Centralized Households and Decentralized Communities: Economic Integration in a Marpole Period Plankhouse Village

Summary

The Marpole Period (2500 to 1000 BP) was a time of social transformation in the Salish Sea region of the Northwest Coast of North America. During this period, social and economic relations became increasingly bound up in the operation of centralized, long-lived, multifamily households. Yet, centralization arguably failed to extend far past plankhouse walls, producing regionally decentralized economic communities. This paper examines the processes underlying this pattern from the vantage point of inter-household interactions in the Marpole Period plankhouse community at the Dionisio Point site (DgRv-003) on Galiano Island in southwestern British Columbia. A recent examination of toolkit assemblages from contemporary households at the site illustrated how several pursued common suites of subsistence strategies. Here, we extend this analysis to the rest of the village and contrast these data with faunal evidence for household consumption practices. The results are consistent with patterns of household economic autonomy and by implication the operation of geographically decentralized communities. These patterns are in contrast to processes elsewhere on the coast where rising economic centralization within households appears to have been linked to greater integration between households.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17290