Culture Change and Persistence among North American Indigenous Peoples in the Contact Zone

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah K Smith.

Summary of results of archaeological investigations conducted by AMEC Environment & Infrastructre within the Kikayt village site (DhRr-74) located on the southern bank of the Fraser River in Surrey, British Coulumbia, Canada.  The Kikayt site is identified in the ethnigraphies of Hill-Tout as a Kwantlen First Nation fishing village, reportedly abandoned by 1858-1859 when the then capitol, New Westminster, was founded accross the river. The site was established as an Indian Reserve for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle Lynch.

The contact-era Heiltsuk village of Old Bella Bella, British Columbia, site of both HBC Fort McLoughlin (1833-1843) and a Methodist mission (1880-1890), existed during a time of rapid changes. Missionary influence resulted in a shift among the Heiltsuk from traditional longhouses to European-style single-family frame houses, creating two spatially and temporally separate archaeological assemblages. Using data collected during a 1982 excavation of this site, this study compares artifact...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michelle M Pigott.

By the early 18th century, the Northern Gulf Coast was a nexus of cultural exchange; home to many displaced native peoples. After the destruction of their homeland of Tallahassee in 1704, the Apalachee became dispersed across the American Southeast, contacting numerous cultures including the Creeks, several Mobile Bay and Mississippi Valley Indian groups, and French and Spanish colonists. The Pensacola-Mobile region developed into a cultural borderland which facilitated creolization and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dennis Lewarch.

Historians and anthropologists have reviewed the history of problems associated with delineating tribes and tribal territories in Western Washington, noting often uncritical acceptance of historic records at face value, such as failure to consider the context, goals, and cultural viewpoints of those generating records.  Such problems, unfortunately, persist in contemporary contexts where tribes create fictional histories to accommodate modern political and economic goals.  Here I review flawed...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth K. Spott.

In the broadest sense, Métis refers to the resulting offspring of unions between Native Americans and Europeans, most often the French (Brown 1979, 2008; Devons 1992; Hatt 1969; Kienetz 1983). More specifically, Métis has served as a racial or ethnic term, as well as a socio-cultural term. John B. Richardville was a Métis individual and was able to successfully bridge the gap between the two worlds of his parents and exploit his access to each of them at different times in his life. He was able...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Dale Elizabeth Boland.

Although the Cold Lake First Nation signed Treaty Six in 1876, granting them a small treatied territory of some 19,000 hectares, many families continued their winter forays in search of game and furs into traditional territories well off the Reserve for many decades. Recent archaeological research, ahead of a proposed pipeline development, has focussed on one such wintering site, located within what is now the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range. Evidence of family groups reusing this base camp has been...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cara Mosier.

From the late 17th to the mid-19th century, Native American and French communities have engaged in dynamic and extensive trade relations. Alcohol became a significant factor that was both heavily exploited and employed during these exchanges. The trade and consumption of alcohol caused a radical change in the way these two peoples interacted. By exploring patterns in the variation of alcohol use at both Native and French sites and employing ethnohistorical data from additional sites in northern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meghan Weaver.

This paper will examine the role of wampum in the globally-connected western Great Lakes fur trade, with a focus on Fort St. Joseph, in Niles, Michigan, and the fort's position on the periphery of trade activities in New France. To explore wampum's spatial and temporal boundaries, I sampled data from the archaeological findings of historic sites throughout the Northeast and Midwest regions. GIS spatial analysis provided an alternate method of processing archaeologically-recovered and historic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Tait Elder. Steve Archer. Lauran Riser. Melissa Cascella.

In the nineteenth century, Seattle enterprises depended on Native Americans for labor but settlers increasingly displaced Natives and tensions led to sometimes hostile conflict. In response, a Seattle ordinance was passed in 1865 which limited Native American encampments within the city limits. Located at the peripheral margin of the city, Ballast Island became a crucial layover for Native Americans and also represents an important, but infrequently discussed, element of the historical narrative...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John L. Creese. Kathleen Bragdon.

The incorporation of the dead into the social practices of the living – as revealed by mortuary practices in the Native Northeast – is especially relevant to current archaeological theories of materiality, value, and consumption. This paper presents comparative data from southern New England Algonquian and northern Iroquoian societies to argue that mass burials (including ossuaries and cemeteries) typical of sixteenth and seventeenth century Northeastern aboriginal societies reflected new...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann Sharley.

In 2012, at the request of the Native Village of Afognak, a multi-agency team documented Afognak Village, an Alutiiq Creole settlement abandoned following the 1964 Alaska earthquake and tsunami. Village features included pre-contact and historical period archaeological sites, cemeteries, garden plots, fencelines, trails, remnants of a Russian Orthodox church, and numerous residences and outbuildings. Nearly all the buildings had at least partially collapsed and many were in advanced states of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gregory Waselkov.

Discovery of a small Muskogee-tradition component at site 1BA664, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico in Orange Beach, Alabama, is tentatively identified as a fishing and hunting camp of the Towasas, radiocarbon dated to ca. 1700. Propelled westward by British and Creek slaving raids in 1705 that destroyed their towns in north Florida, the Towasas have never before been linked to an archaeological site assemblage. Artifacts from site 1BA664 suggest minimal acquisition of European technology, despite...