Archaeological Dig Shows Spokane Was Inhabited 8,000 Years Ago

Archaeologist says Spokane site of oldest community in Washington State

Late last month city officials celebrated the 125 anniversary of incorporation. As it turns out, that's barely a pimple on 8,000 years of human habitation at the confluence of the Spokane River and Latah Creek.
In terms of continuous human use and habitation verified by radiocarbon dating, recent discoveries have made Spokane the oldest city in the state, said Stanley C. Gough, archaeology director at Eastern Washington University in nearby Cheney.
"This documents for the first time people actually living here at this age," Gough said.
His findings at the 25-by-60-foot site are likely no surprise to Indian tribes in the area whose oral history regards the area as a salmon fishing and food processing site dating back to ancient times.
"We've known that all our lives," said Buzz Gutierrez, a Spokane Indian tribal member who was born and raised just upstream from the traditional encampment.
"It's great for me to know that somebody is going to admit that native peoples have been here for more than 3,000 years," he said. "We can say to the Europeans, 'We've been here longer than you thought."'
Gough, who led a five-month dig in the alluvial delta downstream from Spokane Falls, said his team found 60,000 artifacts, including spear tips known as Cascade points that were found in the oldest layers of human evidence at the site and were in use throughout the region 4,000 to 8,000 years ago.
Radioactive carbon dating showed three samples of charcoal four to seven feet below the surface were 8,000 years old, he said.
"Every excavation yields new things," said Gough. "This one was a particularly information-rich site."
The $430,000 dig, required under state antiquities law, was the result of a state order to install overflow tanks for combined sewer and stormwater lines for the city's south side. City wastewater chief Dale Arnold said the cost was far less expensive than to put the tank elsewhere.
The vast majority of the artifacts consisted of broken animal bone and rock chips, but there was also an arrow point made of obsidian, or volcanic glass, from eastern Oregon and an adz blade made of nephrite, a type of jade, from the Wenatchee area.
Also found was an oven hearth lined with river mussel shells, showing how food was cooked and eaten, said Sara Walker, another archaeologist on the dig.
The dig unearthed a technological progression, with arrow points about 1,000 years old closer to the surface and rocks fashioned into weights for fishing nets at a layer about 3,500 years old.
The weights indicate an effort to increase the fish catch for greater drying and storage, or possibly for use in trading, Gough said.
No evidence of winter shelters was found, and the presence of bones from mammals that hibernate during the winter, such as marmots, also indicated that humans were present only during warm-weather months.
Layers of sand between separating the samples showed that they came from different campsites over periods that could have been centuries, he added.
The artifacts survived through the real estate rule of location, location, location, Gough said. Instead of being wiped clean by floods, the typical fate of aboriginal riverside campsites, the old fire pits in Spokane were covered more gently by layers of sand from the two rivers.
Even so, no clothing or wood was found, only mineral, charcoal and bone.
"All of the baskets are gone," Gough said.