The next OAS General Meeting is January 7, 2025 at 7p.m
Guest lecturer Dr. Virginia Butler, speaking on
“Updates from The Dalles Roadcut Site,
a Sample of the Stories”
In 1993, Butler and a small crew returned to The Dalles Roadcut Site, originally excavated in the 1950s by Luther Cressman and the UO Museum to salvage cultural materials that would be inundated by waters behind The Dalles Dam. Among other findings, Cressman documented a huge number of salmon remains dating to ~10,000 years before present, which he used to argue that salmon had been important to Indigenous people of the region throughout the Holocene. Subsequent questions about whether the fish remains could have been natural (spawned out salmon? waste from scavenger birds?) prompted Butler to open a small-scale excavation to assess the condition of the site, analyze the sedimentary context of the bone bed, and obtain samples of bone for taphonomic analyses, sediments for physical and chemical analyses, and charcoal for dating. This presentation summarizes key findings from this work, and includes personal reflections on ways the practice of archaeology has changed in the ~70 years since this important cultural place was first documented.
Virginia Butler is a Professor Emerita at Portland State University (Portland, Oregon, USA), where she has been on the faculty in the Department of Anthropology since 1995. She earned her BA at the University of Georgia and her MA and PhD at the University of Washington. Her primary scholarship has focused on zooarchaeology focusing on the enduring relationships between people and fish, and working on projects in the Pacific Northwest, Oceania and deserts of western North America. Since 2010, she has turned more of her attention to public archaeology and education, creating and directing the Archaeology Roadshow. Her scholarship has been published in international journals including Antiquity, Journal of World Prehistory, American Antiquity, Journal of Archaeological Science, Quaternary Research, and Ecology and Society.
The meeting will be live at OMSI, free and open to the public
and also available to OAS members via Zoom.
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) is located at
1945 SE Water Ave. Portland, OR 97214-3354
Recordings of meetings will be available to the general public on the OAS YouTube channel one week after the meeting date. Visit the OAS YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVcaApNDyXOz2W6tsiWTPZw/
OAS Free Public Lecture Series, 2024-2025
Sept 3, 2024
Dr. April Nowell, University of Victoria
Dr. Nowell will be speaking on “Growing Up in the Ice Age: Were Children Drivers of Human Cultural Evolution?”
Oct 1, 2024
Cheryl Mack
“The Search for Chequoss – A Camp From the 1853 Pacific Railroad Survey Expedition”
November 6, 2024 Date change to Wednesday
Dr. Larry Loendorf, Sacred Sites Research
“Warfare, Pots and Rock Art in the
Jornada Mogollon Region, New Mexico”
December 3, 2024
Dr. Robert Losey, University of Alberta
“The Par-Tee Archaeological Site on the Oregon Coast: Equipment Scaling and Learning”
January 7, 2025
Dr. Virginia Butler, speaking on
“Updates from The Dalles Roadcut Site, a Sample of the Stories”
February 4, 2025
Dr. Karen Steelman, SHUMLA Archaeological Research and Education Center, Texas.
Dr. Steelman will speak on state-of-the-art dating processes for rock art.
March 5, 2025
Dan Stueber, University of Victoria
“Understanding Stone Tools Through Replication and Experiments”
April 1, 2025
Jim Keyser, OAS
Reporting on work at the Vissotzky Site in NW Montana
May 6, 2025
Jocelyn Lee
“Feeling Safe in the Field: Fostering Spaces of Inclusion during Archaeological Excavations”
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