Lost and Found in British Columbia:
Central Coast A

Back in 1994, Roy Carlson (now Emeritus Professor at Simon Fraser University) published an intriguing article on Trade and Exchange in Prehistoric British Columbia. In it, he described the geographic distribution of artifacts from two unknown obsidian sources - Central Coast Type A and Central Coast Type B. Sites with the two unknown sources were located primarily along the inland coast of Vancouver Island and the opposing mainland coast of British Columbia. In particular, artifacts correlated with the two unknown sources showed up most frequently towards the northern end of Vancouver Island and the mainland across the strait. Carlson speculated that the source of the Central Coast A and B unknowns might possibly be found on the mainland opposite the north end of Vancouver Island.

In 2004, we began to receive small numbers of obsidian artifacts from British Columbia, most of them from Vancouver Island. XRF analysis indicated that the bulk of the artifacts were from two unknown sources and we wondered if these might be the Central Coast unknowns. But without obsidian source material or artifacts that had been previously assigned to the Central Coast unknowns, there was simply no way to know. Many of the artifacts that had been originally assigned to the two unknown sources had been analyzed at Simon Fraser University using an analytical methods that did not allow direct comparison with our quantitative trace element data. Over the next few years, this cycle repeated itself several times at other B.C. sites but we were only able to identify the obsidian as unknowns that we had previous seen. But the visual appearance of the unknown artifacts sent to the lab (small phenocrysts in a black glassy groundmass) also matched Carlson's description of obsidian from the Central Coast unknowns.

Finally in late 2008, we were sent several obsidian source samples by Jim Stafford (Coast Interior Archaeology) that had been collected in the Kingcome area of mainland British Columbia - opposite the north coast of Vancouver Island. We analyzed the new samples and they matched nicely with one of the unknowns that we had previously suspected as one of the Central Coast varieties. But we still didn't know for certain which unknown we had found and whether or not it was one of the Central Coast unknowns.

At last in 2009, Roy Carlson sent us a single artifact that has been previously assigned (by SFU) to Central Coast Type A. The artifact was a perfect match with the Kingcome Glacier source and was renamed the Kingcome (Central Coast Unknown A) source. Now all we need to do is to locate the B variety!