The Complex Organization of Communal Bison Hunting: Revisiting the Late Prehistory of the Northern Plains

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。在国家科学基金会的支持下，Maria Nieves Zedeño博士和一个由同事和Blackfeet合作者组成的团队将在美国西北部平原进行两个季节的考古实地考察。他们将一起研究社会投资之间的关系，在社区野牛狩猎和组织的复杂性之间的史前晚期猎人社区谁居住的山麓和大草原之间的蒙大拿-阿尔伯塔边境AD 1050-1660。在北美野牛猎人采用马之前的几个世纪，重要的技术进步和人口变化明显地改变了各种规模的自然和社会景观。景观工程的证据在史前晚期库托伊斯在蒙大拿州中北部的地方将明确的目标，以评估大规模的野牛收获和随之而来的发展的社会，政治和仪式结构和做法。 研究小组将对国内和非国内结构进行考古测绘，挖掘杀戮和加工特征，并进行大量的古环境和地球物理分析，以回答以下问题：（1）经济集约化是否塑造了库托伊斯的景观？(2)在库托伊斯的建筑中有没有任何调节社会行动的证据？(3)库托伊的景观是由诸如社区仪式之类的综合机制塑造的吗？(4)在库托伊斯狩猎野牛的材料记录中，个人和团体的代理机构和做法是否可见？库托伊斯，也被称为两个医学野牛跳跃点，位于蒙大拿州冰川县的黑脚印第安人保留区。库托伊斯它由一个巨大的复杂的岩石特征和骨分散延伸超过13平方公里的高原俯瞰两个梅迪辛河和其洪泛区。偏远而鲜为人知，这仍然是该地区最大和最重要的黑脚遗址之一。驱动线系统的完整性和复杂性，多个杀戮事件，畜栏/处理组件的存在，以及两个大型营地的存在，最初的建筑变化证据和一个可能的仪式组件靠近杀戮地点，使库托伊地方成为调查社会投资，景观工程，和组织复杂性的物质印记。这项研究将提供机会，以评估和更新社会政治组织的特点，考古学和人类学的方法，以大型游戏猎人一般，特别是北方平原野牛猎人深套模型。它将把不同的考古成分和数据集、古生态学和人种学信息整合到野牛狩猎的多尺度景观方法中。最后，它将提供大量的新信息，以增加目前的知识北方平原史前。作为与黑脚部落的合作奋进，这项研究具有巨大的变革潜力：它将把一个代表性不足的选区纳入考古研究，并将促进考古实践，这不仅是科学合理的，但认识和响应这个选区的传统知识和做法。该项目将为本科生和研究生创造多年的研究机会，并为他们提供参与式考古调查模式。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Maria Nieves Zedeño and a team of colleagues and Blackfeet collaborators will conduct two seasons of archaeological fieldwork on the US northwestern Plains. Together they will examine the relationships between social investment in communal bison hunting and organizational complexity among Late Prehistoric hunter communities who inhabited the foothills and prairies of the Montana-Alberta border between AD 1050-1660. The centuries preceding the adoption of the horse by North American bison hunters were marked by important technological advances and demographic processes that visibly transformed the physical and social landscapes at various scales. Evidence of landscape engineering at the Late Prehistoric Kutoyis locality in north-central Montana will be explicitly targeted in order to evaluate large-scale bison harvesting and concomitant development of social, political, and ritual structures and practices. The research team will conduct archaeological mapping of domestic and nondomestic structures, excavation of kill and processing features, and a host of paleoenvironmental and geophysical analyses to answer the following questions: (1) Did economic intensification shape the landscape at Kutoyis and how? (2) Is there any evidence of regulatory social action in the architecture of Kutoyis? (3) Was the Kutoyis landscape shaped by integrative mechanisms such as communal rituals? (4) Are the agencies and practices of individuals and groups visible in the material record of bison hunting at Kutoyis? Kutoyis, also known as the Two Medicine Bison Jump Site, is located in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Glacier County, Montana. Kutoyis. It consists of a vast complex of rock features and bone scatters extending over 13 km2 on a plateau overlooking the Two Medicine River and in its floodplain. Remote and little known, this is nonetheless one of the largest and most significant Blackfeet heritage sites in the region. The completeness and intricacy of the drive line system, the multiple kill episodes, the existence of a corral / processing component, and the presence of two large campsites with initial evidence of architectural variability and one possible ritual component in close proximity to the kill site, make the Kutoyis locality a strong analytical case for investigating the articulation of social investment, landscape engineering, and material imprints of organizational complexity.This study will provide the opportunity to evaluate and update deeply set models of sociopolitical organization that have characterized archaeological and anthropological approaches to big game hunters in general, and to northern Plains bison hunters in particular. It will integrate diverse archaeological components and data sets, paleoecology, and ethnographic information into a multi-scale landscape approach to bison hunting. Finally, it will furnish a substantial amount of new information to augment current knowledge of northern Plains prehistory. As a collaborative endeavor with the Blackfeet Tribe, the research has great transformative potential: it will incorporate an underrepresented constituency into archaeological research, and will promote archaeological practice that is not only scientifically sound but cognizant and responsive to the traditional knowledge and practices of this constituency. This project will create multi-year research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, and a participatory model of archaeological investigation for them to follow.