From northern California to Alaska, the Northwest Coast of North America is one of the continent’s richest cultural areas. Long famous for its magnificent art, it also contains some of the most complex and intriguing archaeology found in the United States and Canada. Author Kenneth Ames is Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University and Herbert Maschner, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, are two of the leading experts of the archaeology of the region with extensive experience in the field up and down the coast.
Until fairly recently, the story of the people of the Northwest Coast has been mainly told by ethnologists. Because of the perishable nature of the material culture, it was often believed that archaeology was very limited. Ames and Maschner show that archaeology is now providing vast amounts of information about these fascinating cultures. —Mark Michel
