Harvesting strategies as evidence for 4000 years of camas ( Camassia quamash ) management in the North American Columbia Plateau

One of the greatest archaeological enigmas is in understanding the role of decision-making, intentionality and interventions in plant life cycles by foraging peoples in transitions to and from low-level food production practices. We bring together archaeological, palaeoclimatological and botanical data to explore relationships over the past 4000 years between people and camas ( Camassia quamash ), a perennial geophyte with an edible bulb common across the North American Pacific Northwest. In this region throughout the late Holocene, people began experimenting with selective harvesting practices through targeting sexually mature bulbs by 3500 cal BP, with bulb harvesting practices akin to ethnographic descriptions firmly established by 1000 cal BP. While we find no evidence that such interventions lead to a selection for larger bulbs or a reduction in time to maturity, archaeological bulbs do exhibit several other domestication syndrome traits. This establishes considerable continuity to human intervention into camas life cycles, but these dynamic relationships did not result in unequivocal morphological indications of domestication. This approach to tracking forager plant management practices offers an alternative explanatory framework to conventional management studies, supplements oral histories of Indigenous traditional resource management and can be applied to other vegetatively propagated species.

Harvesting strategies as evidence for 4,000 years of camas (Camassia quamash) management in the North American Columbia Plateau

One of the greatest archaeological enigmas is in understanding the role of decision-making, intentionality, and interventions in plant life cycles by foraging peoples in transitions to and from low-level food production practices. We bring together archaeological, paleoecological, and botanical data to explore relationships over the past 4,000 years between people and camas (Camassia quamash), a perennial geophyte with an edible bulb common across the North American Northwest. Throughout the mid to late Holocene, people begin experimenting with selective harvesting practices through targeting sexually mature bulbs by 3,500 BP, with bulb harvesting practices akin to ethnographic descriptions firmly established by 1,000 BP. While we find no evidence that such interventions lead to a selection for larger bulbs or a reduction in time to maturity, archaeological bulbs do exhibit several other domestication syndrome traits. This establishes considerable continuity to human intervention into camas life cycles, but these dynamic relationships did not result in unequivocal morphological indications of domestication. This approach to tracking forager plant management practices offers an alternative explanatory framework to conventional management studies and can be applied to other vegetatively propagated species.

The Radiocarbon Record of the Western Stemmed Tradition on the Southern Columbia Plateau of Western North America

The late Pleistocene–early Holocene archaeological record of the interior Pacific Northwest is dominated by what has been regionally referred to as the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). While various efforts have attempted to clarify the chronology of this tradition, these have largely focused on data from the Great Basin and have been disproportionately preoccupied with establishing the beginning of the tradition due to its temporal overlap with Clovis materials. Specifically focusing on the Columbia Plateau, we apply a series of Bayesian chronological models to create concise estimates of the most likely beginning, end, and span of the WST. We then further explore its chronology by modeling its temporal span under various parameters and criteria so as to better identify places in the chronology that need further work and those that are robust regardless of data iteration. Our analysis revealed four major findings: (1) WST conservatively dates between 13,000 and 11,000 cal BP, likely extending to ~13,500 cal BP; (2) the most problematic period for WST is its termination; (3) the WST is incredibly long-lived compared to roughly contemporary Paleoindian traditions; and (4) the WST was seemingly unaffected by the onset of the Younger Dryas.

Gendered Places and Depositional Histories: Reconstructing a Menstrual Lodge in the Interior Northwest

This project considered the deposition history of a burned structure located on the Kalispel Tribe of Indians ancestral lands at the Flying Goose site in northeastern Washington. Excavation of the structure revealed stratified deposits that do not conform to established Columbia Plateau architectural types. The small size, location, and absence of artifacts lead us to hypothesize that this site was once a non-domestic structure. We tested this hypothesis with paleoethnobotanical, bulk geoarchaeological, thin section, and experimental firing data to deduce the structural remains and the post-occupation sequence. The structure burned at a relatively low temperature, was buried soon afterward with imported rubified sediment, and was exposed to seasonal river inundation. Subsequently, a second fire consumed a unique assemblage of plant remains. Drawing on recent approaches to structured deposition and historic processes, we incorporate ethnography to argue that this structure was a menstrual lodge. These structures are common in ethnographic descriptions, although no menstrual lodges have been positively identified in the archaeological record of the North American Pacific Northwest. This interpretation is important to understanding the development and time depth of gendered practices of Interior Northwest groups.