Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Transitions To A Nomadic Lifestyle

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

PhD Candidate Brandi Bethke, of the University of Arizona, will examine the extent to which the adoption of the horse altered landscape uses, bison hunting practices, and worldviews of the Blackfoot during the protohistoric and historic periods in the northwestern Plains of the U.S. and Canada. Inspired by the richness of hunter-gatherer archaeology in the northern Plains, theoretical and methodological advances in geospatial mapping, and Blackfoot traditional knowledge, this work provides new insights into the region's equestrian culture and society. Employing a framework that integrates archaeology, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), social history, and ethnography, Bethke's research will provide a contemporary model and nuanced narrative of the influence of the horse on Blackfoot lifeways. Specifically this research will answer the question: to what extent (if any) did the Blackfoot become true nomadic pastoralists? Overall Bethke's work provides an opportunity to evaluate and update the history of the horse and its incorporation into social, economic, and political systems of nomadic hunters on the northern Plains, a story that is integral to the United States' shared heritage and history of western expansion. More broadly, this work will promote an archaeological practice that is not only scientifically sound but also responsive to the traditional knowledge and practices of Blackfoot tribal members. Present-day Blackfoot peoples offer unique perspectives and hold significant knowledge regarding cultural change associated with the introduction of the horse among their ancestors. This collaboration and constructive dialogue between archaeologists and Blackfeet non-archaeologists will benefit the discipline of archaeology in that it will provide new modes of analysis for interpreting relationships between humans and their domesticated animals both in the past and present. Bethke's work will refine and expand models developed in earlier works in order to evaluate how the transition from a bison-centered to a horse-centered lifestyle altered land use patterns as the Blackfoot began to follow habits of horses instead of bison for their own annual cycles of subsistence activities, integrative ceremonies, labor organization, economy, and trade. Additionally, while the socio-economic consequences of the horse have been studied from a historical perspective, the archaeology of this transition remains ambiguous. This study will integrate locational information of multiple archaeological site types from Montana, Alberta, and Saskatchewan with historic and ethnographic data, in order to produce a comprehensive GIS database that will then be used to analyze shifts in land use patterns over the whole of Blackfoot territory that is not limited by modern geopolitical borders. In this way Bethke's research presents a new, archaeological dimension to the dynamics of the Blackfoot equestrian transition by incorporating material culture with traditional knowledge, historic accounts, and scientific data into a multi-scalar, transnational interpretation within the framework of world pastoralist studies. Pastoralism as a mode of production has never before been formally considered as a way of life experienced by Native North Americas. This project will therefore contribute new theoretical and methodological approaches as well as substantive data to our understanding of hunting and pastoralism among people of the North American Plains.