Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
This symposium presents current research on the social and political organization of fisher-hunter-gatherer communities that occupied coastal and riverine locations in North America. In particular, papers focus on groups that were politically complex, maintained institutional inequality, or organized themselves in unexpected ways. Archaeology, ethnography, and historic records have all documented instances of such non-agrarian coastal groups, and while these developments are not entirely unique to coastal foragers, access to aquatic resources and avenues of transportation can have dramatic effects on social trajectories. Paradigms for evaluating complexity and social organization can vary regionally because of substantive differences among case studies, and because of the influence of distinct research traditions. This session brings scholars of North American fisher-hunter-gatherers in conversation with one another, with the broader aims of examining those paradigms we use for investigating social organization, untangling criteria of categorization, and comparing regional histories.
Other Keywords
Social and Political Organization •
Archaic •
Woodland •
Mississippian •
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis •
Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers •
Lithic Analysis •
Political economy •
Zooarchaeology •
Territoriality
Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
USA (Country) •
Delaware (State / Territory) •
Georgia (State / Territory) •
Mississippi (State / Territory) •
Tennessee (State / Territory) •
North Carolina (State / Territory) •
Kentucky (State / Territory) •
West Virginia (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
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Are the Calusa Unique? Environmental Stewardship and Historical Contingency in the Pacific Northwest and Southwest Florida (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coastal societies of the northern Pacific and southwestern Florida were once thought anomalous because they achieved sociopolitical complexity without agriculture. The Calusa are often cited as especially unusual, or as the "pinnacle" of complexity among fisher-gatherer-hunters because they achieved a tributary, state-like political...
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Bayesian Models for the Occupational History of Complex Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Communities in the Interior Pacific Northwest (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interior Pacific Northwest landscape contains a system of waterways that coalesce to form three major drainages with outlets in the Pacific Ocean. Substantial evidence has been provided that complex hunter-gatherer-fisher communities occupied sites in these river drainages during the late Holocene. Some chronological frameworks...
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Conflict and Territoriality: An Archaeological Study of Ancestral Northern Coast Salish-Tla’amin Defensiveness in the Salish Sea Region of Southwestern British Columbia (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Coast Salish ethnohistory describes how various locations associated with settlements were used for defence within the Salish Sea region of southwestern British Columbia. During times of conflict, these linked places formed defensive networks that functioned to maximize defensibility at both the settlement and allied settlement scales....
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The Development of Sociopolitical Complexity among Chumash Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers on California’s Northern Channel Islands (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chumash of the Santa Barbara Channel region of southern California are well known among archaeologists for developing complex sociopolitical systems within a hunter-gatherer-fisher subsistence system. This includes the advent of both hereditary high-status leaders and craft specialization in the form of shell bead and stone drill...
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Incipient Pottery Practices and Divergent Complexities in the Late Archaic Southeast (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pottery technology has long played a central role in evolutionary narratives of early complex societies, most often through its perceived link to other cultural benchmarks such as sedentism, farming, and regionalization. Archaeological research over the past few decades, however, has largely discredited simplistic and monolithic accounts...
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Inter-Island Material Conveyance and Exchange on California’s Channel Islands (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most discussions of exchange relating to California’s eight Channel Islands have been framed in terms of island-mainland interactions, of which the Chumash people of the four northern islands have been the primary focus. Less consideration has been given to the Tongva of the four southern islands as well as inter-island and intra-island...
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Networks of Exchange in the Late Archaic Southeast: Copper and Crematory Practices (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Societal complexity, once a stalwart of archaeological research, has become increasingly difficult to define as archaeologists increasingly look at its various aspects, including entrenched authority, monumental architecture, and economic specialization as rising independently of one another. To date, long-distance exchange among...
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Selfish for Shellfish, or Magnanimous about Mollusks? The Transformation of Cooperation across the First Millennium CE at Crystal River and Roberts Island, Florida, USA (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Blanton and Fargher (2016) critique evolutionary theorists for the assumption that cooperation was a single evolutionary hurdle; even if our species overcame such an obstacle in our distant evolutionary development, it is simplistic to assume that cooperation and collective action have been unchanged around the world over the last 100,000...
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Stop Seeing Like a State: Relational Complexity among Small-Scale Societies of Gulf Coastal Florida (Who Routinely Gathered in Large Numbers) (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Interventions of modern nation-states in the affairs of "underdeveloped" nations often fail for imposing standard categories on highly variable and historically situated local practices. The same might be said about scholarship on "complex" hunter-gatherers. Rather than oversimplifying by imposing order vis-à-vis state-level criteria...
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Trade, Tradition, and Rivalry: Late Pre-Columbian Craft and Exchange on the Central Peninsular Gulf Coast of Florida (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Complex Fisher-Hunter-Gatherers of North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines changes over time in the ways that fisher-hunter-gatherer communities on the central Gulf coast of peninsular Florida participated in the regional trade of specialized crafted goods. The social landscape of the greater Tampa Bay area appears to have become increasingly politically integrated between the end of the...