Article
Rope Bridges and Cables: A Synthesis of Prince Rupert Harbour Archaeology
Canadian Journal of Archaeology
(2014)
Abstract
Prince Rupert Harbour is a flagship region in Northwest Coast prehistory with resonance across the archaeological world as an epitome of the development of hunter-gatherer-fisher social and political complexity. It is so because of theharbour's extraordinary archaeological record, its long history of archaeological research, and most importantly, the Coast Tsimshian people and their deep and abiding commitment to their history and their oral record of it, the adaiox. There is however a chasm between history as narrated archaeologically and as narrated by Coast Tsimshian scholars. A crucial on-going effort of archaeological research in the harbour has been to build bridges of inference to span that chasm. We review the history of archaeology in Prince Rupert Harbour to argue that a synthesis of this divergence is possible. However it requires resolving three recurring challenges to spanning this divide: 1) sampling issues, 2) the diversity of theoretical approaches in archaeology and 3) the complexity of the historical subject, the scope of which is visible to us via the adawx. These challenges face archaeologists working anywhere but may be most pressing where archaeologists and Native scholars are actively working to span the divide
Keywords
- Oral history -- Historiography,
- Excavations (Archaeology)
Disciplines
Publication Date
2014
Citation Information
Ames, K. M., & Martindale, A. (2014). Rope Bridges and Cables: A Synthesis of Prince Rupert Harbour Archaeology. Canadian Journal Of Archaeology, 38(1), 140-178.