FY20 ROSS LAKE ARCHEOLOGY, North Cascades NP, Marb

North Cascades National Park Service Complex (NOCA) proposes to conduct data-recovery-scale excavation of one (1) pre-contact age archeological site (45WH473) in the drawdown of Ross Lake, Whatcom County.****Site 45WH473 is located on a Pleistocene terrace near the center of Ross Lake reservoir. The site is perched 17 meters above the Skagit River flood plain and has an approximate elevation of ca. 1520 ft. The site is a low-density scatter of metasediment Hozomeen chert and basalt flaked lithics and includes two hearth features and a large irregular scatter of fire-modified rock (FMR) exposed at the ground surface. The features are dense circular concentrations of FMR charcoal fragments and calcined animal bone. The age of the site is estimated from a projectile point and a radiocarbon date. The projectile point was recovered from a hearth feature and was identified as a Columbia-Plateau Side-Notched point a form that occurs in deposits less than 700 years old in the North Cascades (Miernedorf et al. 1998). A charcoal sample recovered from the same feature yielded a date of 370 + 80 14C years B.P. Site 45WH473 is a contributing property to the Upper Skagit River Valley Archeological District DT-212. Data recovery is the prescribed mitigation determined in the Archeological Resources Mitigation and Management Plan for Ross Lake (Schalk et al.