Dentalium, a small tusk-shaped shell harvested from deep coastal waters near Vancouver Island, was gathered and distributed through exchange networks reaching far into the interior of northwestern North America. Archaeological recoveries of dentalium at interior sites across the Columbia Plateau, far from its marine source, indicate the shell moved through a chain of exchange relationships among coastal and inland Indigenous communities over thousands of years. Later ethnographic accounts describe dentalium as a valued ornament and standard of worth, but its archaeological presence shows the exchange network itself predates any written record.
Relevance to Trade History
Illustrates a long-lived regional exchange system linking coastal resource zones with interior communities, documented archaeologically long before European contact.
Read the full story in our article How Early Communities Exchanged Goods Before Currency.
Source: Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.