The Last House At Bridge River

A detailed reconstruction of a traditional North American aboriginal household

"Following up on their earlier work, Prentiss and colleagues showcase the fifteen earlier household floors from their excavations of a single pithouse in British Columbia at the Bridge River site."--

"Following up on their earlier work, Prentiss and colleagues showcase the fifteen earlier household floors from their excavations of a single pithouse in British Columbia at the Bridge River site."--

The story is the cross section of the life and realities of Kerala State, South India, during the hoary and obfuscated years of internal emergency. The protagonists in the story are generally sad, and the sadness they are charged with makes them philosophical in various ways. Each one is gnawed by a nostalgia to reach out to a state of being and also to a state of mind they seem to have forfeited somewhere beyond the time-space capsule they are shut into. The story largely covers the life of Christian Syrian settlers who settled in the virgin forests of northeastern hill tracts of Kerala, destroying the forests that were there for thousands of years, supporting a community of aborigines who survived in the woods quite unobtrusively and sustainably. The relation between man and nature has degraded to be that of hunter and prey, from that of child and mother, and the socio-environmental ramifications thereof are far-reaching. Also, the story examines the relation between the rulers and the ruled from an elemental angle. The story is basically centered on a man who undergoes a spiritual, as well as political, evolution through the rigorous course of life. The desolation, poverty, political opportunism, and the poetic suffering of the rural masses of the hill tracts of Kerala State, South India, offer the fecund canvass for the development of the story. It explores the possibility of man reaching a solemn level of inner maturity across the trials and tribulations. Particularly in the backdrop of the Communist party spreading its mass base and then declining through decadence and avarice. The faces, places, and events elaborated in the story are very near to me and very dear to me. The plot is very realistic, and my own life is spread thin in the story.

This Element provides an overview of pre-modern and ancient economies of the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The region is widely known for its densely occupied semisedentary villages, intensive production economies, dramatic ritual life, and complex social relations. Scholars recognize significant diversity in the structure of subsistence and goods production in the service of domestic groups and institutional entities throughout the region. Here, domestic and institutional economies, specialization, distribution, economic development, and future directions are reviewed. The Element closes with thoughts on the processes of socio-economic change on the scales of houses, villages, and regional strategies.

Ash is an important and yet understudied aspect of ritual deposition in the archaeological record of North America. Ash has been found in a wide variety of contexts across many regions and often it is associated with rare or unusual objects or in contexts that suggest its use in the transition or transformation of houses and ritual features. Drawn from across the U.S. and Mesoamerica, the chapters in this volume explore the use, meanings, and cross-cultural patterns present in the use of ash. and highlight the importance of ash in ritual closure, social memory, and cultural transformation.

Demonstrating the wide variation among complex hunter-gatherer communities in coastal settings This book explores the forms and trajectories of social complexity among fisher-hunter-gatherers who lived in coastal, estuarine, and riverine settings in precolumbian North America. Through case studies from several different regions and intellectual traditions, the contributors to this volume collectively demonstrate remarkable variation in the circumstances and histories of complex hunter-gatherers in maritime environments.  The volume draws on archaeological research from the North Pacific and Alaska, the Pacific Northwest coast and interior, the California Channel Islands, and the southeastern U.S. and Florida. Contributors trace complex social configurations through monumentality, ceremonialism, territoriality, community organization, and trade and exchange. They show that while factors such as boat travel, patterns of marine and riverine resource availability, and sedentism and village formation are common unifying threads across the continent, these factors manifest in historically contingent ways in different contexts.  Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America offers specific, substantive examples of change and transformation in these communities, emphasizing the wide range of complexity among them. It considers the use of the term complex hunter-gatherer and what these case studies show about the value and limitations of the concept, adding nuance to an ongoing conversation in the field. Contributors: J. Matthew Compton | C. Trevor Duke | Mikael Fauvelle | Caroline Funk | Colin Grier | Ashley Hampton | Bobbi Hornbeck | Christopher S. Jazwa | Tristram R. Kidder | Isabelle H. Lulewicz | Jennifer E. Perry | Christina Perry Sampson | Thomas J. Pluckhahn | Anna Marie Prentiss | Scott D. Sunell | Ariel Taivalkoski | Victor D. Thompson | Alexandra Williams-Larson A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson and Scott M. Fitzpatrick