Reconstructing the Economics of Long-Term Settlement in the Southern Gulf Islands
Colin Grier is currently an Assistant Professor at Washington State University. He started work in the Gulf Islands in 1996, completing his PhD dissertation on the organization of early plankhouses at Arizona State University in 2001. He then took up a SSHRC post doctoral fellowship and taught in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at UBC until 2007, broadening his research to consider patterns of settlement and economic change in the Gulf of Georgia region. He also has a research interest in coastal hunter-gatherers generally, and with a recent appointment at Kyung-Hee University in Seoul, Korea, is expanding his research to include ancient coastal hunter-gatherers of East Asia.
1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver
Research underway in the southern Gulf Islands of the Salish Sea represents a multifaceted approach to reconstructing the long-term settlement history of Coast Salish peoples. Taking a multi-site, comparative perspective, research focuses on six key cuspate spit-based village sites that capture five millennia of pre-contact Salish history. This talk outlines the research goals for the project, presents a model for understanding the co-evolution of cuspate spit landforms and Coast Salish lifeways, and situates southern Gulf Islands pre-contact history in relation to archaeological arguments concerning the origins of social complexity on the Northwest Coast.