Ceramic analysis at Fort Vancouver NHS
Cromwell. 2007. Ceramic analysis at Fort Vancouver NHS. National Park Service, Department of the Interior
Fort Vancouver, located in present-day Vancouver, Washington, was a Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) trading post and administrative center from 1825-1860. It passed into the hands of the U.S. Army in 1860 and was managed as a part of the Vancouver Barracks until it burned to the ground in 1866. Today, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site encompasses 210 acres of land that contain the site of the original HBC fort. The National Park Service (NPS) has been hosting archeological research at Fort Vancouver since 1947, resulting in an unrivaled HBS-era artifact collection, with over 2 million catalogued artifacts. This study focuses on over 20,000 English-manufactured ceramic sherds excavated from households at HBC Fort Vancouver. Fort Vancouver is a premier historical archeological site in the Pacific Northwest, and the well-documented spatial definition of the various ethnic groups living and working at the fort provides an ideal setting to explore the complexity of culture, class, and identity through material culture.