Fort Vancouver — Douglas Wilson has won the 2011 John L. Cotter Award for Excellence in National Park Service Archaeology.
Wilson, an archaeologist with the Pacific Northwest Regional Office of the National Park Service, based at the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, was nominated for his work on the Station Camp/Middle Village archaeological site at Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, near the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon.
As principal investigator, Wilson led a multidisciplinary team and used Carbon-14 dating, ground penetrating radar, magnetometry and other scientific techniques to study the site and its artifacts.
Their work will lead to interpretive park improvements of $2 million this year. The park commemorates the November 1805 encampment of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the history of the indigenous Chinook Indians and the salmon cannery town that followed.
