Culture Contact and Culture Change in a Rocky Mountain Frontier

在国家科学基金会的支持下，劳拉·谢伯博士和他的同事们将在大黄石生态系统进行两个考古季节的实地研究。该项目将重点关注偏远狩猎采集者营地的日常生活，以增进我们对美洲原住民对接触和殖民主义的反应的理解。殖民主义对流动狩猎采集者的影响仍未得到充分的研究，在公元1600年至1900年的动荡年代里，文化接触研究的最新理论进展尚未应用于北美大平原和落基山脉东部的偏远荒野以及大黄石生态系统。该项目是同类项目中第一个将文化联系视角整合到文化归属安全的狩猎采集者遗址的项目。大黄石生态系统是考察美国西部殖民主义的绝佳场所。2003年在肖肖尼国家森林发生的野火暴露了营地和山羊屠宰设施，这些设施与肖肖尼山区人民建造的大量捕羊陷阱有关。在这些被烧毁的表面上可见的数千件文物和特征提供了一个难得的机会，可以研究日常生活的空间和时间维度，以及居住环境中狩猎采集者的活动，这些都是对殖民主义的反应的证据。研究小组将重点关注史前-历史过渡时期的四个关键时期：平原印第安人扩展到传统的肖肖尼人家园，肖肖尼山区与欧美探险家和毛皮商人之间的最初接触，持续的接触和参与毛皮贸易，以及由于平原印第安人战争和在美国西部建立保留地而导致的日益增加的文化冲突。这个项目的研究设计涉及肖肖尼山区随着时间的变化：1)景观使用，2)饮食习惯，3)技术组织。研究小组将调查肖肖尼山人选择生活在偏远荒野的原因，以及这些选择与边境扩大、猎羊加剧和更专业化的自给经济之间的关系。该团队还将研究黑曜石（用于石器制造的火山玻璃）的交换网络，以及在接触后环境中持续使用接触前技术是否反映了对原材料的不同获取、对变化的抵抗和/或殖民纠缠。研究将采用系统的调查、挖掘、详细的地表测绘、黑曜石来源和年代测定、AMS放射性碳测年和人工制品分析等方法来回答这些问题。该项目将通过提供与印第安人在美国西部的存在相关的崩溃叙述的对应物，以及通过检查荒野景观在构建土著社会身份中的作用，为人类学考古学的更广泛目标做出贡献。它还将为本科生和研究生提供科学培训，包括贫困少数民族学生，并让后代社区参与科学研究。这项工作还将通过探索使用创新技术来最大限度地减少考古遗迹的破坏和减轻资源消失的影响，解决在荒野环境中工作的后勤困难、森林地面覆盖的厚度以及野火后的快速和广泛的抢劫。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Laura Scheiber and a team of colleagues will conduct two field seasons of archaeological research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The project will focus on everyday life at remote hunter-gatherer campsites to advance our understanding of Native American responses to contact and colonialism. The effects of colonialism on mobile hunter-gatherers remains understudied, and recent theoretical advances in culture contact studies have yet to be applied to the Great Plains of North America and the remote wilderness of the eastern Rockies and Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem during the turbulent years between A.D. 1600 and 1900. This project is the first of its kind to integrate culture contact perspectives at hunter-gatherer sites where cultural affiliation is secure.The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is an excellent place to examine colonialism in the American West. Wildfires in the Shoshone National Forest in 2003 exposed campsites and mountain sheep butchering facilities associated with extensive sheep hunting traps constructed by Mountain Shoshone peoples. The thousands of artifacts and features visible on these burned surfaces provide a rare opportunity to examine spatial and temporal dimensions of daily life and the activities of hunter-gatherers in residential settings, which serve as evidence of responses to colonialism. The research team will focus on four critical periods spanning the protohistoric-historic transition: the expansion of Plains Indians into traditional Shoshone homelands, the initial contact between the Mountain Shoshone and Euroamerican explorers and fur traders, the sustained contact and participation in the fur trade, and the increasing cultural conflicts resulting from the Plains Indian Wars and establishment of reservations in the western U.S. The research design for this project addresses change through time in Mountain Shoshone 1) landscape use, 2) food practices, and 3) technological organization. The research team will investigate the reasons why the Mountain Shoshone chose to live in the remote wilderness, and the relationships between these choices and expanding frontier borders, the intensification of sheep hunting, and more specialized subsistence economies. The team will also examine whether exchange networks for obsidian (volcanic glass for stone tool manufacture) and the sustained use of pre-contact technology in post-contact settings reflects differential access to raw materials, resistance to change, and/or colonial entanglements. The research will employ the methods of systematic survey, excavations, detailed surface mapping, obsidian sourcing and dating, AMS radiocarbon dating, and artifact analysis to answer these questions.This project will contribute to broader goals of anthropological archaeology by providing a counterpoint to narratives of collapse associated with the Indian presence in the western United States and by examining the role of wilderness landscapes in structuring Native social identities. It will also provide scientific training for undergraduate and graduate students, including under-privileged minority students, and involve descendant communities in scientific research. The work will also address the logistical difficulties working in wilderness settings, the thickness of the forest floor cover, and the rapid and extensive looting following wildfires by exploring the use of innovative technologies to minimize destruction of archaeological remains and to mitigate the effects of vanishing resources.