Generationally-Linked Archaeology

Generationally-Linked Archaeology: “Living-Off-The-Land” for 4,000 Years on the Salish Sea adds an innovative, easy to read, test of the authors' far-reaching Generationally-Linked Archaeology (GLA) approach, first developed with over 4,000 years of ancient Coast Salish basketry traditions (Carriere and Croes 2018), and now evaluated with Ed’s early use of 44 natural resources and evidence from over 4,000 years of hunting, fishing, and gathering from archaeological sites within 20 miles of his home. Since Ed was raised by his Great-grandmother Julia Jacobs (born 1874), they essentially “lived-off-the-land” using what anthropologists term their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with all the native resources to support themselves: shellfish, fish, ducks, mammals, and berry crops. Dale and Ed compare these practices with the archaeological fauna/flora analyses near his home allotment lands, including sites in the Seattle, Washington, area, for 4,000+ years. The results support their GLA basketry style linkage through time, upholding the hypothesis of cultural continuity and sustainability of Coast Salish subsistence, a process they term Generationally-Linked Ecological Knowledge (G-LEK), with similar resource use frequencies through these four millennium and two hundred generations of Coast Salish Peoples. Through Ed’s description of 44 natural resources, they provide information not preserved archaeologically: resource behaviors, capture techniques, preparation procedures, cooking, taste, and storage practices. The book is jargon-free and accessible to readers who do not necessarily have training in cultural anthropology or archaeology. Over 200 color photographs and illustrations of the 44 natural resources that Ed used and Dale’s archaeological wet and shell midden sites greatly enhance the text.


Ed’s stories of hunting, fishing and collecting shellfish, and cooking are a treasure trove of information not usually available to archaeologists. There are early histories of hunting and fishing, but rarely in the detail we would like. In this book, information on tools used, animals caught, seasonal scheduling, and cooking are given in fine detail. Even after reading this book several times, I am still finding new details of interest.... Of particular interest, I think, is that Ed’s Great-grandmother, Julia Jacobs, was interviewed by T.T. Waterman in the early 1920s and Warren Synder in the early 1950s. This adds a longitudinal aspect to the family’s resource use which is unprecedented.... Dale’s inclusion of the local archaeological data into the record of an individual’s extended family resource use is also unusual, to say the least.
-Rebecca Wigen, Zooarchaeologist, Pacific Identification and University of Victoria (Retired), B.C., Canada