This doctoral dissertation revisits the horse in Blackfoot culture in order to explore how its adoption altered Blackfoot hunting practices and landscape uses during the Contact Period in the Northwestern Plains of North America. The Blackfoot provide one of the best avenues for research into the horse's impact on big-game hunters because of their pre-contact trajectory, history of interaction with other groups, detailed ethnographic record, and continued investment in equestrianism. While the socio-economic consequences of the horse's introduction have been studied from a historical perspective, the archaeology of this transition remains ambiguous. This project presents a new, archaeological dimension to the dynamics of the Blackfoot equestrian transition by incorporating material culture with traditional knowledge, historic accounts, and geospatial data into a multi-scalar, transnational interpretation of the horse's impact on both Blackfoot social, economic, religious, and spiritual life, as well as the way in which Blackfoot peoples used and understood their landscape. The results of this study show how these changes may be best understood as a transition in modes of production from hunting and gathering to nomadic pastoralism. In this endeavor, this project contributes new theoretical and methodological approaches as well as substantive new data to our understanding of hunting and pastoralism among people of the Northwestern Plains.

This investigation focuses on the decision making relative to plants by Native Americans on one of the oldest and most continuously occupied reservations in the United States, the Mashantucket Pequot Nation. Within an agency framework, I explore the directions in which decision making about plants were changing from 1675-1800 A.D. I evaluate plant macroremains, specifically progagules (seeds), recovered from ten archaeological sites and the historical record from the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation, located in southeastern Connecticut. I demonstrate how decision making about plants related to food and medicinal practices during the Colonial Period were characterized by heterarchical choices that allowed the Mashantucket Pequot to retain their sense of economic and cultural autonomy from their colonizers. This type of problem-directed agency analysis will aid in placing Indigenous individuals and communities into the contexts of colonization as more active participants in their own past, and as long-term stewards of the environment. More specifically, this dissertation shows that even as small a space as the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation is a rich testimony to the 11,000-year history, and continues to provide important information about how households and communities (re)conceptualize their socio-natural worlds under the most severe constraints.

Since the 1980s, there has been a growing consciousness among heritage workers and policy makers about the management of indigenous heritage. Museums, universities, and other cultural institutions around the world have acknowledged that old work practices must be exchanged for new ones, where the indigenous peoples are allowed influence, stewardship, and interpretative prerogative. One result of these efforts is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007). With the breakthrough of public archaeology and community archaeology in the 1990s, these ambitions have also been put into practice in multiple archaeological projects around the globe. In my research, I examine the heritage management system of Sweden, and how this system works in relation to the indigenous Sámi.  Despite being on the retreat geographically for the past few centuries, the Sámi still dispose of about 50% of the area of Sweden for the grazing of their reindeer, which means the historical and cultural landscape of the Sámi is vast and the archaeological traces of their activities are spread over a large area. In Sweden, about 90% of all archaeological projects are due to land development projects and conducted by archaeological companies operating on a commercial market. The remaining 10% are research projects financed by public funding and mostly conducted by museums and universities.  Investigating the Swedish county of Jämtland as a case study and drawing on interviews with ten actors with different perspectives on Sámi heritage, I study what happens when policy meets practice. The indigenous perspective appears to be considered less in contract archaeology than in research projects. Legislation, money, old habits, and the realities of everyday life obstruct indigenous influence. But my research results suggest that there are also ways of improving the system.

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has become increasingly important for the preservation of cultural resources by tribal entities. This project serves as a platform for the management of archaeological site data on the Qualla Boundary to be used by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) members. Over the course of a year, data was gathered from various agencies in order to export and create geospatial data that can be visualized, analyzed, and managed using ArcGIS software. A map and detailed data set were created to provide the user with the locations and attributes of archaeological sites, which can be used by the EBCI THPO as a tool for archaeological research and to protect sites on the Qualla Boundary. Additionally, a preliminary settlement pattern study was performed for the broader Qualla Boundary, along with a more in-depth analysis of sites along the Oconaluftee River.

<p>This dissertation contributes to Indigenous archaeology, particularly along the Northwest Coast, the Coast Salish region and the territory of the Squamish Nation. I examine the regional archaeological sequence and provide an Indigenous perspective of time and space of Squamish Nation territory. Closer examination of this region’s archaeological record focuses on the occurrence of suitable igneous tool stone sources and their use over the past 10,000 years. A full understanding of these lithic sources comes from three different perspectives Squamish Nation culture, the archaeological and geological records.</p> <p>I propose that lithic sources are important places of the Squamish Nation cultural landscape and that the distributions of certain material types is linked to Squamish Nation place names and oral histories. Expanding this concept outward, I consider the distribution of the occurrence of these materials from 25 archaeological sites ranging from sea level ocean shore to mountainous alpine contexts. I then examine lithic source materials and artifacts from these sites on a visual and chemical basis (X-Ray Fluorescence) to illustrate the varying importance of certain lithic materials across Squamish Nation territory. Resulting analysis demonstrates that these materials have varying spatial and temporal distributions that relate to predominant themes of Squamish Nation oral history, concepts of Transformation and Mythical Beings. Material distributions, place names, oral history related to the region’s archaeological record are discussed under different theoretical frameworks of the Northwest Coast building from culture history, processual, post processual, and humanist perspectives cumulating at a Indigenous perspective of lithic sources and flaked stone artifact distributions.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Yes / This special issue gathers together a selection of short articles reflecting on the historical construction of inequality and race in the histories of archaeology. The articles also suggest ways in which the discipline might grapple with the—often obvious, sometimes subtle—consequences of that historical process. Solicited via an open call for papers in the summer of 2020 (one made with the aim of speedy publication), the breadth of the topics discussed in the articles reflect how inequality and race have become more prominent research themes within the histories of archaeology in the previous five-to-ten years. At the same time, the pieces show how research can—and should—be connected to attempts to promote social justice and an end to racial discrimination within archaeological practice, the archaeological profession, and the wider worlds with which the discipline interacts. Published at a time when a pandemic has not only swept the world, but also exposed such inequalities further, the special issue represents a positive intervention in what continues to be a contentious issue. / The EDH project was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), project number AH/S004580/1, and conducted in compliance with UCL’s ethical guidance, project id 14901/001.

Throughout the history of archaeology, the Sámi (the indigenous people in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in the Russian Federation) have been conceptualized as the “Others” in relation to the national identity and (pre)history of the modern states. It is only in the last decades that a field of Sámi archaeology that studies Sámi (pre)history in its own right has emerged, parallel with an ethnic and cultural revival among Sámi groups. This dissertation investigates the notions of Sámi prehistory and archaeology, partly from a research historical perspective and partly from a more contemporary political perspective. It explores how the Sámi and ideas about the Sámi past have been represented in archaeological narratives from the early 19th century until today, as well as the development of an academic field of Sámi archaeology. The study consists of four main parts: 1) A critical examination of the conceptualization of ethnicity, nationalism and indigeneity in archaeological research. 2) A historical analysis of the representations and debates on Sámi prehistory, primarily in Sweden but also to some extent in Norway and Finland, focusing on four main themes: the origin of the Sámi people, South Sámi prehistory as a contested field of study, the development of reindeer herding, and Sámi pre-Christian religion. 3) An analysis of the study of the Sámi past in Russia, and a discussion on archaeological research and constructions of ethnicity and indigeneity in the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union. 4) An examination of the claims for greater Sámi self-determination concerning cultural heritage management and the debates on repatriation and reburial in the Nordic countries. In the dissertation, it is argued that there is a great need for discussions on the ethics and politics of archaeological research. A relational network approach is suggested as a way of opening up some of the black boxes and bounded, static entities in the representations of people in the past in the North.