BLACKFOOT (Other Keyword)
1-9 (9 Records)
Euroamericans who encountered northern Plains bison hunters in the late 19th century believed that the Blackfoot held the Rocky Mountains in awe and fear, preferring to remain on the plains even as bison and elk herds dwindled. This incorrect assumption has hampered our ability to understand deep-time relationships between mountain and plains cultural expressions. Although the historic Blackfoot did not dwell in high elevations, the character of their relationship with the Rocky Mountain Front...
Dog Days to Horse Days: Evaluating the Rise of Nomadic Pastoralism among the Blackfoot (2016)
This paper will examine the extent to which the adoption of the horse created a transition in Blackfoot modes of production from hunting and gathering to incipient nomadic pastoralism by tracing the horse’s effect on Blackfoot settlement patterns and landscape uses during the protohistoric and historic periods in the northwestern Plains. While the socio-economic consequences of the horse’s introduction have been studied from a historical perspective, the archaeology of this transition remains...
Lame Bull Speaks: The Lukin Ledger and Pikuni Blackfoot History (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Paleo Lithics to Legacy Management: Ruthann Knudson—Inawa’sioskitsipaki" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A Pikuni Blackfoot notebook created sometime between 1904 and 1911 and linked to the descendants of Lame Bull contains a winter count, a record of two treaty conferences, and a list of the leaders of various nations comprising the Blackfoot Confederacy, recorded as pictographs. An unknown person has annotated some...
A Prehistoric Stone Line Complex from Northwest Wyoming (1997)
The Two Dot Flats site (48PA1068) was discovered in 1989 during cultural resource investigations of the Dead Indian Pass area by the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist for road construction activities by the Wyoming Department of Transportation (Eakin 1990). The Two Dot Flats site consists of over 400 stone cairns presumed to be parts of a prehistoric bison drive line complex, and around 40 stone circles believed to both predate the drive system and be a part of it.
Reconnaissance Survey of the Big Horn County, Montana, Bison Jump-and-Kill Site (2000)
A Gatchell Museum Field Team conducted reconnaissance surveys of a Bison Jump-and-Kill site in Big Horn County, Montana, on May 15 and July 1, 1999. The Jump is over sandstone cliffs some 3.0 to 4.3 meters in height. That height may have been reduced somewhat by erosion of the past few millennia. Test holes and a two meter long trench yielded numerous bison bone pieces. Many were burned and charred and some showed cut and impact marks interpreted to be of human origin. Evidence of a probable...
Resistance, Resilience, and Blackfoot Horse Culture from the Reservation Period to the Present (2018)
Programs of forced settlement and assimilation were responsible for the loss of many aspects of traditional Blackfoot lifeways. At the same time, however, they also strengthened the identity of the Blackfoot people as they resisted absorption into Euroamerican culture. This resistance through adaptation is seen in the Blackfoot people’s continued use of and adoration for horses. While many elements of nomadic Blackfoot culture were abandoned in the late nineteenth century with the near...
Symbolism and Ritualistic Uses of the Bison Skull Among the Plains Indians of North America (2003)
Archaeological data show acts which may at first appear to involve merely the acquisition of food are, indeed, interwoven with spiritual beliefs and emotions. Bison kill sites have been investigated to gain information regarding hunting strategies and food appropriation. However, some of the sites have yielded additional information taking us beyond the procurement of food, widening our view to include religion, rituals and ceremonialism. The Cooper site (Bement 1999) offers early evidence of...
Twentymile Biface: A Hilltop Offering in Northeastern Wyoming (2009)
A finely made bifacial skinning knife was left on a small natural pointed hill apparently as a non-utilitarian offering placed on a high promontory, a common prehistoric practice across much of western North America. Age is unknown, but the tool is believed to date from the Late Prehistoric Period or terminal Archaic, or about A.D. 200-1200.
What Is ‘Good Hair’? – Personhood, Ritual, and Resurgence of Bodily Adornment among the Equestrian Blackfoot (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Painting and writing from Fort Union Trading Post, North Dakota in the 1830s, George Catlin greatly admired Plains Indian coifs, body paint, and insignia, painstakingly describing each individual’s appearance. Contemporary descendants of Blackfoot warriors whom Catlin painted, joyfully display their portraits as evidence of the...