Demonstrating the wide variation
among complex hunter-gatherer communities in coastal settings
This book explores the forms and trajectories of social complexity among
fisher-hunter-gatherers who lived in coastal, estuarine, and riverine
settings in precolumbian North America. Through case studies from
several different regions and intellectual traditions, the contributors
to this volume collectively demonstrate remarkable variation in the
circumstances and histories of complex hunter-gatherers in maritime
environments.
The volume draws on archaeological research from the North Pacific and
Alaska, the Pacific Northwest coast and interior, the California Channel
Islands, and the southeastern U.S. and Florida. Contributors trace
complex social configurations through monumentality, ceremonialism,
territoriality, community organization, and trade and exchange. They
show that while factors such as boat travel, patterns of marine and
riverine resource availability, and sedentism and village formation are
common unifying threads across the continent, these factors manifest in
historically contingent ways in different contexts.
Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America offers specific,
substantive examples of change and transformation in these communities,
emphasizing the wide range of complexity among them. It considers the
use of the term complex hunter-gatherer and what these case studies
show about the value and limitations of the concept, adding nuance to an
ongoing conversation in the field.
Contributors: J. Matthew Compton C. Trevor Duke Mikael Fauvelle
Caroline Funk
Colin Grier Ashley Hampton Bobbi Hornbeck Christopher S. Jazwa
Tristram
R. Kidder Isabelle H. Lulewicz Jennifer E.
Perry Christina Perry Sampson Thomas J. Pluckhahn Anna Marie Prentiss
Scott D. Sunell Ariel Taivalkoski Victor
D. Thompson Alexandra Williams-Larson
A volume
in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology,
edited by
Victor D. Thompson and Scott M. Fitzpatrick
