Corrupted Table

I have a table that seems to have become corrupted.

---------------
$ pg_dump -t archivewords ec > aw.dump
pqWait() -- connection not open
PQendcopy: resetting connection
SQL query to dump the contents of Table 'archivewords' did not execute
correctly. After we read all the table contents from the backend,
PQendcopy() failed. Explanation from backend: 'The Data Base System is
starting up
'.
The query was: 'COPY "archivewords" TO stdout;
'.
---------------

As a result of this event, in the log file I see:
---------------
Server process (pid 21764) exited with status 139 at Mon Jul 31 14:51:44
2000
Terminating any active server processes...
Server processes were terminated at Mon Jul 31 14:51:44 2000
Reinitializing shared memory and semaphores
The Data Base System is starting up
000731.14:51:44.967 [21766] DEBUG: Data Base System is starting up at Mon
Jul 31 14:51:44 2000
000731.14:51:44.967 [21766] DEBUG: Data Base System was interrupted being
in production at Mon Jul 31 14:50:24 2000
000731.14:51:44.968 [21766] DEBUG: Data Base System is in production state
at Mon Jul 31 14:51:44 2000
---------------

Here is what the table looks like:
CREATE TABLE "archivewords" (
"docid" text NOT NULL,
"word" text NOT NULL,
"weight" int4 DEFAULT 0 NOT NULL
);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX "iarcwordsword" on "archivewords" using btree ( "word"
"text_ops", "docid" "text_ops" );

Does anyone know what would couse this or how to recover from it? In this
particular case I can recreate the file but I am concerned that this might
happen on a more critical file so I would like to pursue recovering it if
possible.