On- and Off-Reservation Life: A Multi-scalar Study of Indigenous Villages on the Northern Plains

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Much of what we know archaeologically about the Reservation Period (1850s-present) on northern Plains village groups like the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara is found in government-sponsored salvage excavations conducted in the 1940s and 1950s. The resulting reports are primarily based on acculturative approaches, which assess the relative loss of Indigeneity and growing Europeanization based on ratios of ‘European’ objects and traditional ‘Native’ artifacts. This research breaks free of those outdated ideas by reexamining salvaged collections through the lens of contemporary critiques and theoretical developments. Using a more nuanced consideration of persistence at three related Reservation Period sites: Like-A-Fishhook Village (32ML2), Garden Coulee (32WI18), and Crow-Flies-High Village (32MZ1), this paper’s acknowledgment of change as part of persistence and its incorporation of survivance, residence, practice, and memory, provides a more comprehensive and complex understanding of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara colonial experience.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology