This study integrates settlement and community archaeology in investigating pre-colonial Stó:lō-Coast Salish community organization between 2,550-100 years before present (cal B.P.). Archaeological housepits provide a basic unit of analysis and proxy for households through which community organization manifests in relationships of form and arrangement among housepit settlements in the lower Fraser River Watershed of southwestern British Columbia. This study focuses on spatial and temporal data from 11 housepit settlements (114 housepits) in the upriver portion of the broader study area (mainland Gulf of Georgia Region). These settlements were mapped and tested as part of the Fraser Valley Archaeology Project (2003-2006). The findings of this study suggest a trajectory of continuity and change in community organization among the Stó:lō-Coast Salish over the 2,500 years preceding European colonization. Shifts between heterarchical and hierarchical forms of social organization, and corporate to network modes of relations represent societal transformations that become expressed by about 550 cal B.P. Transformations of social structure and community organization are manifest as increasing variation in housepit sizes and settlement patterns, and the development of central arrangements in both intra- and inter-settlement patterns. In the Late Period (ca. 550-100 cal. B.P.), the largest and most complex settlements in the region, including the largest housepits, develop on islands and at central places or hubs in the region’s communication system along the Fraser River. These complex sets of household relations within and between settlements represent an expansive form of community organization. Tracing this progression provides insight into the process of change among Stó:lō pithouse communities. Societal change develops as a shift expressed first at a broad-based collective level between settlements, and then at a more discreet individual level between households. This process speaks to the development of communities formed within a complex political-economic system widely practiced throughout the region. This pattern survived the smallpox epidemic of the late 18th century and was maintained by the Stó:lō up to the Colonial Era. Administration of British assimilation policies (e.g., Indian Legislation) instituted after 1858 effectively disrupted but failed to completely replace deeply rooted expressions of Stó:lō community that developed during preceding millennia. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

This work attempts to seek new insights in understanding the archeological phenomena traditionally labelled as the western Bronze Age and the coastal Pre-Roman cultures of Finland (1500 BC-AD 1), by studying the phenomena from a socioeconomic interaction and practice oriented community perspective. The basic line of thought is that it was the everyday life of the local agents and their interactions that constituted the local communities. Communities are seen as built from the bottom up by the interaction of various local agents. The organised agents, their practices and their mutual interaction on various scales of social organisation are regarded as the central factors that created and shaped the history of the communities. Problems that are addressed concern the interrelationship between the subsistence practices, habitation practices and the social organisation of the coastal communities. Houses and local polities are regarded as two basic social institutions that were essential for the structuration of the coastal communities and for their relation to external networks. I also address the issue of the various spatial and temporal scales that can be considered as essential for the structuration of the coastal communities, and furthermore how the coastal communities managed change over time. The geographical scope of this thesis is limited to the former province of Vaasa (Vaasan lääni/Vasa län) in western Finland, with a special emphasis on the coastal southern part of Ostrobothnia.  A suggested high-rank House from the Late Bronze Age is studied in Laihia. Methodologically a broad perspective with a comparative, diachronic and a multi-proxy approach is conducted in the study of the structuration of communities. The constitution of the communities is largely approached through themes that are related to landscape and settlement archaeology. Contextual analyses of the combinations of various subsistence and habitation practices form the basis for the identification of different community constituting subgroups of agents.