Stability and Change in the Construction of Place: Juxtaposing Practices on the Pacific Northwest Coast with the US Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Southwestern precontact history appears written in migrations and dramatic shifts in settlement patterns and identity over the last two millennia. Recent data from the Northwest Coast of North America, in contrast, suggest people may have been situated in specific places and persisted in certain practices for as much as 10,000 years. Such differences have significant implications for the way in which people were connected to and constructed place. I examine this issue initially from a theoretical perspective, invoking approaches to place-making to contemplate the construction of social identities and histories over varying time scales. Second, I take a more operational view, considering the methodologies by which we might address currents of social change and stability in these two regions. Despite the differences of continuity versus fluidity, and of maritime abundance versus agricultural marginality, Southwestern and Northwest Coast communities appear to have negotiated tensions between social differences and collective identities in somewhat similar ways. Limitations of Northwest Coast data — in chronological resolution, in material survivorship, and in density of research — are daunting relative to the Southwest, but I argue that constructions of place provide a productive basis to juxtapose these otherwise disparate areas of precontact North America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23898