Household Hearth-Centered Activity Areas and Cache Pit Patterning at the Bridge River Site

Summary

Archaeological investigations at Housepit 54 within the Bridge River site have, to date, exposed seventeen discreet floors primarily dating to ca. 1500-1000 cal. B.P. In this poster we draw data from three of the site’s floors, IIk, IIl, and IIm, where the most recent investigations have yielded an interesting pattern of hearth and cache pit features. Questions will be addressed specifically towards formation processes as well as the potential relationships between the patterning of hearth-centered activity areas and nearby cache pits by examining variability in artifacts, faunal remains, and other features. Using the same methodological and theoretical approach for each floor, we examine feature form and function, lithic tool production and maintenance, animal and plant processing, taphonomic processes, and potentially, ritualistic practices to reconstruct the means by which the items in each activity area came to be co-associated. From these studies, we draw conclusions regarding the roles of these spaces on the house floor. We then seek to address potential relationships between activity areas by application of re-fitting analysis and examination of inter-assemblage variability. Results of this research permit us to develop a range of implications regarding household occupational history and sociality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Complex Fisher-Foragers of the Interior Pacific Northwest: The Housepit 54 Project at Bridge River, British Columbia

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15962