GIS & Archaeology:

The 1974 OAS Excavation of the

Sale Shop at Fort Vancouver

Presented by Colby Parrott

GIS 588 Portland State University

GIS & Archaeology – How is it used? (overview & images taken from ESRI)

Research:

Analyzing density,

clustering,

proximity, etc.

Survey &

Excavation:

Recording sites

locations, etc.

Data Management:

Provides good

descriptive &

Analytical tools.

Modeling: Create

models of excavation

sites to compare

spatial relations.

Education/Museums:

Make archaeological

and historic

preservation available.

Fort Vancouver - Sale Shop

• Fort Vancouver, located near the Columbia River in Vancouver, WA, is the historical trading and settlement site of the Hudson Bay Company.

• The European Sale Shopwas the first retail storein the Oregon territory.The shop was built around 1841-1845 and was located in the NW corner of the stockade.

Sale Shop

• Canadian Style Construction – “Post-on-the-sill”

• Based on Coode sketch and existing photo, only one door on the shop. In addition and based on the sketch and photo, seven windows are present on the front or east wall of the shop. Four windows are also present on the second story of the structure.

• Only parts of the shop were excavated during this 1974 study. They were selected based on their potential value in providing structural information.

• Twenty units were excavated along the west, north, and south walls and within the interior of the building structure.

Research Questions

On the north, west, & south walls, where did the windows

and doors exist?

Is the proposed cultural activity area map consistent with

the artifact densities in the excavation units?

• The Sales Shop is one building that the park would like to reconstruct. Currently there is only one existing photo of the shop, which only shows the front of the building.

• Through the use of the existing photograph, past archaeological excavations, and an artifact density analysis from this project, the Fort hopes to gain greater insight into where other windows and doors existed on the other three sides of the building.

• Spatial distribution of material culture remains within the excavated units indicate at least three primary functions of the interior. These areas also suggest the cultural activity and movement patterns in and around the building.

Primary Functional Areas: Personal, Trading & Storage Secondary Functional Areas: Refuse, Manufacturing & Maintenance

Artifacts Used

Reconstruction Artifacts:

• Flat glass – window panes

• Hand Forged Nails

• Machine Cut Nails

Cultural Activity Area Artifacts

• Bottle Glass – storage area

• Beads – trading area

• Pipes – trading area

Data Used

• Created a boundary shapefile based on

an existing shapefile.

• Edited the boundary to include the

interior cultural activity areas as

proposed by the 1974 study.

• Shapefile from the OAS excavation consisting of 20 10 ft x 10 ft units.

• Converted to metric units.

• Edited and cleaned the Shapefile.

• Calculated artifact densities:

(artifact count / amount of sediment excavated)

• Edited the attribute table to input the artifact types, counts, and densities, etc.

Methodology

I. Created a simple visual map by classification and overlays.

II. Used the Buffer tool to create a 1m buffer around the building outline shapfile.

III. Used the Select by Attributes to pick the units with the highest densities. Exported them to create new shapefiles.

IV. Used the new shapefiles with the building buffer layer and the cultural activity layer to see where these specific units fell in relation.

V. Create metadata using TKme, which is an open source program. Must create the metadata to be compliant with Federal and National Park standards.

Artifact Density

• Used the Quantities method to create a graduated classification.

• Created data layer frames to show each artifact type within each unit excavated in relation to the proposed cultural activity areas.

Buffer + Select by Attribute

• Created a buffer for the outline boundary

• Used Select by Attribute to choose the units with the highest densities

Results & Metadata

Flat glass – Falls along the west wall. Also close to the

refuse area.

Hand-Forged Nails – Falls in the refuse, personal

(maintenance), & trading areas.

Machine Cut Nails – Falls into the personal

(maintenance), trading, & manufacturing areas.

Beads – Fall into the personal storage, trade/manufacturing

area.

Pipes – Falls into the boundary, storage, trade, and

manufacturing areas.

Bottle Glass – Falls into refuse, storage, & trading areas.

FOVAGIS_SaleShop_BufferMap

The following map shows the excavation units with the highest artifact type densities in proximity to the buffered wall boundary and the interior cultural activity areas.

Metadata - Open Source - TKme

• Once metadata is created, the files are parsed for validation at the following site and an HTML and XML format are saved: http://geo-nsdi.er.usgs.gov/validation/

• All metadata for maps must be compliant with federal standards for the National Park Service.

• TKme is an open source program available on the USFS site that Ft. Vancouver uses to create metadata: http://geology.usgs.gov/tools/metadata/tools/doc/tkme.html

Metatdata Output Formats

HTML Format XML Format

Limitations & Recommendations

• Only data from the 1974 OAS study was used. The fort will use data layers from later years for more analysis.

• Not the entire surface area was excavated for this study.

• Only used a few artifact types. Future studies will want to look at all artifact types.

• Only used high density artifact counts.

• Will need to combine later years of excavation data.

• I personally need to become more familiar with the spatial analysis tools for in-depth research.

Citations

• ESRI. GIS for Archaeology. Retrieved November 30, 2007: http://www.esri.com/industries/archaeology/index.html

• Hussey, John A. (1972). Historic Structures Report. Historical Data Volume 1. Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Washington.

• O’Rourke, Leslie (2003). Progress Report on the Fort Vancouver GIS Project.

• Steele, H. W.; Ross, L. A.; Hibbs, C. H. (1975). Fort Vancouver Excavations – XII. OAS Sale Shop Excavation. Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Washington.

• Taylor, Terri A. (1992). Cultural Landscape Report: Fort Vancouver National Historic Site Vol 1. Department of the Interior Cultural Resources Division, Washington.

• Schweitzer, Peter N. (Friday, 19-Oct-2007) Tkme. Retrieved November 30, 2007 from the USGS site: http://geology.usgs.gov/tools/metadata/tools/doc/tkme.html.

• USGS Geoscience Data Catalog. (06-Nov-2007). Geospatial Metadata Validation Service. Retrieved November 30, 2007 from the USGS site: http://geo-nsdi.er.usgs.gov/validation/.

Thank you!

Questions?

Shovelbums.org