Exploring the Chinook Middle Village and Station Camp
The Cannon Beach History Center & Museum welcomes special guest speaker, Dr. Douglas Wilson, on Wednesday, July 20 at 7:00 p.m. Wilson will be giving a presentation regarding his most recent archaeological work at the Middle Village.
The Middle Village is a contact-period Chinook Indian village in the estuarine zone near the mouth of the Columbia River. This site contains abundant fur-trade era goods and well-preserved architectural features associated with at least three plank structures. Early fur traders and explorers described the village. It was later used as Lewis & Clark’s Station Camp. The Middle Village contains an abundance of wealth items and a dearth of productive tools and debris within a traditional Chinook summer village. The archaeological excavations of the site suggest the intensity and context of interaction between the Chinook and the Euro-American fur traders.
Dr. Wilson’s research interests include the colonial archaeology of the Pacific Northwest of North America, cultural identity, labor history, method and theory, and public archaeology and cultural resources management. He currently serves as the Historical Archaeologist to the Partnerships Program, Pacific West Region of the National Park Service and is the Director of the Northwest Cultural Resources Institute (NCRI), a partnership program at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, Vancouver, Washington.
Dr. Wilson continues to explore the historical archaeology of the Pacific Northwest and has a number of projects at Fort Vancouver National Historical Site. One of the projects is synthesizing research on the Fort Vancouver Village, a multicultural community that formed the heart of the British fur-trade headquarters post. Archaeological research has been driven by the program’s Public Archaeology Field School, which has sampled houses and landscape from the Village to explore the nature of cultural identity, technological change, globalization, and public interpretation. His research has appeared in the Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage, Columbia Magazine, and more.
This program is a free event and is open to the public. The Cannon Beach History Center & Museum is located at 1387 South Spruce Street in Cannon Beach, Oregon. For more information visit www.cbhistory.org or call 503-436-9301.