Tobacco Smoking in Northwestern North America: Synthesizing the Results of Organic Chemical Residue Analyses

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The past several years have seen a number of studies—largely based at Washington State University—incorporating organic chemical residue analytical methods to address questions regarding past smoking practices in Northwest North America. In this poster we summarize the results of these studies, which cover a geographic range from northern California to southern British Columbia, and synthesize them, presenting the current understanding of smoking practices in the region’s past. Of particular interest is the northern limit of tobacco (genus Nicotiana) use, given its limited natural range and importance in the beliefs and practices of many present-day Native people in the Northwest. Evidence of past tobacco use at several locations in the region is contrasted with the current natural distribution of the genus.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26103