Port Camden Fish Trap
1810 BP
Port Camden Fish Trap is located on a vast tide flat at the head of a large bay. Deep and sticky tidal sediments have preserved thousands of wood stakes sharpened at one end and driven securely into the tide flats. The stakes are generally four to eight centimeters in diameter and extend up to 20 centimeters above the ground surface. The stakes are positioned tightly together to form one to five meter-wide sweeping linear formations. One of the continuous alignments stretches for 158 meters!
This fantastic example of the ubiquitous wood stake traps of southeast Alaska came to our attention when a Forest Service archaeologist noticed the site early one morning when flying in a float plane over the bay. Always on our radar, we were able to record it during a section 110 monitoring and inventory trip that had us in the vicinity during an extreme low tide event. We used a mobile GPS mapping device to gather as much information as possible during our window of opportunity. Some of the site remains un-digitized, but the Alaska ShoreZone Coastal Mapping and Imagery project provides excellent aerial views of the site.
The fish trap is located on a vast tide flat at the head of a large bay. Deep and sticky tidal sediments have preserved thousands of wood stakes sharpened at one end and driven securely into the tide flats. Bivalves, dead and alive, are packed among the stakes and seaweed clings to the wood. Due to the very mucky nature of the tidal sediments we had to walk on the trap to map it, being careful to step on the bivalve pack rather than the stakes.
The stakes are generally 4 to 8 cm in diameter and extend up to 20 cm above the ground surface. The missing portions, that once rose high above the sediments, have been destroyed by worms, erosion and decay. The stakes are positioned tightly together to form 1 m to 5 m-wide sweeping linear configurations. Long configurations form v-shaped structures that terminate with semi-circular curves. Shorter arcs are positioned off the main configurations. To give you an idea of size, one of the continuous alignments stretches for 158 meters.
This trap is particularly illustrative of the many feature types found at traps across the region; funnel-shaped leads, loops, linear, curved and parallel alignments, wide swaths and narrow configurations the width of just a few stakes. A single radiocarbon date (1810 ± 50 BP cal 1869–1612 BP [Beta-262553]) suggests this late-Middle Holocene site falls squarely in the time period when wood stake trap construction peaked, between about 2250 and 1500 cal 14C yrs BP (390 cal BC to cal AD 600)(Smith 2011). This must have been a time of mass salmon, and possibly other finfish, harvest with great hierarchal or communal cooperation almost certainly in action. The technical design and countless number of sharpened stakes that went into the construction of the fish trap is impressive.
References
Smith, J. L.
2011 An Update of Intertidal Fishing Structures in Southeast Alaska. Alaska Journal of Anthropology 9(1):1-26.
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