Culture Contact and Culture Change in a Rocky Mountain Frontier

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Laura Scheiber博士和一个同事团队将在大黄石生态系统中进行两个考古研究季节。该项目将重点关注偏远狩猎采集营地的日常生活，以促进我们对美洲原住民对接触和殖民主义的反应的理解。 殖民主义对移动的狩猎采集者的影响仍然没有得到充分研究，文化接触研究的最新理论进展尚未应用于公元1600年至1900年动荡年代的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。 这个项目是第一个将文化接触的观点整合到狩猎采集遗址的项目，那里的文化联系是安全的。大黄石生态系统是研究美国西部殖民主义的绝佳场所。 2003年肖肖尼国家森林的野火暴露了与肖肖尼山区人民建造的大量捕羊陷阱有关的营地和山区绵羊屠宰设施。 在这些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来研究日常生活的空间和时间维度以及狩猎采集者在住宅环境中的活动，这是对殖民主义反应的证据。 研究小组将重点关注跨越原始历史-历史过渡的四个关键时期：平原印第安人向传统肖肖尼人家园的扩张，肖肖尼山人与欧美探险家和毛皮贸易商之间的初步接触，持续的接触和参与毛皮贸易，以及平原印第安人战争和美国西部保留地的建立所导致的日益加剧的文化冲突。对此的研究设计该项目致力于肖肖尼山随着时间的推移而发生的变化：1）景观利用，2）食品实践，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边界扩大、牧羊活动加剧和更专业化的生存经济之间的关系。 该小组还将研究黑曜石（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差异获取，对变革的抵制和/或殖民纠缠。 这项研究将采用系统调查，发掘，详细的表面测绘，黑曜石来源和定年，AMS放射性碳定年，这个项目将有助于人类学考古学的更广泛的目标，通过提供一个与美国西部印第安人存在相关的崩溃叙述的对应点，并通过研究荒野景观在构建土著民族中的作用，社会身份 它还将为本科生和研究生，包括贫困少数民族学生提供科学培训，并让后代社区参与科学研究。 这项工作还将解决在荒野环境中工作的后勤困难，森林地面覆盖的厚度，以及野火后迅速和广泛的抢劫，探索使用创新技术，以尽量减少对考古遗迹的破坏，减轻资源消失的影响。

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.