Karen: Today, we've got three speakers from Fort Vancouver who have agreed to talk about
some research that they've been carrying on.
Our first speaker is Robert Cromwell who will be� the title of his talk is �Comparing
Ceramics of the Early 19th Century Fur Trade British Fort Sites Along the Columbia River.�
Bob will present a typological analysis of early 19th century British and Chinese ceramics
wares that were imported into the Pacific Northwest through the British fur trade, and
he'll compare the archeological ceramic assemblages from a series of fur trading forts in the
Northwest, as all of these posts were supplied from England via an ocean-based sea route
of over seventeen thousand miles, and his study examines the extent to which people
clung to their culturally prescribed indicators of social status.
This sounds like a really interesting talk.
I'm really looking forward to it.
Bob is very well qualified to talk about this topic.
He's worked at Fort Vancouver since 2000.
He was first hired as a term archeologist and he became a permanent archeologist at
the park unit in 2006.
To date, he's worked on archeological research in at least eight parks and fifteen states.
Thank you very much, Bob, for agreeing to talk in the series today.
Bob: My pleasure.
Karen: I'm going to turn this over to you, but I will get your presentation lined up
for you.
There you go.
Bob: Great.
Thank you, all.
I'm just going to need a quick primer on how to advance the slides here.
The Ceramics of Early 19th Century Fur Trade British Fort Sites along the Columbia River.
Here we go.
This paper has its impetus in the archeological analysis of a Chinookan village site on the
Washington Coast at the mouth of the Columbia River.
The site known as Station Camp or the Middle Village, was excavated with data recovery
operations by the NPS in 2005/2006 as part of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.
The excavations revealed a traditional Chinookan village site with multiple plank house structures,
but nearly sixty percent of the recovered artifacts were European or Asian in origin.
The date range of occupation of the site, based upon the recovered artifacts, was circa
1792 to 1820.
The site appears to have been predominantly occupied during the early fur trade period
of the Pacific Northwest.
You can see that just north of the 101 symbol on the center of the slide, there's a little
pointer for the Station Camp site.
Among the recovered artifacts included two hundred and ninety-three ceramic vessel sherds,
which analysis indicated a minimum number of vessels of seventy-three.
A majority of these vessels were represented by decorated and undecorated Staffordshire
creamware ceramics, which are not typically recovered in the Pacific Northwest.
I was very excited to see these when we did recover them.
I have done quite a bit of work on the east coast as well, and they're definitely a hallmark
of 18th century context.
Most historical archeological sites in the Pacific Northwest have their origins in the
19th century, so to see creamware sherds was quite exciting.
The mean ceramic date of the assemblage was early for the Pacific Northwest of 1805.64,
which coincidentally matches very well with when Lewis and Clark were actually out there,
but I'm pretty sure that these ceramics have almost nothing to do with Lewis and Clark.
One of the more impressive vessels recovered from the Middle Village site was this hand
decorated creamware tea caddy.
Tea caddies or tea canisters are an interesting vessel form produced by the Staffordshire
factories in the late 18th century - really at the boom of the tea craze in England.
When we reconstruct it, this representative tea caddy shape is consistent with those that
date to the 1790 to 1810 period.
The 2007 Society for Historical Archeology meetings were at the Colonial Williamsburg,
and they have a fantastic ceramics wing at their museum, and of course it was the one
conference where I forgot to bring my camera.
There on display was an almost identical tea canister, actually same shape, very similar
decorations, and slip glaze in the middle.
It was actually dated 1792.
I was very excited to see that.
The date ranges and possible origins of these wares could, as of 2006, be only substantiated
by historical information.
The three most plausible origins of these wares were the Maritime Fur Trade 1792 to
1815 period; the Pacific Fur Company�s Fort Astoria, 1811 to 1813; and the Northwest Company�s
Fort George, 1813 to 1821.
We have basically no archeological information for the Maritime Fur Trade as far as shipwreck
sites that we could study.
Unfortunately, at that time, Fort Astoria, which later became Fort George, had never
been archeologically tested, so we had no data from it.
These determinations led to a larger research study with the analysis of the ceramic assemblages
from their earliest and most prominent fur trade era post located in the Pacific Northwest.
The early 19th century fur trade in the Pacific Northwest was dominated by the British Terrestrial
fur trade with the establishment of trade posts within formalized posts mostly centered
upon the Columbia River.
An American incursion into the trade by John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company was short
lived, only two years, 1811 to 1813.
Karen: Bob, can I interrupt you for just a minute?
Bob: Sure.
Karen: Can everybody make sure that they've got their phone on mute who's listening to
this so that we can't hear you guys rattling around in your offices?
Thanks a lot.
Go on, Bob.
Bob: Okay.
American incursion into the trade by John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company was short
lived, only two years, 1811 to 1813, and the exit of the Pacific Fur Company from the scene
allowed a British colonial toehold along the Columbia River for the next thirty years.
The trade posts of most of the interest for this study include Fort Astoria and Fort George,
circa 1811 to 1848, Fort Vancouver, 1829 to 1860, Fort Okanagan, 1811 to 1831 and Fort
Spokane, 1810 to 1826.
In addition, this author has now analyzed the contact era context of the Chinookan Village
sites of Meier and Cathlapotle in Oregon and Washington.
Although not the major emphasis to this paper, they will be referenced as a foil for further
research on the scale of the British fur trade in the inland Pacific Northwest in the early
19th century.
During the summer of 2012, the National Park Service, Portland State University, Washington
State University, Vancouver Public Archeology Field School have the opportunity to conduct
the first professional archeological survey of the location identified as the site of
Fort Astoria and Fort George.
Although the earliest of the terrestrial fur trade posts established along the Columbia
River, the site was developed over by the modern city of Astoria, Oregon, and had never
been systematically surveyed by archeologists before this point.
It's commemorated by an interesting park, and you can see this mural's painted, and
I just love the way that the fur trapper portrayed in the background is peering over the excavators
as they're working.
A total of four hundred and fifty-eight vessel sherds were recovered from the limited test
excavations in 2012, which upon analysis a hundred and fifty-eight of them can be identified
as having been manufactured during the early 19th century fur trade.
These sherds were analyzed from a minimum number of vessel perspective and constitute
a MNV of forty-six identified vessels.
The great majority, fifty-eight percent of these consist of transfer print decorated
whitewares with most of these being manufactured by the Spode Copeland and Garrett firm of
Staffordshire, England.
These likely date to the period of the Hudson's Bay Company occupation of the site, 1821 to
1848, when the Hudson's Bay Company had a contract with the Spode firm.
As seen here, these ceramic vessel sherds also included Chinese manufactured porcelains
represented on the two images on the left of the slide.
These Canton and Nanking exported wares are common at all of these sites.
A great range of various transfer print patterns are also representative assemblages indicated
in the upper right slide.
In fact those are all Spode identified patterns.
You can drop those into the assemblage here at Fort Vancouver and it'd be impossible to
tell them apart from the Fort Astoria context.
Most impressively from the perspective of the Pacific Northwest, the site also yielded
remnants of the Staffordshire hand decorated creamware teacup common to the turn of the
19th century, and we had almost identical sherds across the river at Station Camp.
The site of Fort Okanagan is located in north central Washington State along the Columbia
River.
Excavated in the 1950s and 60s, the artifact assemblage is currently curated by the Spokane
Tribe in Nespelem, Washington.
This author has yet to have the opportunity to analyze the two hundred and eighty-five
ceramic sherds recorded in the previous archeological reports.
Fort Spokane, also known as Spokane House, is located in northeastern Washington State
near the confluence of the Spokane and Columbia Rivers.
Also excavated in the 1950s and 60s, the artifact collection from the site is currently curated
at the Burke Museum of Natural History at the University of Washington.
In 2007, this author had the opportunity to analyze the ceramic vessel sherds from the
site from an minimum number of vessel perspective, and I actually did that on a small projects
fund through the Parks Service.
As this author has yet to analyze the artifacts from Fort Okanagan, the data presented here
are from Grabert's 1964 report on excavations of the site.
From a sherd basis, one can see an overall similarity to the ceramic vessel sherd types
recovered from the Station Camp, Fort George and Fort Okanagan sites.
Impressively the majority of the recovered sherds are recorded as being Staffordshire
creamware, an indicator of the early 19th century occupation of the site.
This author's 2007 analysis of the Fort Spokane ceramic assemblage yielded a total of two
hundred and thirty-five ceramic vessels.
This is the largest assemblage among these early 19th century British fur trade posts.
Impressively, the site yielded a hundred and sixty-three Chinese export porcelain vessels
representing over sixty-nine percent of the total assemblage.
This is the highest percentage of Chinese export porcelain at an early 19th century
site this author has ever seen represented in archeological literature in North America.
Other than this percentage, however, the types of wares represented again are very similar
to those recovered from the other fur trade sites in the study.
One of my favorite sherds in this assemblage is a pearlware figurine.
It's actually a hand.
I didn't put a photo of it in here but to me it's just a representation of the extent
to which the British fur trade companies wanted to symbolize home, to actually haul a pearlware
figurine from England and then up the Columbia River and overland to Fort Spokane was quite
a feat.
Represented here are examples of hand decorated Staffordshire creamware sherds recovered from
Fort Spokane, which were virtually identical to those recovered from the Station Camp in
Fort Astoria and Fort George sites.
The Chinese export porcelain sherds represented in the bottom panels represent the widest
range of decoration types represented in any of the analyzed sites, representing not only
the common cobalt blue on light gray, but also multicolored hand decorated wares.
Arguably these were quite expensive for their time.
This author's 2006 dissertation research centered upon the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver
site, which dates 1829 to 1860.
Comparing the ceramic assemblage from households within the Fort site to specific households
located in the Hudson's Bay Company's employee village located a quarter mile west of the
fort site.
This site was the largest, latest, and longest occupied of any of the sites analyzed in this
study.
As a matter of comparison, this author has analyzed the mean ceramic dates and a George
Miller�s CC index comparison for each of these sites.
Although not specifically analyzed in this paper, the English Staffordshire ceramic vessel
sherds recovered from the lower Columbia River Chinookan village sites of Meier and Cathlapotle
are also referenced in this table.
Of greatest note in this table is the notable increase in CC index values of these sites
that have a mean ceramic date value postdating 1830.
The sites that have mean ceramic dates prior to 1830 have relatively few transfer print
decorated vessels, whereas those that postdate 1830 are dominated by transfer print decorated
vessels.
When looking at Miller CC index values, there's a notable increase, almost double in the valuation
of transfer print decorated vessels over hand decorated vessels.
This begs the question of whether the market drove the dominance of transfer print decorated
vessels or if there was a notable shift in consumer choice variables towards the transfer
print decorated vessels and away from the hand decorated vessels.
The hand decorated vessels were still available and they were fifty percent cheaper, and yet
somehow the transfer print dominated the market.
Also of note is the fact that the CC index values of the British occupied sites do not
have appreciably higher values than those from the Chinook occupied sites of Station
Camp Cathlapotle and Meier.
It can be argued that the ceramics placed into the fur trade market in the early 19th
century with Native Americans were of similar value to the ceramics utilized by the British
and Euroamerican occupants of the fur trade post in the sales, which leads to a realm
of many new research questions and directions to work from.
Clearly there are still many assumptions, research questions and hypotheses that can
still be posited to these ceramic vessel assemblages that originated from these varied early 19th
century fur trade posts, and Contact Era Native American sites.
This paper represents nearly a decade long research effort by this author and the ceramics
from the Fort Okanagan site and probably dozens of contact era Native American sites along
the Columbia River still need to be analyzed.
Even after over sixty years of archeological research of the early fur trade era along
the Columbia River, there has been relatively little synthesis and inter-site comparative
analysis to ask these basic questions and artifact types, of function and market forces,
product availability and transportation route limitations that influence the British colonial
terrestrial fur trade system represented at these sites.
That is it.
I'd be happy to take any questions if anybody has any.
Karen: Bob, I have a question.
Bob: Sure.
Karen: How were the Chinese ceramics physically getting into the Northwest?
Bob: Honestly, there still needs to be a lot of research on that.
What is interesting here at Fort Vancouver, the Hudson's Bay Company clerks here were
very meticulous on recording everything that was imported.
Of the fifteen years� worth of inventories that I've personally gone through, I've never
seen a record of Chinese ceramics or Chinese porcelains being imported here, and yet they
are here.
At Fort Vancouver, they usually represent less than five percent of the assemblage.
What's interesting is that the East India Company controlled the trade of these porcelains
as far as English markets, and there's a lot of evidence that the East India Company and
the Hudson's Bay Company and earlier, the Northwest Company did not really like each
other and really did not engage in direct trade.
There are definitely big questions as to how these Chinese ceramics are getting here.
Specifically for Fort Vancouver, it's interesting to note that the Hudson's Bay Company had
a trading station at Oahu in the 1830s and 40s, and so did the East India Company.
I think there is probably a chance that there is essentially a black market trade coming
out of Hawaii where, basically, Hudson's Bay Company and East India Company employees are
trading and the ceramics are ending up on Hudson's Bay Company vessels and then coming
here to the Pacific Northwest.
The earlier sites and specifically Fort Spokane, it's a much bigger question with Fort Spokane
having an almost seventy percent Chinese export porcelains.
There's a lot of research that still needs to be done on how those were getting there
during the Northwest Company tenure, which the Northwest Company operated that Fort for
its longest period of occupation.
It's the furthest inland, so it would have definitely taken an effort to get those up
there.
Again, there's still a lot of research that needs to be done to figure basic questions
like that out.
Karen: Wow.
That's fascinating.
Are there any other questions for Bob?
Bob, thanks very much for that very interesting paper.
Bob: You're welcome.
My pleasure.
Karen: I also wanted to mention that Bob has given us a paper that we have posted on the
Archeology Program website in our Projects in Parks series, that also deals with ceramic
analysis at Fort Vancouver.
There's additional information there if you're interested in the topic.