Year of Award

2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

Anthropology

Other Degree Name/Area of Focus

Archaeology

Department or School/College

Department of Anthropology

Committee Chair

Anna Prentiss

Commitee Members

Sarah Halvorson, Pei-Lin Yu

Keywords

Archaeology, Lithic Technology

Abstract

The 2012 excavation of a single housepit (Housepit 54) at the Bridge River Village site (EeR14) offers the unique opportunity to look at lithic organization and techinological strategies during the Fur Trade era in the Middle Fraser Canyon. The main goal of this research is to understand how the winter occupation of Housepit 54 may have affected the lithic technological strategies carried out at Bride River Village. As a winter pithouse, lithic raw material sources would be inaccessible during the three months of occupation. The hypothesis of this thesis is structured with a theory of risk framework in order to understand what strategies may have been implemented in order to minimize the risk of exhausting raw material over the winter. This thesis will also seek to explore the ethnographic record in relation to the archaeological record in order to extrapolate a model of lithic organization. The hypothesis proposes that certain strategies such as bipolar reduction and high production intensity would be applied in order to conserve raw material over the winter. Tools size, expedient reuse and longer use-lives are also factors anticipated from the hypothesis. These factors are highly testable variables that will provide a deeper understanding of lithic technological strategies, but also, will provide insight into the activities being carried out over the winter occupation at Bridge River Village during the Fur Trade era.

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© Copyright 2013 Kelly French