Publications in Cultural Heritage: Archaeology, Ethnography and Tolowa Heritage at Red Elderberry Place, Chvn-su lh-dvn Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

The Cultural Resources Division of the California Department of Parks and Recreation presents Publications in Cultural Heritage, No. 30, titled  Archaeology, Ethnography and Tolowa Heritage at Red Elderberry Place, Chvn-su’lh-dvn, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.. This volume is about the Tolowa, their deep past, their more recent history, and their rich cultural heritage as viewed from a single locality within Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park named Chvnsu'lh-dvn (TcuncuLtun), or Red Elderberry Place. Presented within is a unique blend of rigorous archaeological investigation, local history, and ethnography. This volume is the result of three years’ worth of research conducted by California State Parks, National Park Service, University of California, Davis, private cultural resource management firms, and local historical societies in cooperation with the Elk Valley and Smith River Rancherias and the general Tolowa community. The report represents a collaborative study for preserving and interpreting an ancient village site located on the banks of the bucolic Smith River. It contains archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data of this north coast indigenous people. The unique and ongoing partnership between all these parties has led to the discovery and documentation of an extremely long occupational history spanning about 8,500 years. Among other discoveries, this project has revealed the earliest plank houses and the only semi-subterranean sweathouse recorded to date in northwestern California.

A PDF copy of this report is now available, below. For more information about State Parks archaeological publications or to request a hard copy of the report, please email SACRF@parks.ca.gov or call 916-263-1632.

2013 Publications in Cultural Heritage, No. 30

Tolowa Dugout Canoe on the Smith River, date unknown.