A Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Urban Landscape in Prince Harbor, British, Columbia?

Summary

Urbanism is almost exclusively associated with agriculture, although hunter-gatherers sometimes have seasonal aggregations numbering in the thousands. This paper considers the evidence for an urban-like settlement on the northern Northwest Coast. By AD 1787, the villages of nine tribes of the Northern Tsimshian were concentrated a small area in Prince Rupert Harbour (PRH), British Columbia and had been so for centuries. Prior to ca. 1500 cal BP the Northern Tsimshian lived in villages of varying sizes scattered throughout their territory. At some point after that date, this settlement pattern was reorganized with residential sites in the region abandoned and those in the PRH expanded into a residential core. Available data suggests harbor village middens grew to accommodate the increased population, with some reaching 55,000 m2. There is also evidence that these villages were not independent, but rather formed a linked network for defense as part of an urbanized political alliance. What had been residential areas became a logistical hinterland for the PRH villages

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Terraforming and Monumentality in Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Landscapes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage