Archaeological Investigations (1991-1996) at 45Cl1 (Cathlapotle), Clark County, Washington. A Preliminary Report. by Kenneth M. Ames, Cameron M. Smith, William L. Cornett and Elizabeth A. Sobel. January 1999 Wapato Valley Archaeology Project Report #6 Department of Anthropology Portland State University U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The following document is a simple conversion of a late (but not final) draft of the text file representing the bulk of this work to an HTML web page. The page was produced mainly for my own purposes, but anyone is free to download and read this document. This document is not supplied with all figures; these are available in the hard copy of this report. Please feel free to contact me regarding this report. Dr. Cameron M. Smith Department of Anthropology Portland State University ABSTRACT Archaeological investigations at archaeological site 45CL1, Clark County, Washington, demonstrate that the locality is a very large (c 1.5ha), deeply stratified (2-4m) town site with an occupation spanning at least 1000 years (c. AD 1000 to 1840). Six large, complex depressions have been mapped. Test excavations show that these depressions represent the semi-subterranean portions of residential structures, probably large plankhouses of the type common on the Lower Columbia River and the Northwest Coast in aboriginal times. The depressions may represent as many as 11 such dwellings. A seventh depression is deeply buried beneath midden deposits. The cultural deposits contain very high densities of artifacts, ecofacts (including both faunal and floral remains), debris and features. The site is near the Columbia River on a very active flood plain, resulting in site stratigraphy produced by a combination of activer cultural and alluvial depositional processes. Site 45Cl1, given its location and size, is the best candidate to be the site of Cathlapotle, a Middle Chinookan town visited by Lewis and Clark in 1806, as well as by other early Europeans in the area. The site is extraordinarily well preserved, having undergone only minor alteratioins since its abandonment, probably in the third or fourth decade of the 19th century AD. Acknowledgments Successful archaeological projects are invariably the result of the cooperation of a wide variety of people. We wish to express our gratitude to the following: Jim Carty, who grew up on the land that holds Cathlapotle, told us where it was, and provided us with considerable information and assistance. Page 1 of 77 final text 3/27/2006 http://web.pdx.edu/~b5cs/1999cathlapotlereport.html