Fruits from the Ancestors: Tsimshian Forest Gardens in the Pacific Northwest

Summary

The historical ecology of Dałk Gyilakyaw, the ancestral village of the Gitsm’geelm Tsimshian, is a community-based research program that focuses on connecting the past to the present using a heterarchy of ethnographic, ethnobiological, and archaeological methods that are organized from Tsimshian Adawx, worldviews, and community objectives. Traditional resource management and environmental wisdom are explored as a means of investigating the archaeological past in less invasive ways. In this context, we explore how descendant communities connect as intensely with the plants that continue to grow above ground at ancestral village sites — their names, smells, stories, tastes, and management practices — as they do with traditional archaeological materials and features found below the ground, such as stone tools or cultural depressions. Living heritage embodied by plants provide touchstones of memory and literally bring forth the fruits of the ancestors.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21504