How did small scale hunting and gathering societies undergo the fundamental transformations that ultimately produced the complex societies in which we live today? With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Colin Grier of Washington State University will conduct three field seasons of archaeological research in southwestern British Columbia, Canada directed towards answering this question. This project brings together a team of archaeologists, graduate students, local conservancy groups and aboriginal peoples from the USA and Canada. Field work will collect archaeological data needed to reconstruct long-term economic changes in this region over the last 5000 - the time period during which its hunting and gathering peoples underwent some profound changes towards more complex lifeways. The prehistory of the Northwest Coast represents a critical counterpoint to standard explanations that see the development of complex societies as an outgrowth of the adoption of agriculture. Northwest Coast societies did not practice agriculture, yet developed many features associated with complex societies, such as intensive storage economies, sedentary villages, resource ownership systems, class stratification and slavery.
Archaeologists have in the past argued that the importance of salmon in Northwest Coast economies may explain the development of complexity, in that intensive salmon fishing and storage is akin to agricultural production in labor organization demands and productivity. However, archaeological data from the region do not point to salmon as the single focal resource and thus driver of complexity in prehistory. Rather, recent data indicate that a diversity of subsistence resources underpinned these broader changes. Moreover, evidence for increasing investments in the technology and infrastructure of food procurement suggests intensification across a broad spectrum of resources to a degree rarely seen amongst hunter-gatherers. The overarching goal of this project is therefore to document the economic changes in this region to better explain the development of complex social systems in the absence of agriculture.
Accordingly, this project will collect multiple lines of data on economic practices. A set of six coastal landforms contain archaeological sites that document 5000 years of prehistory. These sites will be mapped to reconstruct the evolution of these landforms and their settlement history. Excavations will produce faunal material from shell middens that reflect the changing diversity of resources used over time. Ancient DNA analysis of recovered salmon bones will provide a species profile to evaluate whether that profile conforms to expectations for an intensive storage economy. Fossil pollen and charcoal data documenting the use of plant resources and their intensification through intentional burning of landscapes will be collected through sediment coring of bog features at these sites.
It is clear that debates concerning the emergence of social complexity in the region cannot effectively move forward without a detailed understanding of its economic prehistory. The coastal spit sites investigated in this project will provide resolution of data previously unequalled for the Northwest Coast, and will advance one of the longest-standing debates in the social sciences: how did complex societies develop?
The broader impacts of this study include significant graduate student involvement offering career training in cutting edge materials analysis. This project also involves partnering with local aboriginal First Nations and conservancy groups. Direct participation of members of these organizations will foster capacity building, provide career training and facilitate data sharing, moving forward our common objective of modeling long-term economic practices as a roadmap for sustainable ecological management in this sensitive and unique island region.
