Marmes Rockshelter: A Final Report on 11,000 Years of Cultural Use

The Marmes Rockshelter is one of the most significant archaeological sites in the Pacific Northwest, due not only to its 11,000-year record of human use beginning in early Holocene times, but also because of the attention it generated towards American archaeology throughout the Northwest, the nation, and the world. Following excavation in the early 1960’s, the collection of artifacts and records was brought to the Washington State Museum of Anthropology, where it was used for teaching and research purposes, but details regarding the curated assembly were not readily available until now.

The culmination of five years of work and the support of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this 466 page paperback volume includes a complete analysis and interpretation of all the available information from the site’s rockshelter and floodplain areas, including the project’s background, research design, environmental overview, cultural context, stratigraphy and site formation processes, features, remains, lithic debitage, tools, and materials, and represents the completion of a final report some thirty years after the Marmes site was excavated. Illustrations, maps, and a bibliography supplement the text.