Complex Hunters-Gatherers
Evolution and Organization of Prehistoric Communities on the Plateau of Northwestern North America

Edited by William C. Prentiss and Ian Kuijt

272 pp., 8 ½ x 11
80 illustrations
Paper $45.00
ISBN 978-0-87480-793-6
Archaeology / Anthropology

The Anthropology of Pacific North America
Herbert D.G. Maschner and Katherine L. Reedy-Maschner, series editors

The Plateau region of the Pacific Northwest witnessed the emergence, persistence, and decline of a diverse array of hunter-gatherer communities during the course of a past several thousand year period. Consequently, the region contains an archaeological record of groups who lived at times in permanent villages, employed complex resource procurement and processing strategies, participated in wide-ranging trade networks, and maintained social organizations featuring high degrees of social inequality.

Complex Hunter-Gatherers presents a broad synthesis of the archaeology of the Plateau, inclusive of the Columbia and Fraser-Thompson drainages. The contributors seek to further our understanding of the nature of prehistoric social organization, subsistence practices, and lifeways of those living on the Plateau, and to expand upon this foundation to understand the evolution and organization of complex hunter-gatherers in general.

William C. Prentiss is assistant professor of anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula.

Ian Kuijt is associate professor of anthropology, University of Notre Dame.

Contents and Contributors:

The Archaeology of the Plateau Region of Northwestern North America: Approaches to the Evolution of Complex Hunter-gatherers, William C. Prentiss and Ian Kuijt

A Culture Historic Synthesis and Changes in Human Mobility, Sedentism, Subsistence, Settlement, and Population on the Canadian Plateau from 7000 to 200 bp, Mike K. Rousseau

Materials and Contexts for a Culture History of the Columbia Plateau, William Andrefsky Jr.

Cultural Complexity: A New Chronology of the Upper Columbia Drainage Area, Nathan B. Goodale, William C. Prentiss and Ian Kuijt

The Evolution of Collector Systems on the Canadian Plateau, William C. Prentiss and Ian Kuijt

Safety in Numbers: The influence of the Bow and Arrow on Village Formation on the Columbia Plateau, James C. Chatters

Ritual Structures in Transegalitarian Communities, Brian Hayden and Ron Adams

Fraser Valley Trade and Prestige as Seen from Scowlitz, Michael Blake

A Question of Intensity: Exploring the Role of Plant Foods in Northern Plateau Prehistory, Dana Lepofsky and Sandra L. Peacock

The Social Dimensions of Roasting Pits in a Winter Village Site, Brian Hayden and Sara Mossop Cousins

Villages on the Edge: Pithouses, Cultural Change, and the Abandonment of Aggregate Pithouse Villages, Ian Kuijt and William C. Prentiss

A Transcontinental Perspective on the Evolution of Complex Hunter-gatherers on the Plateau, Jeanne E. Arnold