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

该奖项由2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助。在国家科学基金会的支持下，玛丽亚·尼维斯·泽德诺博士及其同事和黑脚合作者将在美国西北平原进行为期两个季节的考古田野工作。他们将共同研究在公元1050-1660年间居住在蒙大拿州-艾伯塔省边界山麓和草原上的已故史前猎人社区之间的社会投资和组织复杂性之间的关系。在北美野牛猎人采用这种马之前的几个世纪里，重要的技术进步和人口统计过程明显地改变了不同规模的自然和社会景观。将明确针对蒙大拿州中北部史前库托伊斯地区的景观工程证据，以评估大规模的野牛收获以及伴随而来的社会、政治和仪式结构和实践的发展。研究小组将对国内和非国内建筑进行考古测绘，挖掘杀戮和加工特征，并进行大量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，以及如何塑造的？(2)库托伊斯建筑中是否有任何监管社会行动的证据？(3)库托伊斯的景观是由集体仪式等综合机制塑造的吗？(4)库托伊斯猎牛的材料记录中是否可见个人和团体的机构和做法？库托伊斯，也被称为两药野牛跳跃地点，位于蒙大拿州冰川县的黑脚印第安人保护区。库托伊斯。它由一个巨大的岩石特征和骨骼散布的综合体组成，绵延13平方公里，位于俯瞰比梅迪奇河及其泛滥平原的高原上。这里地处偏远，鲜为人知，但却是该地区最大、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，一个畜栏/加工部件的存在，以及两个大型露营地的存在，初步证据表明建筑多变，一个可能的仪式部件靠近杀戮地点，使库托伊斯地区成为研究社会投资、景观工程和组织复杂性的材料印记的有力分析案例。这项研究将提供机会评估和更新社会政治组织的深层设定模型，这些模型是大型猎物猎人，特别是北部平原野牛猎人的考古学和人类学方法的特征。它将把不同的考古组成部分和数据集、古生态学和人种学信息整合到一个多尺度的野牛狩猎景观方法中。最后，它将提供大量的新信息，以增强目前对北部平原史前的了解。作为与黑脚部落的合作努力，这项研究具有巨大的变革潜力：它将把代表性不足的群体纳入考古研究，并将促进考古实践不仅具有科学合理性，而且认识并响应这一群体的传统知识和做法。该项目将为本科生和研究生创造多年的研究机会，并为他们提供一种参与式的考古调查模式。

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.