Is Yellowstone a Wilderness? The Role of Archaeology in Challenging Contemporary Views of Wild Areas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeologists are in a unique position to challenge the contemporary view of wilderness as defined by the United States in the 1964 Wilderness Act. Following the postmodern critique of William Cronon, Mark David Spence’s 1999 book “Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks,” examined the removal of Indigenous people prior to the establishment of places like Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks. Can the parks really be considered wilderness, as defined as places lacking historical human occupation and unable to support human life? The irony of calling a place like Yellowstone a “wilderness” is obvious, considering that its Native inhabitants were removed in order to make it “wild.” Can such places even be considered “natural” spaces without the original human inhabitants? Archaeological research in Yellowstone establishes the presence of Native Americans in all portions of the park for at least 11,000 years, supporting the fact that the park’s landscapes amply support human hunter-gatherers and are not, in fact, inhospitable landscapes devoid of human life.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• A Further Discussion on the Role of Archaeology in Resource and Public Land Management   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36550.0