What One Artifact Points Out

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 1835, Pierre Louis Vasquez established Fort Vasquez in the South Platte River Basin to trade for bison products with the Indigenous groups of the region. Though this fort was not the first instance where Indigenous people of this region encountered Euromericans and their enterprises, it did mark the beginning of an era of Euromerican settler-colonialism that would permanently affect the dynamics of the region. An artifact from Fort Vasquez that conveys this shift is FV-1-512, an amber glass projectile point lodged in a bison bone. This paper takes an approach informed by Janet Spector’s What This Awl Means to understand how the data extrapolated from just one artifact can convey a detailed story of use. Drawing from archaeological collections and sites similar to Fort Vasquez, ethnohistoric research, and Indigenous ledger art, the proposed paper explores a robust method for researching similar post-contact artifacts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow