Settlement pattern dynamics and the evolution of social complexity on the northern Northwest Coast

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With NSF support, Drs. Kenneth M. Ames, Andrew Martindale, and Kevan Edinborough will use recently perfected field and mapping methods to investigate the history of social complexity on the northern Northwest Coast (NWC) of North America. The social complexity in this region was comparable to that which scholars traditionally thought could only be achieved with agriculture; yet the people of this region were hunter-fisher-gatherers (HFG), a case study that can reveal the underlying causes of this universal aspect of human historyThis research focuses on the Coast Tsimshian and on the archaeological record of Prince Rupert Harbor (PRH), British Columbia, a major global case study for HFG complexity. At European Contact, PRH contained a dense aggregation of villages, archaeologically visible as an extraordinary concentration of massive shell middens. The harbor's 277 recorded sites includes 96 shell middens of which 61 are documented villages, 18 of which are major villages (more than 10,000 m2 ) in a area of 30 km2. Key open questions are the timing of initial occupation of the harbor; the evolution of settlement patterns including when the historic village aggregation developed; and the timing of the development of permanent inequality. The project will build a large data set of radiocarbon dates in PRH using field techniques honed over the past 20 years for investigating large shell sites in geologically complex coastal environments. A database of archaeological and paleoenvironmental radiocarbon dates for the northern NWC will also be compiled. The results will increase the precision with which organic samples from marine environments are converted to calendar dates (essential to constructing histories); test current models of the evolution of social and political complexity; build a chronology for the massive shell middens within the harbor, and date the formation of the historic village aggregation in the harbor, hence testing the adawx accounts. This work will produce the best-supported local marine radiocarbon correction on the west coast of North America improving global understanding of this issue with a well dated coastal settlement history that potentially covers the last 12,000 years; better evidence with which to date the appearance of permanent inequality on the NWC, a model of population dynamics for the northern coast based on a large, controlled sample of radiocarbon dates and a tested methodology for investigating enormous shell middens, which will be of broad archaeological interest. The active use and testing of Coast Tsimshian data will provide a tested model for incorporating oral traditions into archaeological research, addressing a major issue for Native peoples.The project builds on a long tradition of international research projects in PRH and of deep involvement of Coast Tsimshian people in such research. The project is funded by NSF and the Social Science and Research Council of Canada, drawing researchers from the United States, Canada and Great Britain. Coast Tsimshian involvement includes work in field and lab research as well as formal consultation, discussions with elders and active sharing of the results with them.