Sediment Geochemistry and Household Spatial Analysis: Social Organization and Housepit Floors from Three Millennia of Occupation at the Slocan Narrows Site, Interior Pacific Northwest

Summary

House floors in archaeological contexts often lack the density of artifacts and in situ placement to be able to fully reconstruct the spatial organization of activities. Geochemical analyses of sediments provide an alternative line of evidence for understanding household organization and potentially changing social systems. This study presents geochemical analyses of living floors from several pithouses at the Slocan Narrows site in the Upper Columbia river area of interior British Columbia. In order to understand the spatial organization of activities in these dwellings, we use pXRF and EA-IRMS analyses of sediment samples to measure element concentrations and determine carbon and nitrogen ratios respectively. Our sample strategy targeted multiple housepits of varying size that were occupied throughout the site’s history, making Slocan Narrows an ideal site to study household organization change through time. This study expands the methodological toolkit for reconstructing household organization and contributes more broadly to understanding social organization in prehistoric villages.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20683