Mark Axel Tveskov

• PhD
• Professor at Southern Oregon University

Driven by the participation of Native American people in the contemporary political, cultural, and academic landscape of North America, public and academic discussions have considered the nature of contemporary American Indian identity and the persistence, survival, and (to some) reinvention of Native American cultures and traditions. I use a case...

"Do you know the story of the Battle of Hungry Hill? A woman--Queen Mary--led the Native Americans from horseback, and her booming voice could be heard across the battlefield" -- Coquille Elder George Bundy Wasson Jr. from: http://www.ohs.org/research-and-library/oregon-historical-quarterly/current-issue.cfm The Battle of Hungry Hill, fought on Oc...

Archaeological investigations at Miners’ Fort, a mid-nineteenth-century settler fort located in the US Northwest, is part of a larger inquiry into conflict archaeology and historical memory of settler colonialism and warfare in the region. Built by gold miners, Miners’ Fort overlooked the Pacific Ocean and was used significantly when the Tututni, J...

an edited volume on Conflict Archaeology and Historical Memory in North America

The historical memory of the settlement of the Oregon Territory was crafted in a genre of memoirs published in magazines and newspapers in the decades around the turn of the 20th century. These narratives minimized the complexity of the events, smoothed over the contradictions and genocidal violence of settler colonialism, and erased the diversity...

excerpt of the Introductory Chapter

This volume presents approaches to the archaeology of war that move beyond the forensic analysis of battlefields, fortifications, and other sites of conflict to consider the historical memory, commemoration, and social experience of war. Leading scholars offer critical insights that challenge the dominant narratives about landscapes of war from thr...

Guest editor for a thematic collection of papers on the topic of frontier fortifications in the journal Historical Archaeology

The wars of American imperialism in the North American West are crafted in historical memory through the tropes of Manifest Destiny, where intrepid pioneers, penetrating a virginal wilderness to make their homes, must overcome a variety of morally dark forces that include the depredations of indigenous people. In this telling of the tale, the U.S....

Notes for my remarks as a member of Oregon's State Advisory Committee for Historic Preservation while reviewing theQ’alya ta Kukwis schicdii me Traditional Cultural Property Historic District Nomination, put forward by the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw, delivered in committee, February 22, 2019

Frontiers are contingent and dynamic arenas for the negotiation, entrenchment, and innovation of identity, and the imposing materiality of frontier fortifications and their prominence in colonial topographies make them ideal laboratories in which to examine this dynamic. This article presents the results of large-scale excavations in 2011 and 2012...

An essay reviewing two recent books about the Modoc War

In the spring of 1872, members of the Carolina Company migrated from North Carolina to Oregon and formed the town of Powers, which is one of the most isolated areas in western Oregon. According to Chelsea Rose and Mark Tveskov,” the homesteaders, like the Native Americans, made a life along the South Fork [Coquille River] that considered the region...

THIS is an account of both the history and the recent findings of the Mosfell Archaeological Project. Excavation is part of an interdisciplinary research approach that uses archaeology, history, anthropology, forensics, environmental sciences and saga studies to construct a picture of human habitation, power relationships, religious and mortuary pr...

Recent excavations at Hrísbrú in the Mosfell Valley of Iceland have revealed a church and cemetery as well as domestic and ceremonial structures spanning the pagan and early conversion periods in the 10th and 11th Centuries. The skeletal remains of thirteen people buried at Hrísbrú provide new evidence of the health status and living conditions of...

Estuarine environments often provide exceptional conditions for the preservation of perishable materials. Over the last decade, over 70 estuarine wood stake fish weir sites have been identified on the Oregon coast. In this paper, we summarize Native oral traditions and archaeological research that indicate that estuarine fishing was primarily a hou...

The American settlement of Coos County, Oregon and the death and/or removal of its Native American people is often portrayed as an inevitable and natural process. I describe certain events as Americans first encountered the region's Indian people to illustrate the point that the American conquest of the region and the near genocide of its rightful...

In 1952, a team led by Luther Cressman excavated the Bandon Sandspit site (35-CS-5), a protohistoric village at the mouth of the Coquille River. A large assemblage of bone and lithic artifacts, faunal material, trade goods, and architectural remains were recovered but remained largely unreported. I present the results of analyses of these materials...

The southern Washington, Oregon, and northern California coasts have long been peripheral to discussions of the development of Northwest Coast cultures. This marginality is challenged by recent studies that examine the dynamic cultures and environments of this area in relation to important research issues applicable to a wide range of Pacific coast...

On the Columbia River's south bank near the town of Mosier, Oregon, is a 12+ hectare (30 acre) complex of rock walls, pits, and cairns patterned in a talus and debris field at the foot of the 30m (100ft) Columbia Gorge escarpment. Commonly known as the “Mosier Mounds”, this site is an unusually large, well-preserved example of the rock feature site...

The nature of prehistoric settlement and subsistence practices in coastal New England has been intensively discussed by archaeologists over the last twenty years. Archaeologists have attempted to determine when and how maize horticulture was adopted in the coastal zone and how maritime resources fit into the aboriginal diet throughout the Woodland...

We provide detailed contextual information on 25 140 dates for unusually well-preserved archaeological and paleontological remains from Daisy Cave . Paleontological materials, including faunal and floral remains, have been recov- ered from deposits spanning roughly the past 16,000 yr, while archaeological materials date back to ca . 10,500 BP. Mult...

Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2000. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 493-537).