Born: Unknown (1950s or earlier), United States (assumed)
Died: Unknown (after 1999)
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the National Park Service. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Projects at Fort Vancouver in the 1970s saw an increase in women working in archaeology. Excavations in the fort stockade area occurred from 1970 to 1974, and included a few women on the crews, including volunteers from the Oregon Archaeological Society (OAS) who helped excavate the Sale Shop. Caroline Carley worked on the crew for the southeastern stockade excavations and co-authored the associated reports.
Three other large excavation projects took place in the southwestern corner of the park in the Village area, as well as the former site of a pond that was once adjacent to the Village, now underneath SR-14 and a railroad berm, in 1974, 1975, and 1977. Based on the crew lists in reports, the excavations in the first two years included women working on the field crew, in the lab, and contributing to artifact analysis, curation, and report writing (Chance and Chance 1976; Chance et al. 1982). Jennifer Chance participated in the excavations and co-authored the reports. The field director for the third project, in 1977, was Caroline Carley (Carley 1982). The project employed women on the field crew, and women worked on the artifact processing and analysis in the Laboratory of Anthropology at the University of Idaho.
Caroline D. Carley started work at Fort Vancouver with the 1973-1974 Hoffman and Ross excavations of the southeast portion of the HBC Fort Vancouver stockade. Carley is a co-author on the two associated reports with Lester Ross, Bryn Thomas, and Charles Hibbs (Ross et al. 1975; Ross and Carley 1976). Later, she was a field crew member for the 1975 Chance-directed excavations and analyzed the glass bottles and glassware, writing the chapter on that subject in Chance et al. (1982).
For the 1977 excavations, Carley served as the field director, assisted by Bryn Thomas. Archaeologists Robert Dunnell and Jerry Jermann oversaw the project. Carley wrote the report for the excavations, completed a few years later in 1982 (Carley 1982). The excavations also served as the basis of her thesis at the University of Idaho in 1979 (Carley 1979), which was under the direction of a committee of archaeologists Rick Sprague and Frank Leonhardy, and historian William Greever. Her thesis interpreted a palisaded area near the Fort Vancouver Village and Waterfront by comparing the archaeological remains to historical documents. Medical artifacts confirmed the historical documentation that a hospital, enclosed within palisade walls, was located near the pond.
Overall, the mid-1970s excavations identified structures and features of the HBC Fort Vancouver Village and Riverside Complex, the pond, and the U.S. Army Quartermaster’s Depot. These included HBC house, the Quartermaster’s Ranch (also known as the Ingalls House after Quartermaster Rufus Ingalls), and a trash-filled pond with deposits containing HBC and early US Army period objects. These excavations provided the data for a number of theses written at the University of Idaho, which eventually became published works on imported and handmade bricks (Gurke 1987), medical practice (Carley 1981), and the dating of window glass (Roenke 1978).