Materiality of Complexity: The Mobile Household of the Ancestral Blackfoot (850-350 BP)

Abstract

This dissertation examines the extent to which pedestrian, mobile bison hunters endeavored to create place on the Northern Plains through their permanent, domestic architecture during the Late Precontact period. While horizontal monumentality of bison drivelines is commonly seen as the primary material means of place-making and landscape persistence in the region, less work has been done to understand how these processes translate to the mobile households and campsites often adjacent to these drivelines. Stone rings, the architectural foundations of the conical tipi or lodge, are one of the most ubiquitous archaeological features on the Northern Plains, but methodological challenges have made interpretations of chronology and organization elusive. Building on previous archaeological work at the Kutoyis Complex, this dissertation applies Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology for spatial analysis, AMS-radiocarbon dating, and micro-artifact analysis to the Upper Kutoyis stone ring campsite on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana, to reveal the role of the campsite on landscape persistence and use on the Northwestern Plains.