Complex Fisher-Foragers of the Interior Pacific Northwest: The Housepit 54 Project at Bridge River, British Columbia

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

The Bridge River site is a complex fisher-forager village most intensively occupied between 1000 and 2000 years ago. Previous research suggests that it grew to maximum size of at least 30 co-occupied housepits with a population estimated to be 800-1000 persons by ca. 1250-1300 cal. B.P. After this time the village declined in size and was eventually abandoned for several hundred years. During the centuries immediately prior to abandonment the village was reorganized spatially and developed evidence for inter-household inequality. The Housepit 54 project at Bridge River was developed to gain an understanding of household history during the period of rapid village growth and decline. The final season of excavations in 2016 confirmed a stratigraphic sequence of 17 anthropogenic floors and approximately six periods of house expansion. Interdisciplinary research is focused on examining social and economic factors associated with household history along with a host of tangential interests including breeding and consumption of domesticated dogs. Posters in this symposium explore house pit stratigraphy, dating, cultural inheritance, lithic technological organization, subsistence (zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany. and isotope studies), canid phylogeny using ancient DNA, geochemical signals in floors and lithic raw materials, spatial distributions, and public interpretation of indigenous cultural heritage.

Other Keywords
Bridge River • Household Archaeology • Spatial Analysis • Bridge River Site • Housepit 54 • Bone Tools • Stone Tools • Lithics • Zooarchaeology • Dog

Geographic Keywords
North America (Continent) • Yukon Territory (State / Territory) • Alberta (State / Territory) • New York (State / Territory) • New Hampshire (State / Territory) • Idaho (State / Territory) • Maine (State / Territory) • British Columbia (State / Territory) • Wisconsin (State / Territory) • Michigan (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-14 of 14)

  • Documents (14)
Documents
  1. Ancient DNA from Stone Tools (2017)
  2. An Archaeological Investigation into the Genetic and Dietary Histories of Dogs at the Bridge River Site, BC (2017)
  3. The Bone Tool Assemblage from Housepit 54 at Bridge River (2017)
  4. Borrowing and Inheritance: Testing Cultural Transmission Hypotheses in the Bridge River Housepit Village (2017)
  5. Community Perceptions and Effects of the Bridge River Community Archaeological Project, 2012-2016 (2017)
  6. Diet and mobility on the Canadian Plateau: Isotopic analysis of domestic dogs and other fauna from the Bridge River site (2017)
  7. Exploring the Status of a Roasting Feature Complex along the Mid-Fraser Canyon, Bridge River Site, British Columbia (2017)
  8. Gendered Cooperation and Competition: A Multivariate Statistical Analysis of Floor Activity Patterns in Housepit 54 (2017)
  9. A Geochemical Investigation and Spatial Analysis of the Earliest Living Floors of Housepit 54, Bridge River British Columbia (2017)
  10. Household Hearth-Centered Activity Areas and Cache Pit Patterning at the Bridge River Site (2017)
  11. Housepit 54 at Bridge River: Seventeen Anthropogenic Floors in Time and Space (2017)
  12. Housepit 54: Dogs and their Changing Roles (2017)
  13. Sourcing FGV Artifacts Recovered from Housepit 54, Bridge River Housepit Village, British Columbia (2017)
  14. A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Housepit 54 at the Bridge River Site (EeRl1), Middle Fraser B.C. (2017)