The rare preservation at Ozette gives a detailed look at the houses of the past. From beneath mud flows, archaeologists have recovered timbers and planks, and with them has come a unique chance to see household arrangements from the distant past. In the part of one house, where a woodworker lived, tools were found and also tools in all stages of manufacture, there were even wood chips. Where a whaler lived, there lay harpoons and also a wall screen carved with a whale. Benches and looms were inlaid with shell and there were other indications of wealth.
A single house had five separate living areas centered around cooking hearths, each still safeguarding evidence of what its occupants did. More bows and arrows were found at one living area than any of the others, an indication that hunters lived there. Another had more fishing gear than other subsistence equipment, and at another, more harpoon equipment. Some had everyday work gear and very few elaborately ornamented things. The whaler's corner was just the opposite.
The houses were built so that planks on the walls and roofs could be taken off and used at other places as people moved seasonally. Paired uprights supported rafters which, in turn, held roof planks that overlapped like tiles. Wall planks were lashed between sets of poles. The position of these poles depended on the lengths of the boards they held and they were evidently set and reset through the years the houses were occupied. Walls met at the corners by simply butting together. They stayed structurally independent, allowing for easy dismantling. There were no windows. Light and ventilation came by shifting the position of roof planks, which were simply weighted with rocks, not fastened in position.
Benches raised above the floor on stakes provided the main furniture of the houses. They were set near the walls. Cuts and puncture marks indicated they served as work platforms; mats rolled out onto them tie with elders' memories of such benches used as beds.
Storage concentrated behind the benches, along the walls and in corners between benches. These locations within the houses have yielded the most artifacts. The rafters must have also provided storage, but the mudflow carried away this part of the houses.
Photos and Text were provided by the Makah Cultural and Research Center
and the Washington State Historical Society and are subject to copyright protection.
