So we signed these mo us just last year actually these are memorandum of understanding, which basically are all about how we talk to each other and, and it took it took us with each tribe, two or three years to even just 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:31.000 figure out okay this is, this is the framework, this is how we're going to talk to each other. 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:48.000 And we're still working that out with Warm Springs we haven't quite gotten there yet. And the biggest things that we've learned is that it's it's you have to build trust and they do have a good reason not to trust. 00:11:48.000 --> 00:12:04.000 Local Government, many different levels of government so I was really excited. We had our first joint city council meeting last December must was like last month. 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:16.000 With the Confederate tribes of the Grand Ronde and I know it's just very exciting was quite a milestone, so we're planning our second one. Hopefully here in the next few months, we'll see how that goes. 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:33.000 So now this is one of my favorite things this might be not you're not your cup of tea but I love the regulatory framework so yes I've got a slide about the many laws that protects archaeological sites and objects in the United States, be done with the 00:12:33.000 --> 00:12:44.000 Antiquities Act in, in 1906, and additional protections added with different laws I won't go through all of them through the 1960s. 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:49.000 Another big milestone was the 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:54.000 Native American graves repatriation act NAGPRA 1990. 00:12:54.000 --> 00:13:09.000 And in Oregon there are additional statutes that protect both the Native American grave, and all dogs, as well as historic archaeological objects insights and a key thing to keep in mind here that really kind of impacts, what I'm going to talk about later 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:25.000 with our case study is that state law requires that an archaeological permit be obtained prior to any ground disturbing activity on a known archaeological site that is either privately owned or public, but it's also required even if you're just going 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:33.000 to do testing on a publicly owned property, and in Salem, even if you're using public money. 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:41.000 So that, that'll go into play when I talk a bit more about our process here. 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:57.000 So while there are a lot of as you just saw, federal and state laws that protect archeological resources we wanted to really incorporate this protection into our existing local processes as well so not just with building permit grading permit review but 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:11.000 you know also well ahead of time we have something called a pre application conference where developers property owners will meet with representatives from our planning department to talk about projects that are just even thinking. 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:24.000 And so that's where this map that I told you about a little bit ago, really, is super helpful, you know, I've got a little in the upper right part of your screen you can see a screenshot of what that looks like. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:36.000 And then what the lookup results are so that, so that we're able to talk really early on in the process with folks about whether or not they are their properties in a high probability area. 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:45.000 And so that's been actually really, really helpful and kind of warding off problems down the road. 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:48.000 And I'm now going to show you. 00:14:48.000 --> 00:15:08.000 We have a beautiful flow chart, I love flow charts also so. So for those properties where there's going to be a development within that car pz zone historic clearance reviews required on public properties or private projects with public funding before 00:15:08.000 --> 00:15:15.000 the issuance of any building our grading permits that would authorize this ground disturbing activity. 00:15:15.000 --> 00:15:28.000 And if a project is in our protection zone this clearance includes an assessment of site significance and the impact of the development on any potential resources there. 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:35.000 So I'm going to now move on to discussing our case study. 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:48.000 So this actually came to our Salem Planning Commission and November 2019. It's a proposal for a new mixed use building. 00:15:48.000 --> 00:16:03.000 We hadn't yet implemented our Mac yet. And so this wasn't caught at the pre application conference but it did come across my desk after, after the decision was approved, and we were in. 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:15.000 In January of 2020 is when we implemented our map and so we were implementing those processes and so this was one of the first ones that we we caught. 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:20.000 And, and then we started running it through our clearance process. 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:30.000 So, again because of when I looked it up the process. The project is clearly within RC cultural resource protection zone. 00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:45.000 And they were getting public money to do the development, and so it triggered, our, our review before any permits could be issued authorizing that ground disturbing activity. 00:16:45.000 --> 00:17:01.000 So the property itself is located at 90 Broadway Street Northeast and Salem, I don't know how familiar you are with, with Salem, but it doesn't at the at the time it didn't look like interesting at all. 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:15.000 Just a parking lot with the vacant undeveloped grassy area, no real no interpretive markers there's a beaver board to the south of the site but a better ways like on top of the bridge. 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:22.000 And so nobody was really tracking that that this was a significant site at all. 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:34.000 So, during that initial research I was super excited to find out that this was the site of Jason Lee's mission house and I think I may have like called Ross right. 00:17:34.000 --> 00:17:37.000 That was like death squad. 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:39.000 You want to do a new project. 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:40.000 Yeah. 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:49.000 So if you aren't familiar with Jason Lee, so he was a Methodist missionary who came to what is now or again. 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:51.000 Back in 1834. 00:17:51.000 --> 00:18:03.000 And he was largely credited with bringing Oregon, under American control, he chaired the first Provisional Government, eating. 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:11.000 And I'm going to talk a little bit about he was the superintendent of the Willamette mission. 00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:27.000 And I'm going to talk a little bit, a little bit about what it must have been like when you first arrived and then about the house he built. So, when, when Jason Lee and his small team of missionaries arrived, they would have encountered the indigenous 00:18:27.000 --> 00:18:30.000 populations that we're living here in the Willamette Valley. 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:44.000 And I really liked the land acknowledgement that you did at the beginning. That was cool and, and so Salem's earliest residents were different bands including primarily the Santana bands of the California. 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:47.000 And here in Salem. 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:55.000 There was a village actually that was known as chum Makati, which sounds a lot like show Mecca right now. 00:18:55.000 --> 00:19:02.000 And the river was known as wala mu, which sounds a little bit like Willamette. 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:13.000 But that's who was living here. When they arrive, however they had already started to coming to a lot of disease. 00:19:13.000 --> 00:19:23.000 Most likely brought initially by the early European American folks that settled in the area, traders. 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:30.000 So they didn't they didn't see as many folks as they initially expected. 00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:37.000 And I think going back a little bit you know Lewis and Clark came last about the turn of the century. 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:51.000 And then settlement really started right after that and they they organized primarily through the Hudson's Bay Company based up at Fort Vancouver, which was established in 1824. 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:59.000 And so, Jason we would have passed through there on his way down to the Willamette Valley most likely to get supplies and things. 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:10.000 He initially decided to build their first mission in the area now known as the mission State Park which you can see a map here on the right side of your screen there. 00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:17.000 It was north of town apparently it takes four hours and 16 minutes to walk there. 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:28.000 And the sketch there on the lower left part of your screen. It shows what that original house look like and if you haven't been up there it's, it was known as mission bottom. 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:43.000 They've built these really cool frame structures so you can get a sense of the scale and where they were located. It was actually excavated in 1980 by a team from OSU led by Dr. 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:52.000 David Bronner. There's some pretty cool reports and some really neat stuff they found there. 00:20:52.000 --> 00:20:55.000 If you want to read more about it. 00:20:55.000 --> 00:21:14.000 So however they dealt with a lot of really severe flooding, their admission bottom, and it was sort of miserable for them there so Lee and his team decided to relocate their mission, down to Salem at the location, there were no way. 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:33.000 So, so he built the first steak house that we know of in Salem in 1841. And there was also addressed on a lumber mill that right there along the, the mill creek which, which could be another potential cool project on my list to do some day. 00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:37.000 To find evidence of that. 00:21:37.000 --> 00:21:54.000 But despite his efforts, as I mentioned earlier, he wasn't successful with his, his primary tasks that he was given which was to work on conversion conversion of the local indigenous population and that's because there was such a small population that 00:21:54.000 --> 00:22:12.000 was left a lot had died already from, from diseases that were brought by the you know the traders or other missionaries and $7. So, Jason Leigh, you actually only lived in the house for a couple of years, and then he went back he is to sort of defend 00:22:12.000 --> 00:22:28.000 position the the folks. The method his leadership back east were kind of upset like why are you spending all our money and not doing what we said, And sadly, he died in 1845, when he was back there. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:41.000 He was initially buried back there but then he was brought back to Salem in 1906, and was re buried here and the, the mission cemetery. 00:22:41.000 --> 00:22:49.000 I think that's really cool we have a lot of really interesting information about that will read burial. 00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:52.000 So, it's a fun picture. 00:22:52.000 --> 00:23:07.000 The article there on your left so the house served many other cool, interesting purposes during his lifetime. In addition to that initial association with Jason Lee and the missionaries so we we had our first post office here. 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:20.000 It was also the location of the territorial Treasury for a while, which I think folks have been hoping we would have found by buried gold. When we do that are excavation. 00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:26.000 It was also where the, the leadership that was in Salem with the Methodist mission. 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:28.000 They changed. 00:23:28.000 --> 00:23:40.000 They decided to change their focus from conversion of the indigenous population to that of educating the settlers that were coming to sing along in droves by that time. 00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:54.000 So initially the school that was created was called the Oregon Institute, but this eventually became limit University and then they began, they built Walla Walla Hall there across town. 00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:58.000 And so that's that's a pretty cool origin story. 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:12.000 The house itself. After that was purchased by a judge Ruben p Boise, where he used one of the rooms as a courtroom, initially, So it serves that purpose. 00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:27.000 And then at the end of its life it became an apartment house, and the picture you can see here at the top right of your screen you can kind of see a portion of the original house, which interestingly it faced east, towards the creek. 00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:36.000 Not towards the main street which is there now which is which is Broadway. 00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:48.000 So Potter. She's kind of an icon in the field. She was the first staff person she was the first national register coordinator for the State Historic Preservation Office. 00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:59.000 And she worked there for many years and she's still active in Salem, primarily working with the Friends of the Pioneer cemetery so she's still doing some wonderful work. 00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:15.000 She worked to document the house. Back in the 60s when it was clear that it was going to be removed from the site and redeveloped. And so the plans on the screen here there on the left hand side you can see show the number of many additions to the house 00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.000 but the red rectangle thing in the middle there. 00:25:19.000 --> 00:25:24.000 It shows the original 1841 portion of the house. 00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:32.000 And the, the picture on the right. So the house was eventually the primary facade was reoriented to front Broadway. 00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:45.000 And so that's what that picture shows, it's, it's taken from Broadway looking, looking back and that pictures from the 1930s. 00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:55.000 So this pictures are remarkable, I was like oh, it shows the house being deconstructed in 1963. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:04.000 The 1841 rectangular section there can be seen in that larger photo graph at the center of your screen it's kind of pulled apart. 00:26:04.000 --> 00:26:19.000 A photo inset lower right of your screen. It's a view from Broadway again similar to what I showed you in the previous slide, and the red arrow is kind of pointing to the roofline topping that original 1841 section of the house. 00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:23.000 It was also so again this is Elizabeth. Great work. 00:26:23.000 --> 00:26:28.000 She they photographed the entire building. 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:37.000 During the move as well so this is a picture after it's been kind of vaulted off of the basement and you can see that breath. 00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:41.000 There the brick foundation in the inset photo. 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:59.000 And this is something that, well, you'll see when we do the excavation, what we ended up finding but it was, it was great that we had this research this documentation ahead of time so we kind of knew what we should be looking for. 00:26:59.000 --> 00:27:05.000 So this picture shows the 1841 portion of the house on wheels. 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:21.000 So after they deconstructed it, they put it on wheels and it actually it sat for quite a while before it was moved to its current location at the Willamette Heritage Center, where they reconstructed it, there was some, there were some issues with funding 00:27:21.000 --> 00:27:26.000 and deciding exactly where it was going to go but it did eventually get over there. 00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:31.000 And as a really great example of. 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:51.000 I think it was the first one, they, they saved this way and they ended up the small group of them who were able to save at least four or five other early period structures in Salem, and without their efforts we wouldn't be able to enjoy them today over 00:27:51.000 --> 00:27:56.000 at the Willamette Heritage Center. We're really happy they did that. 00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:09.000 Okay, now I'm going to jump into the excavation itself and the work that we did on the site, with the help of cross Smith, and a number of other volunteer archaeologists. 00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:16.000 So remembering the process and Salem, that we require that clearance review process. 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:32.000 So we had completed the research and so we had a deeper understanding of the history and significance of the site. So the next question we needed to really answer was whether the proposed development would uncover or harm any significant resources. 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:46.000 So because we didn't really have a lot of information, do have some based on our research but what we really needed to do was complete some archaeological testing in the areas where development would be occurring. 00:28:46.000 --> 00:29:02.000 And then, normally the private owner is responsible for completing this stuff, even if they do get public funding but in this particular case, because of the significance of this site I reached out to the private owner and the developer to offer assistance 00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:19.000 with the testing provided we could do some public archaeology some education and outreach, and the owner, agreed we had actually worked with them before on a project downtown, where we we did some excavation and again I think Ross was involved in that 00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:24.000 although I think he actually got paid for that one. 00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:34.000 But the Brock, the property owner had such a positive experience. He just loves archaeology so so he agreed, but this was, this was. 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:46.000 He agreed and in February 2020 so I don't know if you remember what was happening around then the pandemic hit, so we had to pivot quite a bit. 00:29:46.000 --> 00:30:08.000 Due to the pen dynamic we we had with the city of Sam has a risk officer who was very concerned that we were moving ahead with us but she agreed to let us proceed provided that we put some basic protocols in place so we originally had a full public archaeology 00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:19.000 project proposed with partners from Willamette University the Willamette Heritage Center ship Oh the Confederate tribes of the Grand frond, and the Oregon archaeological society. 00:30:19.000 --> 00:30:31.000 But because of direction from our risk manager, we had to adapt. By reducing the total number of people on the site and the way that we did our work, but ultimately our goals remain the same. 00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:53.000 So first we wanted to start by doing non invasive survey, using ground penetrating radar to just kind of see what was under the surface to help us decide where to put our test units, and shovel shovel pits and the map on the left side of your screen it 00:30:53.000 --> 00:31:13.000 shows the footprint of the Jason Lee house But please, you can also see the footprints of three other smaller houses closer to E Street as well. These are World War Two era houses and we also needed to include work just to verify what, if anything remainder 00:31:13.000 --> 00:31:33.000 So, our goals were to after the survey to do some selective excavation and Arctic artifact recovery and analysis. And then finally to do some interpretation development so that people could learn about the cool history relating to this site. 00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:40.000 So how did we begin. Well, I won't give you a quiz although I thought about it. 00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:48.000 See if you're paying attention to my process. So we began by submitting our archaeological permit, and by we I mean Ross. 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:55.000 So, as you recall from the discussion about all the laws were required to obtain a permit. 00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:58.000 Before we could begin our work, testing. 00:31:58.000 --> 00:32:13.000 And so Ross put that together he worked for Stan tech at the time, and they're a consulting company who does archaeological compliance work and he had done a lot, I think already for this city through our urban development department and had just, he 00:32:13.000 --> 00:32:30.000 has a really good relationship with the tribes that have an interest in what happens in Salem so that was that really helped a lot as well. But Ross for this he did donate his time to the project which we couldn't have done that without him doing that 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:35.000 pretty significant donation of his time and expertise. 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:49.000 And so, in the permit. If you've ever seen one or worked on one you know what it includes you have to provide an overview of the history and significance of the site, as well as a 00:32:49.000 --> 00:33:09.000 research design methodology you and your questions that you want to have answered. And you can see here map. The establish the potential area of effect which is that sort of red hatched rectangle, kind of around the house itself and some of that outbuildings 00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:23.000 that's from our 1895 Sanborn fire insurance mom. Hopefully you you're familiar with those I just love those moms they, they give us a lot of great information and our wonderful tool. 00:33:23.000 --> 00:33:42.000 So we looked also at Ariel sorry for the blurriness of this one this is a 1961 Ariel, and our, so I should mention that a bunch of city staff also pitched in to donate their time usually I mean we're not completely like a consulting firm, but we do have 00:33:42.000 --> 00:33:58.000 to categorize have our billing codes for our time. So we can't just always work on stuff that's fun so a lot of folks at the city decided to donate their time we get a little discretionary time and so the city survey or jumped in and helped us figure 00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:13.000 out how to do reference, where we thought the house was. So we use this area we also then used Elizabeth's floor plans, and were able to figure out where we thought those were. 00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:23.000 But really the biggest key that helped us the most again was the the ground penetrating radar so that was cool. 00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:35.000 Well I'm at university, and the Confederate tribes of the Grand Ron they each have their own GDPR machine. I don't know enough about it but they had different capabilities different antenna sizes so. 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:49.000 So we were able to take each of their, the data from each of theirs and kind of compare and contrast it what you can see on the screen here is that they both found three different anomalies. 00:34:49.000 --> 00:35:05.000 And we were most interested in the anomaly labeled as number one here, and it's what we was showing us what we now know is that house basement, and that was our biggest research question is is that house basements still there. 00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:07.000 Is it intact. 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:17.000 Anyway, and so they were we were able to roughly align. What we found with this GDPR with the plans and the aerials and the Sanborn Maps. 00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:37.000 So from that information, we were able to figure out the initial areas where we wanted to do archaeological testing, both in the larger one meter by one meter units, and then also the shuffle test so on the map here you can see the little circles and 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:53.000 And the squares are larger units. So initially we thought we would just have eight shovel test probes on the north end if you remember that the Sanborn doesn't show up but that's where the world war two era housing was, and then we initially just plan 00:35:53.000 --> 00:35:58.000 for five of those larger units on this at South End. 00:35:58.000 --> 00:36:12.000 But I guess as with as archaeologists sometimes do once we were in the field we were like, We want to do more so we adjusted that number up to 12 units on the south end and then 12 shovel test units. 00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:29.000 So here's some more folks who jumped in and donated their time so these are our city of Salem Public Works crews they're excited to bring their trucks out and scrape the parking lot so that then we could begin laying out our units, and you can see kind 00:36:29.000 --> 00:36:40.000 of, we're looking, looking west. We're saying I'm standing I think they're at the end of block a looking towards Broadway. 00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:43.000 Oh, sorry. 00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:47.000 That's the picture, I'm referring to. 00:36:47.000 --> 00:36:53.000 So these again are the 12 units laid out into blocks. 00:36:53.000 --> 00:37:01.000 And I think that's Ross they're the picture on the left, measuring now. 00:37:01.000 --> 00:37:12.000 So here's a fun little graphic that kind of shows a rendering ish of the units. 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:31.000 So you can see that block is there at the lower part of the screen, and then Block B is up at the top which is where the house was so you can kind of see that red rectangle again that's the 1841 portion of the house, and that's what we were really trying 00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:48.000 to focus on on there so our units just, I don't know if I mentioned this before, we're one meter by one meter and size and we excavated and 10 centimeter levels, and we screen soils to our quarter inch nuts the screens. 00:37:48.000 --> 00:38:06.000 So even though we had kind of a restricted approach, we had 30 volunteers who contributed over 600 hours to the project which is remarkable to me, given the uncertainty of the pandemic we had Willamette University students, we had volunteers from the 00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:21.000 Oregon archaeological society as well as a number of other professional archaeologists, and we did them and volunteers, and we limited people we couldn't have more than 15 people on site at a time. 00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:34.000 And so we needed to also do the social distancing you can see a picture there of us like standing with our are making sure we weren't too close. And I will say it's hard to do archaeology and masks if you haven't done it before. 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:42.000 It's hard work anyway and with fasten was exceptionally challenging. 00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:55.000 They also had some challenges with the weather and water my gosh you see the picture there on the left, we, we realized that they must have had drainage issues in the area and poor. 00:38:55.000 --> 00:39:08.000 The poor missionaries they had been thinking that they were going to get away from water issues and still have water issues. So they persevered though they didn't leave Salem so that that was something. 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:21.000 So Professor Scott pipe from Willamette University, and one of his students were really focused on the geo archaeology so they looked a lot at the soil did. 00:39:21.000 --> 00:39:39.000 To help us better understand the image issues in the area that's not my area of expertise, but he had a theory that given the amount of standing water that we observed that it's possible maybe that the house was constructed consciously with the basement, 00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:42.000 to help manage the water. 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:47.000 That would be something interesting to explore a little bit more down the road. 00:39:47.000 --> 00:40:05.000 So we also did our best to adapt our public education and and our public archaeology, with relation to the community so we had many people just see, let's see what we were doing just stopped by in their cars, while we were working to ask what we were 00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:12.000 doing. And so I created a little, I guess, site notebook with some pictures that I would share with them. 00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:22.000 And I learned how to create YouTube videos which I hadn't really done a lot before just to, I gave a weekly update to share what we were doing. 00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:38.000 And we had hoped to have a public archaeology open house similar to the one we had one at the Chinese shrine public archaeology project the police facility project where we would give folks an opportunity to see firsthand the work that we were doing. 00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:55.000 So similar to, to the the way that up at Fort Vancouver to where they do their, their public archaeology just talking to folks as they're walking through but instead deja coven, we did a Facebook Live Event again the first time I'd ever done that. 00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:08.000 And we did a tour of the site and it, it was very well attended and I think you know we're getting ready to do a new project we're probably going to do that same thing again I had thought we would be through this but I don't think more archaeology and 00:41:08.000 --> 00:41:24.000 math. A little bit about our artifacts so we recovered over 2500 artifacts which were still curating, I do have some laminate suit in the lab. 00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:35.000 We've gotten through quite a few of it. What you see here on the picture is a bottle fragment which we've confirmed was made prior to the Civil War, which is pretty exciting. 00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:44.000 And, and we've also found a number of other ceramics, you can see some of those here. 00:41:44.000 --> 00:42:06.000 I really love the transfer print and the unique patterns, and we've actually been working with some folks up at the port Vancouver lab. Doug and some other folks over there who are looking at what we found in Brent, determine that at least some of these 00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:12.000 are from that early occupation of the house, you know, during our early period which is pretty exciting. 00:42:12.000 --> 00:42:20.000 Here's some of our earlier stuff that we found there's a gas lip I didn't know upper left hand. 00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:31.000 I'd never seen one of those before, so that we found that, and then a bone there in the lower left I think that might be an elk bone. 00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:46.000 And then some stone beads, you can see and then one I think the lower right is like a plastic beads so we're still working on the curation but once we figured out, for the most part what everything is. 00:42:46.000 --> 00:43:01.000 Then we're going to be working with both tribes and the Willamette Heritage Center to just decide how we're going to exhibit some of the stuff at the Jason Lee house which will be very exciting and then also the grand Ron has their own museum there, too. 00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:15.000 So, so now the brick. So, our most exciting find was the basement of the original Jason we mission house and the intact brick wall. 00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:27.000 So, I should point out though that based on the work that we did here, it appears as though the entire site was scraped at the time the house was deconstructed so remember that terrible picture with everything in the big mess. 00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:39.000 That big mess. A lot of it was pushed into the basement so it was really super fun doing the excavation. We found a lot of burned material. 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:47.000 And so we imagine they burn some of that stuff and then just threw it in the basement hole and then covered it. 00:43:47.000 --> 00:44:04.000 So, that was challenging to to screen. And you can see here though the very exciting intact brick wall there on the left and I got that picture again of what what we found early on in our research from Elizabeth. 00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:18.000 So this john Chang gives you a good sense of the overall site and you can see the location there, the basement wall if you look down at the bottom of your, of your screen. 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:40.000 And I think that the most exciting thing for us at this point is that we're, we're hoping to work with the property owner to take some of the brick that we've salvaged from, from this site, and work on doing some interpretation. 00:44:40.000 --> 00:45:03.000 And I don't know what happened to my, my PowerPoint is being terrible so I'm going to stop sharing, right now, or good on time for 46. And I'm happy to answer any questions, folks might have about our project. 00:45:03.000 --> 00:45:07.000 Thank you so much. 00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:09.000 Yeah. 00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:34.000 Folks, if you want to use the raise hand or you can put any questions in the chat. 00:45:34.000 --> 00:45:35.000 See laurels Hannah. 00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:48.000 Loyalty want to go and ask your question um yeah I was curious when you were talking about you found the glass fragments amateur amateur and you said you sent them up to the fourth Vancouver to like, analyze what kind of analysis, do they do on it to 00:45:48.000 --> 00:46:04.000 determine Do you know, we actually didn't send the actual artifacts up there we did send some pictures and the base of the ceramic bottle. And I, again this is not my area of expertise. 00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:24.000 So apparently the way that they used to make bottles. You can date a bottle based upon the way that it's blown. And so they were able to confirm that it was, was not blown by an automated process. 00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:28.000 And so they were able to date it that that way. 00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:43.000 And just from pictures. So we've got again I've got two different interns working through that now and, and doing some, some more outreach with other folks who have more expertise in this area than I do. 00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:46.000 Yeah. Oh good, it's Doug. 00:46:46.000 --> 00:46:51.000 Doug says reference materials of the court. 00:46:51.000 --> 00:47:10.000 Yeah, we have lots of expertise and deal with a lot of those early colonial period as well as the later army period materials so, a lot, a lot of people can can weigh in and for a lot of the materials that are early that are kind of, you know, early, 00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:30.000 you know for trade into the American colonial period will use the pattern of the ceramic and compare it to ceramics that were were being produced by Copeland and Garrett which is the Spode company to and there they were widely brought into the Northwest 00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:49.000 through the Hudson's Bay Company. Is that a lot of pictures of those, those patterns, the transfer prints and stuff. I think it was, Amy, I can't remember now who I because I, we were working with her I think back then, a PC conference but yeah and so 00:47:49.000 --> 00:47:55.000 some of that they were able to recognize right away, which was pretty exciting. 00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:57.000 Yeah. 00:47:57.000 --> 00:48:03.000 See, I think that answered Scott's question Charles Hodges asked Where were the bricks made. 00:48:03.000 --> 00:48:19.000 Oh that's such a good question we're still trying to figure that out, where they're very irregular, and so our first thought was that they were made on sites. 00:48:19.000 --> 00:48:33.000 evidence of them making brick there on site and. And so, the short answer is we don't know for sure it was really early, we have a hard time believing, I don't know if Duggar Virginia if you have any ideas. 00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:42.000 We have a hard time believing they would have shipped the brick in from somewhere else that would have been quite an arduous effort. we do think we think they made it. 00:48:42.000 --> 00:48:56.000 That's our guests, but we don't know yeah that's that's probably highly likely that they've made it on site or somewhere in the vicinity. But we did have a student from Sonoma that did some chemical analysis and was able to identify will have it Valley 00:48:56.000 --> 00:49:16.000 clays from English players because the Brits were shipping in as ballast and their ships bricks for Vancouver so there's a potential to do some chemical analysis and and get a feel but I would guess it's probably good old Willamette Valley bricks, as 00:49:16.000 --> 00:49:30.000 you were saying, and we are. Yeah, we are. I have a whole bunch of it in my lab and we're going to use a portion of it for the base of our the interpretive panel that's going to go on site so, but the rest will be set aside for future testing, future 00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.000 student project. 00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:36.000 So cool Virginia, go ahead. 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:50.000 Thanks Kimberly you know every time I hear you talk about this, I'm just so green with envy, you know, Salem is so lucky to have you and what you bring to the planning and everything so rich. 00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:55.000 So I you know you didn't touch on this, and I'm wondering if. 00:49:55.000 --> 00:50:12.000 To what extent this has come up, you know this kind of reimagining history and the stories we tell, and certainly the mission story is being reconsidered, and you tipped it you know you got to that a little bit that it started out we're going to mission 00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:19.000 eyes Native Americans and then we're just going to turn to the settlers and. 00:50:19.000 --> 00:50:37.000 And then, you know, we can deconstruct all of that, to what extent are you working either on the edges of that or just just leaning right into it and trying to tell that story to Oregonians. 00:50:37.000 --> 00:50:51.000 Yeah, that's a really good question and, and this is something that we are currently in the process of working with both the Confederate tribes of the Grand rond and the Confederate tribes of this lot so Bruce Edwards Chris Bailey from the grand Ron and 00:50:51.000 --> 00:51:11.000 Robert Trent from the slits primarily. So we've got right now actually draft content for our interpretive panels at the Jason Lee site but we're actually trying to coordinate that with interpretation we're doing on the police facility site as well along 00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:30.000 Mill Creek because they're actually pretty close to each other, and then also the new, there's a new building the union gospel mission site which is a little bit to the west, sort of closer to the Willamette River, and then also the, the riverfront amphitheater 00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:36.000 which is in the shape of basket we'd work with the tribes on a design of that. 00:51:36.000 --> 00:51:54.000 So looking more at it in a larger context and telling that story more concretely about okay what top focusing on the village that was here before the missionaries came. 00:51:54.000 --> 00:52:04.000 There's a like I think I mentioned that beaver board that's, that's on the bridge which it says something like Salem began here which it didn't mean it. 00:52:04.000 --> 00:52:08.000 So we're working with another group, the. 00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:17.000 I forget the name the Oregon travel information council to redo that one so it's not just about the old way people, honestly. 00:52:17.000 --> 00:52:37.000 Yeah, and, and I think it's not just one thing so it's it's multiple things. So, so the you got the site interpretation but just earlier today I had a talk with a former city councilor who's working with just walk Salem so we're trying to put together, 00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:43.000 walking towards that focus on indigenous history, so to do like a loop around Salem. 00:52:43.000 --> 00:52:59.000 And I'm very excited I'm going to put my planning how to get hat on again we adopted our first cultural landscape management plan for, which is pasture Park, which is in the south part of Salem's will be the end of the loop. 00:52:59.000 --> 00:53:13.000 And we're the tribes. We've set aside, you park which is if you know where deep wood is there's a. You wouldn't know it was a separate park but just to the east of that. 00:53:13.000 --> 00:53:24.000 There's a goal in the plan to install native plants garden. So with indigenous plants. 00:53:24.000 --> 00:53:39.000 I primarily that they would have used for cooking. We've already got cameras in there but, and then the Salem public art commission is going to be working with the tribes on installing some indigenous art as well, that are going on. 00:53:39.000 --> 00:53:53.000 It's not just one thing, and, and I think though it takes many hands, many hands make light work, many voices to really solve this because you know it may be maybe not with. 00:53:53.000 --> 00:53:58.000 They didn't have bad intentions I think they just didn't think think differently. 00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:06.000 Like I know that beaver board was established, I think it was constructed in the, in the 1940s and that's, that's just the way they they thought. 00:54:06.000 --> 00:54:15.000 So changing that frame, frame of reference. 00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:28.000 Following up on that a question that I've had, is, um, you know, are there other cities in Oregon, that have archaeologists, like you on staff. We don't in Portland, which is something that I would just I know Virginia would love this, we'd all love to 00:54:28.000 --> 00:54:42.000 see that but not that I know of, I mean I wish, I wish, I wish we would I have been contacted it's so funny because. 00:54:42.000 --> 00:55:00.000 So Virginia we did that. The National lines of preservation Commission's conference was that two years ago now in 2020 did we do that in August. And there was an article that came out and it was basically how to, how to incorporate archaeology into your 00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:08.000 local program and Virginia you and I can't remember the other name, the name of the other gentleman did a great article earlier. 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:23.000 Yeah, though. Yeah, yeah. And so, and I think that so folks who context ship oh and through this GLG that sort of certified local government program she was trying to encourage more local jurisdictions to do archaeology projects and so I get contacted 00:55:23.000 --> 00:55:28.000 a lot by other jurisdictions, so I was recently. 00:55:28.000 --> 00:55:38.000 The city of McMinnville I think reached out and was like, how'd you do that man, we want to do that map. The tribes told us we have to do that. 00:55:38.000 --> 00:55:56.000 So I think the challenge always though is money, you know, I don't know, money and and staff expertise, I think, I think that the work that Portland State does in training people is absolutely brilliant and I think that more students should focus on archaeology 00:55:56.000 --> 00:55:59.000 and then combine that with the planning. 00:55:59.000 --> 00:56:02.000 That would be ideal. Yeah. 00:56:02.000 --> 00:56:19.000 One thing that strikes me is that you are showing how it could happen. And then, as others of us across our own state and elsewhere. We can have some kind of meetings to figure out how to, how to model. 00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:37.000 You know what are the steps to get to where you are and this is an off. Zoom call conversation but I just want all the students and everyone here to know just how special this is and that that this is something that many many all communities need something 00:56:37.000 --> 00:56:58.000 like this and I agree that there's a financial, it's you know Money Talks but I think we're not making the case that money is saved, or there's ways of turning those dollars into something really valuable and important to a community that it's it's it's 00:56:58.000 --> 00:57:18.000 soft, it's it's not necessarily converted to $2 right away but the the long term values are just incalculable, and I'm talking to the choir. So, I know. 00:57:18.000 --> 00:57:37.000 and mayor's to see that this isn't it isn't rocket science honestly it's, it takes a little bit of training, and it takes a little bit of work to incorporate it into your process, but it's it's it's it's possible and it actually makes things much better 00:57:37.000 --> 00:57:53.000 in the long run, and we don't we don't issue stop work orders anymore because the tribes are mad. It's, it's, we've got a much more positive proactive program, so it's working really well. 00:57:53.000 --> 00:57:55.000 Cool. 00:57:55.000 --> 00:58:02.000 Um Let's take our last question from me and then we should let you go because you've been on for over and. 00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:16.000 Did you want to go. Yeah, I'm Kimberly I just wanted to know like what your favorite part of the project was like there was there a specific artifact that you found that you were just super excited about or I guess what was the most fun for you. 00:58:16.000 --> 00:58:19.000 Oh, I guess, so I think it was a. 00:58:19.000 --> 00:58:36.000 First of all, finding definitively the basement, and that that brick foundation I think as an archaeologist for me. You know you do all this research, you do your best to make sure that you locate your test units in the area where you think you're going 00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:50.000 to find stuff my fear always like the day before is a we're not going to find anything like like we're going to dig and dig and dig and there'll be nothing nothing nothing, and then I'll be sad, but we we found we found. 00:58:50.000 --> 00:59:06.000 I was super excited to find that brick, and if I didn't have to do my regular day job I think I would be bringing Rick up to Doug and his deep testing to see if we can figure out for certain whether it was in the Willamette Valley but you know I do have 00:59:06.000 --> 00:59:08.000 my job, so. 00:59:08.000 --> 00:59:10.000 Yeah, that's a good question. 00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:16.000 Sounds good to me. 00:59:16.000 --> 00:59:17.000 I do. 00:59:17.000 --> 00:59:26.000 Can I jump in and also Shelby share a little bit about, we are starting a new project and so I'm recruiting volunteer. 00:59:26.000 --> 00:59:46.000 Now, I don't have a flyer yet but we did get a grant from the state so again it's a collaborative public archaeology projects and we are going to be looking for the evidence the the foundation of some of the buildings to we think the Indian manual labor 00:59:46.000 --> 01:00:04.000 training school in Salem, so we're going to be starting our GDPR next month, and then excavating in March. So if you're interested please reach out to me I will send that once I have a fire, I will send lots more information on that that would be super 01:00:04.000 --> 01:00:08.000 cool. Thank you, your presentation was awesome. Thank you. 01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:17.000 Well, yeah thank you I'm so happy I could really definitely Let's stay in touch about that and I can share that info with other folks that might be interested. 01:00:17.000 --> 01:00:21.000 I know there's a lot of students that would love the chance to help. 01:00:21.000 --> 01:00:50.000 Um, we will let you go. Thank you so much for the amazing presentation and for answering all these questions so thoughtfully.