The Faunal Record of the Housepit 54 Project at Bridge River (EeRl4), British Columbia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Housepit 54 Project at Bridge River, British Columbia: Multidisciplinary Contributions to Household Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Bridge River site (K’etxelkná’z) is a winter pithouse village located in the Mid-Fraser Canyon of south-central British Columbia near the confluence of the Bridge and Fraser Rivers. Extensive excavations in Housepit 54 have uncovered a sequence of 17 occupation floors and seven roof deposits that previous research has separated into distinct periods noted as Bridge River 1 (1800-1600 cal. BP), Bridge River 2 (1600-1300 cal. BP), Bridge River 3 (1300-1000 cal. BP), and later reoccupation of Bridge River 4 (600-100 cal. BP). Of particular focus here are the noted differences between Bridge River 2 and 3 where the village population peaked twice during a time of climate change. The population peaks were followed by two Malthusian ceiling events resulting in the renegotiation of household economies and the emergence of institutionalized inequality. Building on these previous studies, this research aims to reexamine the current zooarchaeological assemblage of Housepit 54 with a particular focus on subsistence strategies of groups occupying 14 of the deeper occupation floors (IIa through IIn) as related to changes in housepit size, demographic trends, and noted environmental changes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• The Housepit 54 Project at Bridge River, British Columbia: Multidisciplinary Contributions to Household Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50155