Hidden Dimensions: The Cultural Significance of Wetland Archaeology

Mima Kapches is head of the Department of Anthropology at the Royal
Ontario Museum.

This compendium of data on waterlogged sites and artifacts is the result
of a conference held in 1995. The papers are organized around four
themes: human adaptation to the wetland environment, contributions of
wetland archaeology to cultural history, issues of land management, and
issues of object conservation.

The introductory paper is by John Coles, a world-renowned
archaeologist. In the first section, there are review papers of research
and water features in North America (Nicholas), New Zealand (Barr), the
Russian Far East (Kuzman), and Sweden (Larsson).

The second section comprises papers on specific sites, systems, and
artifacts (e.g., the recovery and reconstruction history of the Biskupin
site in Poland, the use of Mayan wetlands). There is an interesting
paper on the analysis of wood from British waterlogged sites and
interpretations of the cultivation and harvesting of trees, or
“woodmanship,” over time. An in-depth discussion of basketry
recovered on waterlogged sites contains the suggestion that these
artifacts indicate cultural discontinuity, not continuity as
archaeologists have argued. A paper on the Boston fishweir provides an
excellent analysis of recently excavated material.

The five papers in the third section focus on the northwest coast of
North America. These papers deal with such issues as dating fishweirs
and fish traps (much older than previously thought) and fishweir basket
finds from Montana Creek. The final section focuses on the nitty-gritty
of conservation procedures and associated costs.

Although Hidden Dimensions is heavily focused on archaeological
recoveries, the areas of specialized interest would be better considered
ecological, environmental, historical, and anthropological.