Living Landscapes and Moving Cultures

Summary

Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) in the Central Interior of British Columbia are well known and extensively documented. While there are several types of CMTs, the most common in the interior, by far, are barked stripped Lodgepole Pine for the purpose of cambium collection as a food resource. The majority of the discussion and analysis of CMTs is field-based and primarily focuses on scar identification to determine cultural origin, dating methods, mapping and describing locales where large numbers of CMTs are found in mass quantity. What has been lacking is an attempt to consider these CMT sites as an integral part of the cultural landscape of Central Interior First Nations. In this paper we will explore the potential use of geospatial data to examine CMT sites in terms of regional distribution and land use patterns. The Carrier Nations in the Central Interior of British Columbia are known to have followed a seasonal round, focusing on different resources in different parts of their landscape at different times of the year. Cambium collection is an important, and overlooked, part of their holistic interaction and understanding of their surrounding landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17512