A Stone Throw(n) Away: Examining the Interconnection between Identity and Division of Labor through an Evolutionary Analysis of Household Spatial Organization

Summary

This study examines issues of cultural change/continuity as embodied within a singular multi-generational housepit (Housepit 54) located within the Bridge River site in the Mid-Fraser Canyon, British Columbia, Canada. Previous research has focused on understanding the changing social dynamics at both a village and household-level, examining shifts from a more collaborative to competitive framework in response to external environmental pressures. As interpersonal dynamics within Housepit 54 were renegotiated within a context of increased competition, this study will address how—if at all—such changes beget corresponding shifts in identity-defining tasks in order to better understand the recursive relationship between culture, environment, and individual agency. If hunter-gatherer identities were tied to resource-extraction activities (i.e. individuals who hunted had identities based around such hunting practices) then changes in resource access may have caused subsequent, measurable shifts in identity. This study uses ArcGIS in order to examine the fine-grained detailed evolution of spatially-defined activity within HP54 in order to illuminate the interplay between personal identity, cultural transmission, and emergence of inequality.

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): 22095