Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:52:33.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Domestic campsites and cyber landscapes in the Rocky Mountains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Laura L. Scheiber  and
Judson Byrd Finley
Laura L. Scheiber
Affiliation:
1Department of Anthropology, Student Building 130, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA (email: [email protected])
Judson Byrd Finley
Affiliation:
2Department of Earth Sciences, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA (email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The dwellings of prehistoric Native North Americans are amongst the hardest archaeological structures to find and characterise – they leave only a shallow ring of stones. But the authors show that, when recorded to modern levels of precision, these tipi-stances contain a wealth of information. The stone rings are mapped in detail by hand, and located by GPS, their hearths are located by fluxgate survey and sampled for radiocarbon dating, and the results displayed in layered maps on GIS. Different social groups had different floor plans, so that, even where artefacts are missing, the movement of peoples can be dated and mapped. The results also bring to the fore the great cultural value of these, the dominant monument types of Bighorn Canyon National Recreational Area.

Keywords

North American PlainsCentral Rocky MountainsGISGPSstone circlesarchitecturemulti-scalarhouseholdstechnologylandscapehunter-gathererscontract archaeologySection 106 compliance
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 323 , March 2010 , pp. 114 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banks, K.M. & Snortland, J.S.. 1995. Every picture tells a story: historic images, tipi camps, and archaeology. Plains Anthropologist 40(152): 125–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basso, K.H. 1996. Wisdom sits in places: landscape and language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque (NM): University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. 2001. Orientations and origins: a symbolic dimension to the long house in Neolithic Europe. Antiquity 75: 50–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, L.B. (ed.) 1983. From microcosm to macrocosm: advances in tipi ring investigation and interpretation. Plains Anthropologist Memoir 19, Vol. 28(102, Pt. 2): 1–377.Google Scholar
Dooley, M.A. 2004. Long-term hunter-gatherer land use in central North Dakota: an environmental analysis. Plains Anthropologist 49(190): 105–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driver, H.E. 1969. Indians of North America. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frison, G.C. 1967. Archaeological evidence of the Crow Indians in northern Wyoming: a study of late prehistoric period buffalo economy. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Frison, G.C. 1991. Prehistoric hunters of the High Plains. Second edition. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Good, K.N. & Loendorf, L.L.. 1974. The results of archaeological survey in the Grapevine Creek area, Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, 1972 field season. Contract number 4970P20444, an archaeological project conducted under cooperative agreement between the United States Department of Interior, the National Park Service and the University of North Dakota.Google Scholar
Grinnell, G.B. 1892. Blackfoot Lodge tales: the story of a prairie people. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Grinnell, G.B. 1923. The Cheyenne Indians: their history and ways of life. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hind, H.Y. 1860. Narrative of the Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857 and of the Assinniboine and Saskatchewan Exploring Expedition of 1858. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoskin, M. 2008. Orientations of dolmens of western Europe. Journal for the History of Astonomy 39: 507–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Husted, W.M. 1969. Bighorn Canyon archaeology (Publications in Salvage Archaeology 12). Lincoln (NE): Smithsonian River Basin Surveys.Google Scholar
Jones, G. & Munson, G.. 2005. Geophysical survey as an approach to the ephemeral campsite problem: case studies from the Northern Plains. Plains Anthropologist 50(193): 31–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kehoe, T.F. 1958. Tipi rings: the ‘direct ethnologicaL' approach applied to an archeological problem. American Anthropologist 60(5): 861–873.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knapp, A., Labelle, J. & Richings-Germain, S.. 2008. 75 Years of the sporadic study of stone circle sites in northern colorado. Paper presented at the 66th Annual Plains Anthropological Conference, 1-5 October, Laramie, Wyoming.Google Scholar
Loendorf, L.L. & Brownell, J.L.. 1980. The Bad Pass Trail. Archaeology in Montana 21(3): 11–101.Google Scholar
Loendorf, L.L. & Weston, L.O.. 1983. Examination of tipi rings in the Bighorn Canyon-Pryor Mountain area, in Davis, L.B. (ed.) From microcosm to macrocosm: advances in tipi ring investigation and interpretation: 147–155. Plains Anthropologist Memoir 19, Vol. 28(102, Pt. 2).Google Scholar
Maclean, J. 1897. Canadian savage folk – the native tribes of Canada. Toronto (ON): William Briggs.Google Scholar
Mardia, K.V. 1972. Statistics of directional data. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
McCleary, T.P. 1997. The stars we know: Crow Indian astronomy and lifeways. Long Grove (IL): Waveland Press.Google Scholar
McPherron, S.P. & Dibble, H.A.. 2007. Artifact orientations from total station proveniences, in Figueiredo, A. & Velho, G. (ed.) The world is in your eyes: CAA2005: computer applications and quantitative methods in archaeology. Proceedings of the 33rd Conference, Tomar, March 2005: 161–166. Tomar: CAAPortugal.Google Scholar
Mcpherron, S.P., Dibble, H.A. & Olszweski, D.. 2008. GPS Surveying and on-site stone tool analysis: equipping teams for landscape analysis in the Egyptian high desert, in Posluschny, A., Lambers, K. & Herzog, I. (ed.) Layers of perception. Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Berlin, Germany, 2-6 April 2007: 1–6. Bonn: Habelt.Google Scholar
Medicine Crow, J. 2000. From the heart of the Crow country: the Crow Indians' own stories. Lincoln (NE): Bison Books.Google Scholar
MONTANA STATE HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICE. 2002. Recordation standards and evaluation guidelines for stone circle sites (Planning Bulletin 22). Helena (MT): Montana State Historic Preservation Office and Montana Historical Society.Google Scholar
Nabokov, P. & Loendorf, L.L.. 2004. Restoring a presence: American Indians and Yellowstone National Park. Norman (OK): University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Noble, B. 2007. Justice, transaction, translation: Blackfoot tipi transfers and WIPO's search for the facts of traditional knowledge exchange. American Anthropologist 109(2): 338–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oetelaar, G.A. 2000. Beyond activity areas: structure and symbolism in the organization and use of space inside tipis. Plains Anthropologist 45(171): 35–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oetelaar, G.A. 2003. Tipi rings and Alberta archaeology: a brief overview, in Brink, J.W. & Dormaar, J.F. (ed.) Archaeology in Alberta: a view from the new millennium: 104–130. Medicine Hat (AB): The Archaeological Society of Alberta.Google Scholar
Oetelaar, G.A. & Oetelaar, D.J.. 2006. People, places and paths: the Cypress Hills and the Niitsitapi landscape of southern Alberta. Plains Anthropologist 51(199): 375–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Old Coyote, H. 1985. Uuwatisee/Big Metal. Crow Agency (MT): Bilingual Materials Development Center.Google Scholar
Olson, B. 2001. The Lorenz and Buffalo Hill Sitwa: mitigation of two stone circle sites along the Dakota Gasification Co. pipeline, Dunn and Mercer counties, North Dakota. Report Submitted to ENSR Consulting and Engineering Inc. Prepared by Bilcatt Archaeology, Bismarck, North Dakota.Google Scholar
Reher, C.A. 1983. Analysis of spatial structure in stone circle sites, in Davis, L.B. (ed.) From microcosm to macrocosm: advances in tipi ring investigation and interpretation: 193–222. Plains Anthropologist Memoir 19, Vol. 28(102, Pt. 2).Google Scholar
Reher, C.A. & Weathermon, R.. 2008. Stone circles on the High plains. Paper presented at the 66th Annual Plains Anthropological Conference, 1-5 October, Laramie, Wyoming.Google Scholar
Scheiber, L.L. 1993. Prehistoric domestic architecture on the northwestern High Plains: a temporal analysis of stone circles in Wyoming. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Wyoming.Google Scholar
Scheiber, L.L., Finley, J.B. & Boyle, M.P.. 2008. Bad Pass archaeology. American Surveyor 5(4): 12–23.Google Scholar
Schultz, J.J. 1907. My life as an Indian: the story of a red woman and a white man in the lodges of the Blackfeet. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.Google Scholar
Seymour, D.J. 2009. Nineteenth-century Apache wickiups: historically documented models for archaeological signatures of the dwellings of mobile people. Antiquity 83: 157–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuiver, M., Reimer, P.J. & Reimer, R.W.. 2005. CALIB 5.0. Electronic program and documentation. Available at: http://calib.qub.ac.uk/calib/, accessed 1 October 2008.Google Scholar
Wisehart, A. 2005. A cultural study of the Bad Pass Trail in the Pryor Mountains, Montana and Wyoming. Unpublished MA dissertation, University of Montana.Google Scholar
Wissler, C. 1908. Types of dwellings and their distribution in Central North America. Proceedings of the International Congress of Americanists 16(2): 477–487.Google Scholar
Wolf, J.K. 2008. Stone circle sites in Wyoming: historic context study. Draft report prepared by the State Historic Preservation Office, Laramie, Wyoming.Google Scholar
Wood, W.R. & Downer, A.S.. 1977. Notes on the Crow-Hidatsa schism, in Wood, W.R. (ed.) Trends in Middle Missouri prehistory: 83–100. Plains Anthropologist Memoir 13, Vol. 22(78).Google Scholar
Zedeño, M.N. 2008. Traditional knowledge, ritual behavior, and contemporary interpretations of the archaeological record – an Ojibwa perspective, in Hays-Gilpin, K.A. & Whitley, D.S. (ed.) Belief in the past: theoretical approaches to the archaeology of religion: 259–274. Walnut Creek (CA): Lost Coast Press.Google Scholar