Archaeology Theses

NORTHWEST ARCHAEOLOGY THESES AND DISSERTATIONS

Universities are increasingly putting graduate theses online and available to the public. This page collates links to theses and dissertations of interest for Northwest Coast and Northwest Interior archaeology. Right now they are in alphabetical order by author, but that may change.

Each link should go to a page where you can read the abstract and choose to download the thesis free of charge, unless otherwise noted (a few are direct downloads). Some of the older SFU ones have no date and are marked n.d. for the ones where I didn’t bother downloading the PDF and the date wasn’t given on the landing page. Many SFU theses also have no abstract. Relatively speaking the SFU system is less good: the search is not full text, and many of the landing pages are weak; they also disallow printing and cutting-and-pasting though googling for ways around this is productive. On the other hand, the SFU archive goes back much further: there are few theses before about 2000 available on either UVIC or UBC dSpace though retro-digitization projects are in place at both institutions. Relevant theses are also online at places like University of Calgary and Toronto, but are limited to institutional subscribers. However, the intention of this page is to only link to those theses which are publicly available to anyone. I am just beginning to list theses available through the Theses Canada Portal and not elsewhere. Theses are in Anthropology or Archaeology unless otherwise noted.

Having spent a couple of years living on Gabriola Island, I read Amanda Adams’ MA thesis on the rock art of that Island (Visions Cast in Stone: A Stylistic Analysis of the Petroglyphs of Gabriola Island) with great interest. In general, I was disappointed with both the scope of the work and many of the conclusions. I do agree with her conclusion that many of the petroglyphs there, especially those in the vicinity of False Narrows, were likely made by the occupants of the False Narrows village site excavated by Burley (1989). This connection of “dirt” archaeology with rock art is a welcome addition to our understanding of Northwest Coast rock art.

Regarding the shortcomings of the thesis, my main criticism is that all the rock art is not presented, and the reader cannot refer to the data to confirm or disprove her conclusions. I also feel that the thesis would have been much stronger if she has taken the time to include data from other Nanaimo area rock art sites, which I believe shed a great deal of light on the patterns of rock art on Gabriola. Adam’s proposal that the majority of Gabriola Island rock art was created by a limited number of specialists during a fairly short period of time might be harder to support when similarities with Vancouver Island sites is taken into account. Unfortunately, there also exists the problem of the attitudes of many Nanaimo Elders who evidently feel it improper to document the rock art images and publish these images in a scientific paper. This limitation however, could have been largely overcome by utilizing excellent data already published by Mary and Ted Bentley in their book Gabriola: Petroglyph Island, and the data from Vancouver Island published by Beth and Ray Hill in 1974.

Regarding specific problems with the text, I will mention a few examples: Adams states that anthropomorphic figures are always rendered frontally, ignoring the two face profiles illustrated by her in figure A10, also that the nearby petroglyph on Protection Island is not similar to Gabriola Island petroglyphs (I believe there are some similar petroglyphs on Gabriola Island, but here we have the problem of her lack of illustrations), and ignores the clear stylistic similarities of a fish tailed zoomorph profile with historic grave markers from the lower Fraser River. She also, in my opinion, misses a very clear representation of “rattlesnake woman” (her figure A11b– original drawing by me incidentally), a figure with a toothed vagina which may well be related to myths documented by Teit and quoted in Images Stone BC. A very “modern” (i.e. ca. 200 BPE) looking carving located at DgRw 198 was also not documented (perhaps she was not even aware of it), which tends to support the hypothesis that the Gabriola Island petroglyphs continued to be made right up until the contact period. These specific points might have been caught and addressed if the thesis had included a thorough inventory of petroglyph images, enabling a more rigorous analysis of both style and content.

I do not like to be so negative, but I have spent a number of years visiting these and other Coast Salish rock art sites with Beth Hill, Richard McClure and other archaeologists and as well have documented a great deal of Salish Rock art. It presents us with many tantalizing clues regarding its origins and meanings, but a deeper understanding of this scientific and cultural treasure will not yield up its secrets easily. A rigorous analysis of all the available data should be the first step.

Bill, good question. Other folks sometimes call them ‘incised pebbles’ . George MacDonald (1983:114) interprets incised stones as associated with fishing rituals and notes similarities between sandstone and siltstone. There’s undoubtedly much more out there but this is my momentary knowledge.

Twoeyes,
Thanks for the citation I am working on a NRHP nomination for Tsewhitzen. The shear number of etched stones in Washington State from this site is enormous. Do you have any etched stone numbers for sites in Canada?

Hi Bill,
I recall that Morley Eldridge encountered a number of incised stones on a Denman Island site, associated with production of bifaces i believe. I think his interpretation was ‘hunting magic’. It was an older site i think ~3000 BP.