Scrambles, Potlatches, and Feasts: the Archaeology of Public Rituals amongst the St’át’imc People of Interior British Columbia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Public sharing of food and gifts remains important to St’át’imc communities of interior British Columbia today despite decades of prohibition by Canadian authorities. The archaeological record offers evidence that public events involving large scale food preparation and sharing were commonly practiced at least since ca. 1300 years ago. Yet, we have little understanding of variation in how such events were developed and operated. We know even less about the social dimensions of public rituals involving sharing of food and goods. This paper explores the archaeology of food-related public ritual (feasting) and related activities (e.g. potlatching) in the Middle Fraser Canyon of British Columbia. Drawing data from the Bell, Bridge River, and Keatley Creek sites, we assess (1) variation in time and space in the nature of such rituals; (2) potential socio-economic and political explanations for variation; and (3) relationships between historical and contemporary practice.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22800