Continuity or Change: A GIS Analysis of Artifact Distributions from Pre-colonial Housepit 54

Summary

Housepit 54 at the Bridge River pithouse village in south-central British Columbia provides a glimpse into the complex cultural practices that occurred within this area in the past. This village, which includes approximately 80 semi-subterranean structures, was occupied during four time periods that together span from approximately 1800 – 45 cal. B.P., firmly placing the site within both a historic and a pre-Colonial context. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) will be used to explore the spatial distributions of artifacts from a subset of Housepit 54’s pre-Colonial floors. This study should result in a more in-depth understanding of the structure's household organization and the past human behaviors that affected the creation of the assemblages under examination. Ultimately, if there were activity areas being used during the occupation of the Housepit 54 floors, then clusters of cultural material and possibly clusters of material types are expected. In addition, this study will also be looking for evidence of shared space and materials as well as trends through time, such as the continuous use of one area of the housepit for a specific activity. This should reveal more about how the housepit's organization and social structure changed over time.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20500