Thermally Altered Rock

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Thermally Altered Rock

• Qwu?gwes Archaeological Site
• 45TN240
• Data of Experiments
• By Cassandra Sharron
• The Evergreen State College
• South Puget Sound Community College
• Olympia Washington USA

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Thermally Altered Rock (TAR) covering this site.
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Causes of Thermally Altered Rock

• Cooking practices such as stone boiling,
• pit baking, and shellfish steaming.
• Fish, shellfish, and berry drying.
• Fire hearths and sweat lodges.
• Forest fires and structure burning.

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Living Area
Food Processing Area
Waterlogged Shell Midden
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15 of total Count in Food Processing Area.
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11 of total Count in site.
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74 of total count in site.
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64 of total mass. Water logged Shell Midden.
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Data Collection Methods

• Screened material into 3 groups
• lt .5, .5 - 1, gt 1.
• Total counts and masses for each level and square
  were taken.
• The three excavation areas are
• Shell midden site
• Food processing area
• Housing area.

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Food Processing Area
Steaming Oven Site
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Food Processing AreaN28/E26
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Food Processing (FP) Area Totals Weight 83,707
grams Count 4,653 TAR
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Total Count 3,345, Mass
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Oxidation Layer DeterminationProfessor Jim Strong

• Limited Numbers of Jim Strong's published papers
  are available here.

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15 Sample Groupswere used in this
experimentonly a few are shown here.
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Protective Box for Rocks
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Furnace used for experiments.
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Group 1
Group 2
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Group 3
Group 4
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Last Groups of Oxidation layer determination s
5, 6 7
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Processing and cataloguing the excavations
Thermally Altered Rocks (TAR) in the lab.
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Reassembling the sifter after every use. By gt
1 .5-1 lt.5
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After Labeling each package, I would keep
records of prior data, and add to that data with
the completion of the count , weight, location
and depth.
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Getting in my daily arm reps, exercise is easy
with TAR
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Calculating the weight after counting the
TAR. With the size of the scale the amount of
TAR weighed and calculated at a time is
limited. Yet these smaller groups make for more
accurate data records.
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Entries are logged in a folder until they can be
permanently entered into the computer data sheets.
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Data storing also consists of logging
information on cards that stay with each sample.
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Data cards are stored in baggies along with TAR.
Then moved into boxes, stored boxes await moving
to warehouses.
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Data Entering
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Making of Clam Oven
Squaxin Island Tribe Cultural Expertise Bev
Hawks
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Heating the rocks
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Removing the coals
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Wetting the sword ferns
Supervisors Bev Willie
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Applying ferns onto steaming rocks
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Food Processing-Clam Steaming
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Releasing the hot steam from the hot rocks
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With Tarp in place now more water is added
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Tarps containing steam
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Using modern mats from the Aerostar
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Bryce measuring temperature Of steaming rocks
with Automotive digital sensor. Bev Hawks
desires temperatures of rocks to reach 600-700
degrees F
.

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Removing tarps from oven
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Candra testing the clams
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End result delicious clams