Bear/Human Relationships in Southeastern Native North America: Creating Archaeological Models from Historical Accounts

Author(s): Gregory Waselkov

Year: 2017

Summary

Historical accounts and ethnographic studies of the Indians of greater southeastern North America dating from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries contain abundant information on native people’s attitudes toward black bears (Ursus americanus). These records provide a basis for inferences about changes in subsistence exploitation of bear populations in the Southeast over the last five centuries, while offering clues about longer-term non-subsistence relationships between bears and humans that developed over millennia. The unique roles of bears as liminal beings—at times other-than-human, a third gender, intermediaries between plants and animals—have barely been explored by archaeologists. Rethinking bears from southeastern Native North American perspectives opens new lines of inquiry for archaeologists.

Cite this Record

Bear/Human Relationships in Southeastern Native North America: Creating Archaeological Models from Historical Accounts. Gregory Waselkov. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 431215)

Keywords

Geographic Keywords
North America - Southeast

Spatial Coverage

min long: -91.274; min lat: 24.847 ; max long: -72.642; max lat: 36.386 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14397