Located on the central Oregon coast, the Umpqua Eden site (35D083)
yielded an artifact assemblage which is one of the five largest assemblages from
the Oregon coast. The first aspect of the site that I looked at is the people who
lived at the site, the ancestors of the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower
Umpqua and Siuslaw. In turn, I consulted with Patty Whereat, the Cultural
Resources Director for the tribes, which resulted in a more holistic view of the
site. Additionally, I attempted to uncover possible women's and men's activity
areas of the Umpqua Eden site. A wealth of information on the native peoples
of the Oregon coast was discovered, revealing that the sexual division of labor
was not extremely rigid before Euro-American contact and the social category
of "female" was expanded to more than two genders with consideration given to
the two-spirited individual. I also attempted to engender the archaeological
record by looking at the processes involved in the manufacture of smoking pipes
and the cultivation of tobacco. During the ethnographic period, women were
not smoking pipes; however, they were probably cultivating the tobacco and
possibly gathering the clay for smoking pipes. I suggest that there was an
agricultural element to the hunter-gatherer native populations of the central
Oregon coast and challenge Western assumptions of individualism in precontact
groups of the Oregon coast.
I also provide a comparative analysis of clay, schist and steatite pipes of
the Oregon coast. The smoking pipes are all straight and tubular (9% are
shouldered) and the Umpqua Eden site pipes have the most artistic motifs. My
analysis shows that the sandstone pipe dates to approximately 2,000 years ago
and the clay smoking pipe may have replaced the sandstone pipe. Schist and
steatite pipes were also used by the people of the Oregon coast and may have
possibly been traded into the site from southern groups. Microscopic analysis
of the pipes provided evidence that people were firing their clay pipes in a low
temperature reducing atmosphere and using sand temper. In addition, I found a
wide range of pipes being used on the Oregon coast given its relatively small
geographic location.
All of the this archaeological inquiry has helped in understanding the
Umpqua Eden site and helped to give us a clearer picture of pre-contact Lower
Umpqua life. / Graduation date: 2000
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/33220 |
| Date | 04 May 2000 |
| Creators | Nelson, Nancy J. (Nancy Jo) |
| Contributors | Roth, Barbara |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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