Four thousand years ago, Seattle’s historic West Point site may have looked very different than it does today, but some Northwest traditions from that area, such as people eating various types of seafood, have remained. On Saturday, Seattle’s Burke Museum will introduce guests to more of the West Point site’s history at Archaeology Day at Discovery Park.
Some of the facts visitors can expect to learn through fun outdoor activities include details of an earthquake along the Seattle fault line 1,100 years ago that caused a 20-foot tsunami to hit the beaches at West Point and sank the land to three feet below the current sea level. Also, from bones found at the site, archaeologists have learned that native peoples ate a variety of food that is still found here, such as mussels, clams, herring, salmon, seal, deer, elderberries and bitter cherries.
Choose among activities such as tours of the site, seeing and touching tools that were used by West Point dwellers, learning how to split and carve wood with ancient tools, and finding out about plants and animals that inhabited the area.
The Burke has offered its Archaeology Day events for more than a decade each October, which is Archaeology Month in Washington, celebrated with various events statewide for the past 15 years and sponsored by the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.
Until two years ago, Burke staff members say, Archaeology Day had always taken place at the museum, but those working on it found that they enjoy instead, going out to an archaeological site. It’s easier to understand the natural and cultural resources of the native groups who lived there and the visitors seem to get more out of it, the workers say.
People can learn so much from the West Point site, Burke spokeswoman Rebecca Durkin said, that this has been the general topic of Archaeology Day for the past three years, although this year’s particular angle, including the walking tours, is a bit of a different approach.
“Many people walk through Discovery Park every day, but how many know the real story about the people who called it home?,” Durkin said of the West Point site. “The Burke’s Archaeology Day at Discovery Park gives families the rare opportunity to visit a real archaeological site and see it through the eyes of the natives who called it home, as well as the researchers who now study it thousands of years later.”
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