The Housepit 54 Project at Bridge River, British Columbia: Archaeological Perspectives on Demography, Cultural Inheritance, and Household History

The Bridge River Archaeological Project is a long-term research partnership between The University of Montana, Department of Anthropology and Xwisten, the Bridge River Indian Band. The project seeks to understand the long-term history of the Bridge River housepit village with a focus on demographic change, technological evolution, socio-economic variability, and household sociality. This research permits us to develop studies that impact discipline-wide discussions of the evolution and organization of complex forager-fisher communities. The current phase, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, focuses on Housepit 54, deeply stratified house feature at the north end of the village. With at least 14 anthropogenic floors dating ca. 1100 to 1450 cal. B.P. and excellent preservation of faunal and macrobotanical remains, Housepit 54 provides us with the remarkable opportunity to examine persistence and change in household traditions on an intergenerational basis. This poster session presents results of ongoing research developing from our 2012 through 2014 field seasons. Presentations examine dating and stratigraphy, cultural inheritance, demography, food collection and processing, technological traditions, social relationships, and approaches to artistic interpretation.