Land Use and Chronology and GeoPolitical Processes Among Late Prehistoric Communal Bison Hunters, Montana

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Maria Nieves Zedeño, in partnership with the Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office, will build a chronology of Late Prehistoric bison driveline systems and kill sites, as well as associated campsites located on the Two Medicine River, Montana. The objective of this chronology is to ascertain whether multiple driveline systems and kill sites were used by interacting generations and, if so, whether the management of these sites and the surrounding environment led to the formation of territories among seasonally mobile communal bison hunters. More broadly, this research will refine the understanding of big-game hunter geopolitics and its material imprint in the landscape prior to the arrival of European goods and people into the northwestern Plains. The sites to be incorporated in the valley-wide chronology were surveyed and mapped by Zedeño and team in 2009-2012 as part of the Kutoyis Archaeological Project, which has been partially funded by NSF (BCS 0918081). The survey produced abundant evidence of planning, construction, and maintenance of fourteen bison driveline systems. These sites are large (9-16 km sq) funnel-like arrangements of surface stone features that connected bison gathering basins to a cliff or "jump." While there is strong empirical evidence that these sites were built under the same template and architectural tradition, it is yet unknown whether their use-span overlapped. The proposed research will (1) obtain optical lumenescence dates from architectural features, (2) obtain radiocarbon dates from bison bone exposures associated with the driveline systems and from hearths and, (3) establish the chronology of two paleo-fire assessment sites in the heart of the survey area, to determine whether fire was used in grassland management at the same time as the bison hunting sites. Hunter-gatherer territories and territoriality are among the most enduring topics in anthropology. The proposed chronology will expand the understanding of land tenure among pedestrian big game hunters, and answer questions about how communal bison hunters maintained continuity of use and occupation of their prime hunting grounds while being away one-half of the year. The spatial and temporal scales that will be used to link diverse archaeological, chronological, and paleo-ecological data have not been previously applied to the late prehistory of this region and thus this project will stand as a conceptual and analytical model to be tested, or contested, in the future. Since its inception, the Kutoyis Archaeological Project has been explicitly committed to placing archaeology at the service of the Blackfeet Tribe so that their traditional knowledge may be complemented and enriched with scientific data. This project will help to establish the antiquity of the Blackfeet's presence in the valley and to assert their rights to protect cultural resources. This project remains committed to providing archaeological training to students, tribal para-archaeologists, and local residents of the Two Medicine Valley and to inspiring Native American youth to select archaeology as their future career.