Coming-for-the-Bison, Going-to-the-Sun – Evolution and Significance of Staging Places on the Northern Rocky Mountain Front

Summary

As early as the terminal Pleistocene, the northern Rockies witnessed human movement across mountain passes and high terraces overlooking expanses of boreal forest, tundra, and melting ice. Applying lessons learned from David H. Thomas’ work in the central Great Basin, we combine the archaeology, geomorphology, and ethnohistory of the St. Mary River Bridge Site (24GL203) and other sites in the vicinity of east Glacier National Park to discuss how mobile groups colonized a landscape characterized by dramatic altitude gradients. Places at the junction of slope and valley and of forest and prairie were sought after for their year-round resource potential as well as their strategic location in long-distance travel networks. Whether to hunt, trade, seek visions, or make war, people of various cultures and ethnicities traversed remote mountain routes and paused at this ecotone, on and off for millennia, to stage their transitions. We further ponder the significance of staging places in the evolution of hunter-gatherer cultural landscapes.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• 2015 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David Hurst Thomas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage