Identifying Hunter-Gatherer Socialized Landscapes in the Bridger Mountains, Montana

Summary

Archaeologists working in the Rocky Mountains and throughout the world have long recognized that people invest social meanings into the landscape around them. Based on de Certeau’s (1984) "Spatial Stories," these "socialized landscapes" consist of two archaeologically identifiable components: espaces (practiced spaces) and tours (practiced paths). I operationalize these ideas by creating archaeological expectations for six socialized landscape types and ask what types of socialized landscapes can we identify from a largely lithic archaeological record. I test my expectations with a pilot study in the Bridger Mountains, Montana. By controlling for time using projectile point types found at sites throughout the mountains, I conduct a series of four analyses by time period to determine what types of espaces and tours past peoples created. I then compare those results against my archaeological expectations and landscape types. Although this study reveals areas of the methodology and analyses that can be improved in future studies, my research suggests that we can use this approach to understand past hunter-gatherer socialized landscapes both in the Rocky Mountains and worldwide.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21694