This publication pairs Suquamish elder and master basketmaker Ed Eugene Carriere with archaeologist Dale R. Croes to test a deceptively simple idea: start with what people remember and do today, then read the archaeology forward to meet it. Drawing on Carriere’s lifetime of harvesting, fishing, and weaving, the authors document 44 local resources and the practices around them—how to find, catch, prepare, use, and conserve—then compare that living knowledge to evidence from nearby wet sites and shell middens spanning ~4,000 years. The result is a clear demonstration of Generationally-Linked Archaeology, a method that fuses Indigenous traditional knowledge with site data to reveal continuity and change artifacts alone can’t show.
A vital through-line is Carriere’s great-grandmother Julia Jacobs (1874–1960/62), a renowned culture bearer who was not biologically Suquamish; she was born aboard a Portuguese ship to an enslaved mother and adopted as an infant by Suquamish leaders Chief Jacob Wahalchu and Mary Jacobs. Raised at Old Man House and later the family allotment, Julia taught Ed the language, etiquette of gathering, and basketry that shaped “the first half” of his life—and, by extension, made this archaeological collaboration possible.
Carriere’s precise, place-based expertise gives Croes’ analyses traction; Croes’s comparative framing, in turn, shows where memory matches or corrects the material record. Together, they offer a replicable model for starting research with the knowledge holders who live on the landscape—and for returning archaeological results to them in a form that sustains practice. The book blends real, lived know-how with careful archaeology—and it’s told in a way that feels grounded and human. The volume is richly illustrated with more than 200 color photographs and drawings—documenting the 44 resources Ed works with today alongside images from Dale’s nearby wet and shell-midden sites—so readers can see techniques, tools, and habitats as the text links living practice to archaeological evidence.
