Portland State Magazine Fall 2019

24 FOR ALMOST 3,000 years, the Native American village of Čḯx w icәn was washed away by as many as five tsunamis.Yet, its people rebuilt each time. Archaeologists from Portland State University,Western Washington University and the University of Rhode Island have studied the remains of the village located near present-day Port Angeles,Washington.They say their findings shed new light on local earthquake impacts and can help prepare the public for future seismic events. "When you have direct evidence of a community that experienced these tsunamis and earthquakes, you better believe that Port Angeles should be ready because they're in the zone," says Virginia Butler, a professor of anthropology at PSU and the project's principal investigator. "But the other lesson is that if you're prepared, you can come back." Čḯx w icәn (pronounced ch-wheet-son) is the 2,700-year-old ancestral village of the Lower Elwha KlallamTribe—first built at approximately the same time Rome was founded. A traditional village, it included a sacred burial ground, which holds great significance for the tribes’ descendants. Native peoples occupied the site until the early 20th century, when they were displaced and eventually forced to move to a reservation in the Elwha Valley west of Port Angeles. In 2003, excavators uncovered the village during construction of a large dry dock. It was one of the largest Native American villages ever discovered in Washington.The state eventually abandoned the costly construction project, but the discovery turned into one of the most important archaeological finds in the Pacific Northwest with more than 12,000 artifacts and over a million animal remains discovered, as well as the remnants of large plank houses. More than 300 human remains were also unearthed and have since been reburied by the tribe on the site. "We didn't set out to find the largest village in Washington state; we happened to come across it," says Sarah Sterling, an assistant professor of anthropology who, at the time, was hired as a project geoarchaeologist at the excavation site. There were signs of possible past tsunamis during the initial Written by Cristina Rojas Archaeologists explore the remains of a Native American village in Washington that survived multiple tsunamis. ancient people Resilience of an