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One of the guiding principles Richard Daugherty instilled in the generation of Northwest archaeologists who found their passion, and dissertations, at Ozette was his ethic of excavation.

"Excavate 10 percent, leave the rest," explains Dale Croes ('77 Ph.D.), who wrote his dissertation on basketry at Ozette, is an adjunct WSU faculty member, and now teaches archaeology at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia.

Daugherty's principle is based primarily on the idea that by definition excavating an archaeological site means destroying it. Once a site has been explored, there is no going back to reconsider chronology or to look at the placement of an artifact more carefully. So if, as Daugherty believed, 10 percent would keep everyone busy, then the remaining 90 percent could be left for later.
All of which led Daugherty to leave the bulk of the site, including Ozette, to future exploration. Time, he reasoned, may bring new techniques, new technology, and new ideas.

The legacy of Ozette is rich, deep, and diverse. In the preface to volume three of Ozette Archaeological Research Reports (WSU Department of Anthropology Reports of Investigations 68, 2005, ed. David L. Whelchel ’75), archaeologist Kenneth Ames (’76 Ph.D.) warns against “Ozettopeia,” the notion that Ozette is Pacific Northwest archaeology. He then proceeds to explain what a profound effect the exploration of the village has had on our archaeological methods and understanding of coastal Northwest culture.

Wet-site archaeology was not invented at Ozette, but it was certainly refined there. Equally significant is Ozette’s contribution to Northwest ethnoarchaeology, the combining of ethnography—the study of a living culture—with archaeology, the systematic scientific recovery of past life and culture. Abandoned only in the 1920s, Ozette had been occupied continuously for at least 2,000 years. And for the Makah people, many of whom live in Neah Bay and had family who had lived in Ozette, the place was not just a memory. It was home. And thus Ozette presented an extraordinary opportunity, confirming much of Makah tradition and oral history. The Makahs could identify many of the artifacts recovered from the dig—because they themselves had used them or remembered their parents or grandparents using them.

Colin Grier recently joined WSU’s anthropology department in the Northwest archaeology position occupied by Robert Ackerman for 50 years. Grier’s dissertation, The Social Economy of a Prehistoric Northwest Coast Plank House, was “essentially based on what had been accomplished at Ozette,” he says. He, like Ames, is a prominent investigator in the relatively new field of “household archaeology.”
“I started out in the Gulf Islands [Canadian San Juans] digging houses.”

The digging of the Ozette houses led to a great many insights both about the Ozette people themselves and about other “complex hunter-gatherers” along the Northwest Coast.
One such insight regarded property ownership, says David Huelsbeck (’83 Ph.D.), who earned his doctorate at Ozette and is now a professor of archaeology at Pacific Lutheran University.
“We demonstrated archaeologically that people did own different beaches for shellfish,” says Huelsbeck.

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