IMPACTS OF THE PROJECT

Although the level of reporting for the Stawbery Island Proyect´s not as we would like,the work
at the Miller site haz made some substantial contributions to Plateau(e.g.,Ames 2000;Ames et
al. 1998). It also marks a change in the way Plateau prehistory was addressed.Prior to the
Strawberry Island Project,Plateau developments were seen as primarily additions to a static
cultural base.New artifact types appeared in the record and projectile points changed through
time, but the adaption was seen as relatively constant. The Miller site, whitch allowed
comparions between occupations that were about 800 years apart, showed that there was
important,previously unexplored variability. Adaptations were not static but changed in
response to souch factors as increased aridity and population growth.

Strawberry Island ilustrates another point as well. The collections from the Strawberry Island
Proyect shill exist at Washington State University.

Clearly, there is a great potential for further study of those collections to address important
questions raised in the original analyses and questions that have arisen as our understandings
of regional pprehistory have grown. Further, the ready availability today of techniques like
AMS dating means that samples that could not be dated back in 1979 can be dated today.

This shoud allow testing the reconstruction of two occupations and refined dating of two
occupations and refined dating of the early occupation at the contact between the cobbles and
the sands on the island.The site has been pretected since the end of the excavations.Riprap
has been placed around the Banks of the island to shield them from further
damage.Productive new research that adds substantisly to the study of Plateuau prehistory
can be accomplished with the existing collections, and the site temains for further research
when questions, and the site remains for further research when questions requiring new
excavation arise.

BACKWARDS ARCHAEOLOGY

When I talk about the excavations at Strawberry Island; I often joke that we and extended
operations each field season, putting the previous season´s work into a Little broader context
each year, until in the last year we sampled space across the island to see how thw áreas we
had been excavating fit in.This was not a result of backwards thinking by the archaelogists;
instead, it refisected the evolution of the attitude of the projet sponsors, the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, toward archaeology and mirrors changes that took place across the country,
signaling the change from a salvage approach for federal agency archaecology to one that
focuses on managing the resources. That is, rather tan doing no more tan were threatened by
projects or their long tern effects, the agencies began to develop understandings of sites and
their contexts, thying to preserve those that were truly important.

The initial WSU Project in 1976, directed by Greg Cleveland with Richard D. Daugtherty serving
as principal investigator.The map was made by a combination of aerial photography and land
surveying.

While crosses were placed in each depression that could be recognized, and aerial
photographs were taken. A transit survey was undertaken, not only to locate the construction
of a grid system.The detailed map that resulted showed the location of 133 depressions(Figure
6.18). Each of the depressions was assigned a number, though it was later discovered that the
WSU numbering system differed from that used by Osporne and Crabtree(1961).
Excavation during the first field season was confines to trenches in three contiguous
depressions on the southeast sid of the island(also referred to as the left bank, in keeping with
the convention of referring to the Banks as if the trenches were point plotted(mapped in three
dimensions)in the hope that the vertical distibutions would indicate the location of house
floors both in the field season.This was deemed appropriate excavation strategy because
floors were very hard to define in the Sandy sediments of the island.

Plotting each individual ítem encounbered was a time consuming process,but it resulted in
detailed information about sections of house pits.Provisions in the contract restricted
excavation to áreas that were being lost to arosion.The Corps of Engineers saw their
responsibility as limited to saving what was being destroyed(Cleveland et al.1977; Cleveland
1978a).

The 1977 the excavation was again restricted to áreas being eroded. Again under Cleveland´s
supersion, excavation continued in two of the house pits investigated in 1976(piece ploting
artifacts in the thrid had been completed in 1976),and exavations were begun in a depression
on the right bank of the island(Figure 6.19). Excavation in some open áreas between
depressions was also begun in 1977. The trenches that allowed examination of stratification
were excavated with a bachoe, whitch had been trabsported in a surplus military landing
craft,and passed throug the boat lock in Ice Harbor Dam, located just upstream from
Strawberry Island.

In 1978 Randall Schalk took over as Project director.He received permission from the Corps of
Engineers to excavate in áreas of the island beyond those that were eroding. Excavation that
year continued in the open áreas, and a new simple of depressions was designed. Upon
evaluating the variability in the kinds of all that there were two clusters of depressions, one on
the right bank and one on the left. Further, the depressions were round, while others were
elliptial. Creating a chart of the posible atributes,Schalk noted whict combinations on the chart
had already been examined.With report and noted the types they had examined.Which WSU
and the Smithsonian´s River Basin exavations considered, it was easy to tell from the chart
which combinations of atributes had not been sampled.

Alla the posibilibities for the unampled combinations were listed, and examples were chosen
with the aid of a table of random numbers until at least one of each combination had picked
for further work.

For each depression choseen in this way, a trench was laido ut froms the rim of depression on
the north side to the center of the depression.Depending on the the size of the
depression,these trences were 5to 7meters(16to 23ft.)long. Each trench was excavated using
standard 10 cm(4in.)levels.This exercise alowed us to explore the range of variation in
depression types.

By the 1979 field season, in which Schalk assumed the role of principal investigador as well as
Project director, we had detailed data on the range in variation in depressions and had
detalled data on the contents of some depressions, including piece-ploted provience on
material in several pithouses. We also had some information on the twi área excavations that
had been conducted.We knew as well that depressions in the right-bank cluster exhibited
some structure in their distribution, with groups of depressions appearing to be clustered
together, perhaps forming compounds.In the final year of the Project we designe done last
simple so that we could put the existing data into a larger context.In this simple, excavations
were laido ut on a grid at 25 meters(82ft.) intervals on the north-south axis and 50
meters(164ft.) on the eastwest axis.Each excavation on the island .In the 1979 excavation we
also examined spatial variability by selecting one of the pithouse clusters and excavating 29
small 1 by 1 meter units in it.The final tas kwas carrying one of the open área exacations begun
in 1978 down to the cobble layer.

Thus what we did was the reverse of what is ofdine.Generally, the first stage of an excavation
is designed to provide information about the structure of the entire site, and subsequent
áreas for detailed excavation are selected base don the result of the initial sampling. In the
Steawberry Island case, owing to the Corp of Engineer´s interpretation of their responsabilities,
we were restricted at first to detailed excavation; only at the end of the preject coud we do
the sampling across the site that allowed us to establish a context into which to fi tour detailed
information.This sequence of events reflects changes that were happening nationwide in
cultural resource management. In the early days of federal archaeology was considered to be
salvage work, aimed at rescuing some data from sites that were disppearing , owing to souch
federal actions as dam building. Ultimately federal archaeology in many agencies took on an
active role in managing the resources under govermment jurisdiction, a task that