Archaeology and Concepts of Space, Place, and Indigenous Heritage

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering archaeological periods, Indigenous technologies, hunting practices, ethnoarchaeology, and the concepts of space, place, dwelling, and taskscape.

Period II ($10,000\text{--}6,000\,\text{BP}$)

An archaeological period associated with the Plano Cultural Tradition or Archaic Tradition, characterized by retreating glaciers, reliance on large game, fishing, and the adoption of stemmed projectile points and atlatl technology.

Stemmed Points

Stone projectile points designed to fit securely into a weapon shaft and be wrapped, differing from earlier fluted points and characteristic of Period II.

Atlatl

A spear-throwing technology developed to assist hunters by increasing the leverage, range, and velocity of launched projectiles.

Plano Points

Specific projectile points from Period II found predominantly across the Canadian Prairies.

Period IV ($3,000\text{--}1,500\,\text{BP}$)

An archaeological period associated with the Woodland Period and Late West Coast, marked by cultural diffusion, pottery, monumental burial mounds, and bow-and-arrow technology.

Diffusion

The spread of ideas, technologies, and cultural practices between communities without necessarily requiring large-scale migration or population replacement.

"Ideas are moving, people are not"

A summary concept for Period IV expressing that technological and cultural innovations spread between communities without large-scale population movements.

Period V ($1,500\,\text{BP}$–European Arrival)

The Late Woodland Period in Ontario, defined by modern environmental conditions, established communities, and the rise of horticultural food production.

Woodland Period ($2,900\text{--}400\,\text{BP}$)

An archaeological period characterized primarily by three developments: pottery manufacture, monumental mound burials, and the emergence of small-scale horticulture.

Monumental Burials

Collective mortuary practices involving constructed earthen mounds that emerged during the Woodland Period.

Donaldson Site

An archaeological site located along the Saugeen River near Southampton, Ontario, dating to approximately $2,300\text{--}1,200\,\text{BP}$, showing evidence of hearths, burials, fishing, and longer-term occupation.

Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

A bison-harvesting cliff site located in Alberta, associated with the Blackfoot people and dating back approximately $5,000\,\text{BP}$.

Iniskim

Buffalo Calling Stones sacred to Blackfoot traditions and associated with bison hunting sites such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.

Buffalo Jump

A communal hunting method where hunters directed bison herds over a cliff edge to incapacitate them, followed by hunters killing surviving animals below.

Dog Days

The period of bison hunting prior to the introduction of horses and rifles, during which dogs assisted hunters with transportation and tracking.

Travois

A traditional transport frame pulled by dogs during the Dog Days (and later horses) to haul supplies, tools, and harvested bison meat.

Horse Days (Elk Dog Days)

The period following the adoption of horses by Plains hunters, enabling greater travel distances, horse archery, and reduced necessity to trail bison closely on foot.

Overkill Hypothesis (Buffalo Jump Critique)

An outsider interpretation labeling Indigenous buffalo jumps as wasteful, criticized in the notes for overlooking the destructive, large-scale slaughter of bison by colonial settlers.

Horticulture

The small-scale cultivation of plants for food, often practiced alongside hunting, fishing, and gathering, and reflecting a shift toward food production.

Diagnostic Artifact

An artifact with distinctive physical or decorative traits, such as regional pottery, that helps archaeologists date an assemblage and link sites culturally.

James Wright's Ceramic Hypothesis

The proposal that Woodland pottery traditions spread into North America via cultural diffusion and long-distance interaction networks originating toward South America.

Ice Patch Archaeology

The archaeological study of ancient organic artifacts, animal remains, and hunting equipment preserved within high-elevation, non-moving perennial ice patches.

Ice Patch

A stationary alpine accumulation of ice and snow that does not experience glacier flow, preserving delicate organic materials like wood, sinew, feathers, and leather intact.

Kusawa Lake Discovery (1997)

The discovery in southern Yukon by hunters Kristin Benedek and Gerry Kuzyk of caribou dung and a $4,300\text{-year-old}$ dart shaft, initiating the Yukon Ice Patch Project.

$4,300\text{-Year-Old}$ Wooden Dart Shaft

A radiocarbon-dated hunting weapon recovered from a Yukon ice patch near Kusawa Lake, remarkably preserved with sinew and feather remnants.

$9,000\text{-Year-Old}$ Dart

An ancient hunting projectile discovered in a Yukon ice patch demonstrating the deep antiquity of spear-throwing technology in northern environments.

$1,400\text{-Year-Old}$ Moccasin

A preserved piece of ancient footwear recovered from an ice patch near Kluane Lake, Yukon, providing direct material evidence of historic Indigenous clothing.

Caribou Dung (Ice Patch Context)

Well-preserved biological layers found inside ice patches that offer researchers records of ancient caribou populations, diets, and climatic conditions.

Summer Caribou Gathering Behavior

The predictable tendency of caribou to congregate on alpine ice patches during warm months to escape heat and insect harassment, which was utilized by Indigenous hunters.

Yukon Ice Patch Project

A scientific and community partnership between archaeologists and First Nations elders that pairs archaeological research with traditional knowledge.

Meromictic Lake

A lake whose surface and bottom water layers rarely or never mix, resulting in undisturbed, stratified sediment layers that preserve paleoenvironmental and archaeological data.

Crawford Lake

A meromictic lake located near Milton, Ontario, on the Niagara Escarpment, famous for its preserved sediment varves documenting ancient Indigenous horticulture.

Maize Pollen (Crawford Lake)

Botanical evidence recovered from the undisturbed bottom sediments of Crawford Lake proving Indigenous corn cultivation in the surrounding area prior to European contact.

Serpent Mounds

A Woodland Period mortuary site at Rice Lake, Ontario, dating to approximately $2,500\text{--}1,700\,\text{BP}$, featuring nine burial mounds including a $60\,\text{metre}$ snake-shaped mound.

Secondary Burials

Burial practices identified at Serpent Mounds where human remains were interred in constructed earthen mounds after primary decomposition or preparation elsewhere.

Serpent Mounds Grave Inclusions

Grave goods discovered within Serpent Mounds, including natural silver, marine shells, stone tools, animal skulls, and a loon beak that demonstrate regional trade networks.

Dog Burial (Serpent Mounds)

An intentional animal burial found at Serpent Mounds that underscores the ritual and social significance of dogs in Woodland mortuary ceremonialism.

Ethnoarchaeology

The study of contemporary human communities and their material practices to assist archaeologists in interpreting materials and features recovered from past societies.

Limitation of Ethnoarchaeology

The methodological principle that living societies cannot be assumed to behave identically to ancient ones; ethnoarchaeology provides interpretive analogies rather than absolute proof.

Space

A physical or geographical location that can be objectively measured, mapped, and described according to its spatial and physical characteristics.

Place

A physical location that has acquired human meaning, cultural memory, emotional connection, and spiritual significance through lived experience and ongoing relationships.

Space vs. Place (Lake Example)

A comparison showing that while a lake as space is simply a mapped physical body of water, as a place it is a location tied to ancestral hunting traditions and cultural identity.

Dwelling

An approach to landscape and living suggesting that humans actively inhabit and construct meaningful relationships with their environments through daily activities.

Sensory Experiences in Dwelling

The multisensory dimensions of human environments—including smells of wood smoke, tactile fire warmth or cold, animal sounds, and visual layouts—that inform archaeological interpretation.

Tim Ingold

The anthropologist credited with developing the concepts of dwelling and taskscape to explain how people experience landscapes through everyday tasks.

Taskscape

A landscape understood dynamically through the ongoing, interconnected tasks, social practices, and everyday activities performed by people within it.

Hunting Camp Taskscape

The interconnected web of activities centered at a hunting site, encompassing tracking, food processing, tool maintenance, travel, and knowledge transmission.

Tahltan People

An Indigenous First Nation of northwestern British Columbia whose traditional landscape is defined through hunting, oral history, family heritage, and animal relations.

Arthur Nole

A Tahltan Elder whose experiences with whistling birds signaling successful moose hunts illustrate relationships of mutual respect between humans and animals.

Mela’o’tin

A Tahltan term meaning "luck," associated with signs from animals and maintained through respectful interactions between hunters and the natural world.

Tehodeni

The ancestral Tahltan name for Tuaton Lake, encoding cultural knowledge and place-based relationships that colonial maps overlook.

Hunting Camps

Locations used for harvesting, processing game, tool upkeep, and family residence that hold deep cultural and generational value beyond their physical frames.

Ethnocentrism

The practice of evaluating and judging another group's culture, values, or practices solely by the standards, categories, and assumptions of one's own culture.

Resource Developer Conflict over Hunting Camps

A land-use conflict occurring when corporate developers treat hunting camps as relocatable physical shelters rather than irreplaceable cultural places.

Longhouses

Elongated, bark-covered wooden communal dwellings characteristic of Iroquoian-speaking farming communities in Southern Ontario that housed extended matrilineal families.

Matrilineal Longhouse Organization

The Haudenosaunee social system wherein residence, clan descent, and longhouse leadership were structured through maternal family lines.

Three Sisters Horticulture

The intercropping of corn, beans, and squash that supported permanent longhouse communities and agricultural economies in Southern Ontario.

Postholes

Subsurface soil stains identifying where upright wooden support poles once stood, allowing archaeologists to reconstruct the dimensions and floor plans of longhouses.

Landscape Archaeology

The study of how past human societies occupied, shaped, perceived, and modified their broader regional environments and settlement networks over time.

Power and Place

The sociopolitical dynamic whereby unequal authority dictates whose cultural understandings, values, and memories of a landscape are officially recognized in land-use decisions.