Landscape Engineering and Organizational Complexity among ... · reformulation of the temporality and spatiality of late pre-historic communal bison hunting. And, following Scheiber

Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 1, February 2014 23

� 2014 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2014/5501-0002$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/674535

Landscape Engineering and OrganizationalComplexity among Late Prehistoric Bison

Hunters of the Northwestern Plains

by Maria Nieves Zedeno, Jesse A. M. Ballenger, and John R. Murray

CA� Online-Only Material: Supplement A

Studies of hunter-gatherer sociopolitical organization consistently exclude terrestrial big-game hunters—pedestrianbison hunters, in particular—from discussions of emerging complexity. To an important extent, this exclusion stemsboth from the ethology of bison and its consequences for mobile hunters and from the character of their archaeologicalrecord, which lacks conventional indicators of organizational complexity such as high-status burials and long-termstorage facilities. However, this record exhibits stone architecture of monumental proportions. We argue that evidenceof emerging sociopolitical complexity is embodied in the hunters’ ability to (1) invest extensively on landscapeengineering to amass communal bison wealth for consumption, storage, and exchange, and (2) produce and re-produce ritual wealth among individuals and restricted sectors of the group. Through a multiscalar research designthat integrates thousands of surface stone features with data recovered from kill site excavation, ethnohistoricalrecords, and Blackfoot traditions, we demonstrate that Late Prehistoric bison hunters of the northwestern Plainsendeavored to create conditions for permanence in their hunting territory by strategically emplacing and maintaininghunting facilities. These, in turn, would be used by ensuing generations of culturally related groups for whom thecommunal hunt was a formal and ritually managed act.

The Pikunis were rich; meat was their staff of life, and theyhad plenty of it. (James Willard Schultz, Blackfeet andBuffalo [1962:30])

Pedestrian bison hunters of the North American Plains havebeen conventionally categorized as highly mobile, egalitarianbands whose lives and annual schedules were tethered to thebehavior and environment of their resource (e.g., Binford2001:226; Oliver 1962; Wheat 1972). On the surface, it mayseem a fitting portrayal of ancient terrestrial big-game huntersbut does not explain the full range of variability in theirtrajectories and organization. Narrowly focused on behaviorand technology, this categorization excludes the existence of

Maria Nieves Zedeno is Research Anthropologist and Professor inthe Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology of the School ofAnthropology at the University of Arizona, P.O. Box 210030, Tucson,Arizona 85721-0030, U.S.A. [[email protected]]). Jesse A.M. Ballenger is Senior Project Director at Statistical Research, Inc.(6099 East Speedway Boulevard, Tucson, Arizona 85712, U.S.A.).John R. Murray is Tribal Historic Preservation Officer of theBlackfeet Tribe (640 All Chiefs Road, Browning, Montana 59417,U.S.A.). This paper was submitted 1 XII 12, accepted 9 II 13, andelectronically published 16 XII 13.

an enduring present, where decision making may have tar-geted not only economic and reproductive pursuits but alsopolitical goals and a future shaped by intended and unin-tended consequences of hunters’ actions (Feit 1994:421; Weis-sner 2002:411). It certainly fails to characterize northwesternPlains societies of the last millennium, whose communal bi-son-hunter tradition stands out as an anomaly in terms ofscale and complexity (Bamforth 2011:36; Cooper 2008:206,303). We propose that the archaeology and history of bisonhunters provide a fertile ground for redressing the frameworksused in the study of diversity and complexity among terrestrialhunting societies.

Hunter-gatherer complexity has been repeatedly definedand scrutinized by anthropologists; as Sassaman’s (2004) ex-haustive literature review shows, there are numerous andsomewhat complementary conceptual and practical ap-proaches to this topic. We follow Fitzhugh’s (2003) definitionof complexity as a relative measure of structural differentia-tion (horizontal or vertical), for it provides a flexible departingpoint to unpack the rise of large-scale communal bison hunt-ing. Trajectories toward organizational complexity dependlargely on the interplay of environmental and demographicconditions, political agency, historical contingency, and cul-tural logic; these trajectories may involve the evolution of

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24 Current Anthropology Volume 55, Number 1, February 2014

intricate, formalized, and perhaps hierarchical relationships

(e.g., Aldenderfer 2004:389; Fitzhugh 2003:2; Prentiss 2011:

32; Weissner 2002:411). Thus the study of past hunter-gather-

er societies can illuminate previously unanticipated devel-

opments in subsistence economy, social differentiation, and

political strategy that do not conform to standard models of

terrestrial hunters’ evolution and organization. Such is the

case of communities who exploited bison along the northern

Rocky Mountain foothills and prairies, for whom bison wealth

and ritual wealth may have played a significant role in emerg-

ing complexity.

The goal of this article is to present and evaluate evidence

of emerging complexity among northwestern Plains bison

hunters through a landscape study of ancestral Pikaani (Black-

feet) communal bison-hunting complexes dated between AD

950 and 1800. They are located on the Two Medicine River

Valley in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana (fig. 1),

where data strongly suggest that substantive social investment

in the hunt took place during this period. The article’s central

tenet is that material clues to emerging complexity, such as

intensification, differentiation, and integration (after Fitzhugh

2003) may be found in “landscape engineering,” or the in-

tentional modification of place and resource networks

through sequences of actions and inscriptions. Such modi-

fication aimed to increase permanence, manage the flow of

people and resources, and thus plan for the future (Ballenger,

Zedeno, and Miller 2012; Zedeno 2013). The Two Medicine

River Valley, with its monumental record of stone surface

architecture associated with stratified bison kill sites dating

to the Late Prehistoric period and its connection to Blackfoot

speakers, furnishes a unique opportunity to search for these

clues. While not all the needed clues to demonstrate emerging

complexity are at hand, we nonetheless open an avenue for

present and future research that focuses on social investment

and landscape engineering.

Building on alternative explanations for the evolution of

bison-hunter organization, a comparative review of regional

data, and an archaeological case study, we construct a frame-

work for ascertaining organizational complexity that is com-

mensurate with the material record of large-scale specialized,

communal, pedestrian big-game hunting. To succeed in this

endeavor we first examine existing archaeological views of

bison-hunters’ developmental trends and reappraise the his-

torical model against which the archaeological record of bison

hunters has been measured and interpreted. Then, we com-

bine archaeological and indigenous scales of knowledge in a

reformulation of the temporality and spatiality of late pre-

historic communal bison hunting. And, following Scheiber

and Finley (2010), we illustrate how stone surface architecture,

when combined with other data, can provide solid evidence

of social investment on terrestrial big-game hunting and its

social and political implications.

Pedestrian Bison-Hunting Organization:Identifying the Anomaly

Game drives generally found in the Subarctic, Plains, GreatBasin, and Rocky Mountain regions of North America dateto the early Prehistoric period (early Archaic), with possibleantecedents in the Paleoindian period (Frison 1991:164; Gil-more et al. 1999:116; O’Shea and Meadows 2009; Wilson2007). The association of this resilient technology with theonset of massive bison kills date to the Middle Prehistoricperiod (ca. 500 BC), flourishing among groups known fortheir Besant dart points and effective kills (200 BC–AD 500;Frison 1991:199; Peck 2011:241). It has been suggested that,with the addition of the bow and arrow around AD 200,mass-killing success may have improved dramatically (Korn-feld, Frison, and Larson 2010:260, 268; Reeves 1990:168).Reeves, for example (1983a, 1990:185–189), suggests that thecombination of driving technology, storage technology, andthe bow and arrow were the catalyzing factors for economicintensification and internal differentiation beginning 2,000years ago, although the impact of this process does not appearin the archaeological record until after AD 1000 (Brink andDawe 1989:296). In the northwestern Plains, economic in-tensification is associated with the Avonlea projectile pointcomplex (AD 600–900). While Avonlea shows an increasingpreference for bison hunting supplemented by other animalfoods in some areas, specialized intensive bison hunting ischaracteristic of the subsequent Old Women’s phase and com-plex (AD 900–1750; Peck 2011).

Despite years of research, satisfactory explanations aboutthe origins and genealogical relationships of the Middle andLate prehistoric populations in the Montana-Alberta regionare not easily forthcoming (e.g., Brumley and Dau 1988; Byrne1973; Greiser 1994; Kehoe and Eynman 1973; Reeves 1983a;Vickers 1986, 1994). The reluctant consensus, based on stra-tified findings in a handful of sites, seems to be that the OldWomen’s phase represents an in situ amalgamation of localand nonlocal people (or of cultural knowledge) associatedwith Middle Prehistoric period game-driving systems andAvonlea weapon technologies. Old Women’s, in turn, is cur-rently considered ancestral to Blackfoot speakers (Peck 2011:455; Peck and Hudecek-Cuffe 2003:77, 90; cf. Duke 1991).

While advanced technological knowledge was presentamong the Middle Prehistoric bison hunters, communal killspredating AD 600 differed from subsequent ones in importantways. First, earlier kills most commonly involved luring a fewanimals into pounds or traps rather than cliff jumps, thoughthese were used, notably at Calderwood, Alberta (Brink 2008;Peck, personal communication, 2012). On the other hand,the classic jump with its extensive cairn-lined driving systemspredominated in the Late Prehistoric period. Second, the abil-ity to process large quantities of transportable and storabledry meat and pemmican made it possible to take full advan-tage of large bison harvests, but not until the Late Prehistoric



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Period, when the expansion of rock-ring encampments andconstruction of multiple drive-line systems and jumps ingiven areas suggest an increase in labor pool size. And third,the few known Middle Prehistoric processing sites show mod-erate to low carcass-processing intensity, which points to pref-erence for meat retrieval (Peck 2011:322). In contrast, tran-sitional sites such as Pigeon Mountain, Alberta (Clarke et al.1998); Wardell, Wyoming (Brink 2001), and Late Prehistoricoccupations in multicomponent sites such as Head-Smashed-In (Brink 2008) generally exhibit crushed bone deposits, fat-rendering features, and berry-smashing tools associated withthe production of pemmican.

Thus, the distinguishing characteristic of Old Women’sphase hunting technology is the unrivaled frequency, size, andelaboration of cairn-lined bison drives associated with deeplystratified bison bone beds below cliff jumps and intensiveprocessing of by-products (Cooper 2008, fig. 7-7). The mon-umentality of Old Women’s hunting complexes, withthousands of surface stone features forming a vast palimpsest,attests to the impact that integrating two bodies of techno-logical and ecological knowledge had on the effective ex-ploitation of bison herds. As T. Kehoe noted in 1967, thiswas an activity of industrial proportions. It further indicatesthat the economic foundation for complexity, that is, thecapacity for regularly securing abundant supplies of a stapleand storable resource, was at hand (after Ames 1991).

Peck (2004; 2011:335; also Cooper 2008) recently examinedecological, prehistoric, and historic records of bison distri-bution and abundance in the northwestern Plains. He suggeststhat the end of a long drought around 2,000 years ago fosteredunprecedented resource abundance and available surface wa-ter, followed by a warm and dry period similar to modernconditions that was interrupted only by the onset of theequally productive Little Ice Age (ca. AD 1400–1800). Theseconditions encouraged migratory bison herds to winter alongthe northern Rocky Mountain foothills; large herds tendedto break into smaller, localized ones each with its own nicheand seasonal round. Differential movement of splitting herdsthus created an impression of idiosyncratic movement (Epp1988), but in actuality it may have favored hunter groups whodepended on local herds to secure a reliable meat supply neartheir winter camps. By AD 600, conditions were ripe forintensification (Cooper 2008:279). At that time, increasinglylarger hunting bands appeared to have settled in sheltered foot-hill valleys for the 6 cold months of the year. Following alongthe lines of J. Arnold’s thinking (1996), it is likely that morepeople signified more kin and non-kin labor, creating the needfor orchestrated decision making on and off the hunt.

Throughout the Old Women’s phase, opportunistic hunt-ing occurred year-round, but the planned communal harvestswere organized primarily in the late fall–early spring with thegoal of killing hundreds of animals by driving them into adeadfall (Brink 2008:67; Cooper 2008:296). Communal hunt-ing was episodic and entailed one or several successive drives.In this manner, large quantities of meat, fat, bone, and hides

were obtained and processed within a short period of time(Ewers 1958; Forbis 1962; Kehoe 1967; Peck 2004; Schaeffer1978; Verbicky-Todd 1984; Vickers 1991; Yellowhorn 2002).The magnitude of this task and its facilities demanded or-ganized labor from most or all members of the hunting com-munity—here, millennial knowledge of landscape and preywere put to practice daily (Barsh and Marlor 2003). Yet thescale of landscape engineering needed to accommodate in-tensive, multigenerational bison hunting remains largely in-visible in discussions of hunter-gatherer complexity, eventhough it was comparable to the kind of investment that madeArctic whale hunters prosper (Fitzhugh 2003; Sheehan 1985).

There is ample evidence of communal pedestrian bisonhunting along the foothills and high prairies of Alberta andMontana (Carlson 2011; Cooper 2008; Frison 2004; Kornfeld,Frison, and Larson 2010; Peck 2011) and extensive historicand ethnographic description of associated social and ritualpractices (Arthur 1975; Peck 2004; Verbicky-Todd 1984). Butthe specific structure of social relations and historically con-tingent events that recursively emerged from, and shaped,bison exploitation remain poorly understood archaeologically.Palimpsests of surface stone architecture can be somewhatintractable, as Brink, Wright-Fedyniak, and Wetzel (2003)point out, and challenging to conventional research frame-works that depend on diverse artifact assemblages, permanentstorage facilities, continuously occupied structures, or lavishburial offerings to measure internal differentiation. Yet, de-velopmental trends inferred from Old Women’s phase kill andprocessing sites, rock art, local and exotic artifacts, and do-mestic and nondomestic architecture diverge from the tra-ditional view of a highly mobile, egalitarian hunter societywho sought only immediate returns for its efforts.

Alternative Views of Structural Differentiation

Plains scholars have historically attributed pedestrian bison-hunter organization to the deceivingly idiosyncratic behaviorof the herds. Initially it was understood that at specific timesof the year, particularly after the rutting season, bands wouldharvest large numbers of animals for winter storage and hides(Frison 1978:243; Keyser 1979:140). These large-scale kills arethought to have caused rapid local herd depletion, forcingbands to fission and move frequently, particularly in the win-ter (Wheat 1972). A considerable degree of “social fluidity”(Oliver 1962:17) needed to adapt to a migrating resourcewould have precluded social integration beyond the band level(Vickers 1986:86; Vickers and Peck 2001).

Climatological, ecological, and archaeological research con-ducted at the Vore site in Wyoming led Reher and Frison(1980:46) to propose instead that communal bison hunts tookplace during episodes of increased precipitation and highgrassland productivity. During these periods, growing herdsof well-fed bison would congregate on the most productivebasins for longer periods of time, thus allowing hunters toexecute large-scale kills. Reher and Frison (1980:137) sug-



Zedeno et al. Bison Hunter Landscape and Organization 27

gested that those areas where bison aggregated periodically,and which hunters sought and repeatedly utilized, supportedthe development of territoriality and social integration, emer-gence of sodalities, formalization of leadership positions andlineages, and food redistribution—the northwestern Plainsbeing an example in point.

That there were certain habitual gathering basins with pe-riodically large herds is not only evident at Vore but also atmany other kill sites to the north where, over generations, bandsreturned to participate in the communal harvest, includingHead-Smashed-In (Brink 2008), Old Women’s (Forbis 1962),Ramillies (Brumley 1976), Wahkpa Chu’gn (Davis and Stallcop1966), King (Brumley and Rennie 1999), Gull Lake (Kehoe andEynman 1973), Boarding School (Kehoe 1967), Ulm (or FirstNations, Aaberg et al. 2009), and Antonsen (Davis and Zeier1978), among others (see Peck 2011:335). Yet, habitual gath-erings of bison and people were not always associated with wetclimatic episodes. For instance, in certain prairie environmentsbison aggregation and communal hunts took place duringperiods of aridity, which promoted short-grass growth (Spethand Spielmann 1983). In other regions, communal hunts ap-parently occurred regardless of climate or herd condition as,for example, at the Henry Smith site (Wilson 1988).

Fawcett’s (1987:156–170) analysis of bison remains fromkill sites in different regions and time periods suggests thatthe motivations for large-scale harvesting in the Late Prehis-toric period had to do with the social need to hunt. He pro-posed that communal hunts were carried out at times wheninternal or external social tensions threatened the coherenceof the hunting bands. An association between communalhunting sites and ceremonial structures and rock art in theSun River Valley, Montana, suggested to Fawcett (1987:171)that the highly ritualized and regulated hunt would have en-gaged community-wide support and avoided group fission byprocuring means to interact successfully with other huntingbands. He hypothesizes that the organization of Late Prehis-toric communal hunts helped to standardize technology, sys-tematically rotate hunting localities, maintain a year-roundceremonial calendar, secure non-kin labor, redistribute food,and engage in various social activities that reproduced thestatus quo. More recently, Cooper (2008) tested this socialmodel with a broad data set and found that it applies to LatePrehistoric bison hunters in the northwestern Plains but notto those elsewhere, thus strengthening the notion that emerg-ing complexity during this phase was contingent on condi-tions specific to the northern Rocky Mountain foothills andon the consequences of culturally bound decisions made byits denizens.

Looking at developmental patterns across the northernPlains, Walde (2006:291, 298; also Brink and Dawe 1989)hypothesized that economic intensification and sustained in-teraction and trade with Middle Missouri farmers pushed OldWomen’s phase bison hunters toward a process he calls “tri-balization”—a quaint choice of term for what could well becalled emerging complexity. In the northwestern Plains, this

process was associated with the formation of increasinglylarger, semisedentary, specialized hunting communities whorejected farming and its trappings but invested abundantly inbundle groups and esoteric societies of exclusive and expen-sive membership (Wissler 1916a). The influence of historicalprocesses associated with multiethnic interaction cannot beoverstated (Brink and Dawe 1989:299). Trade of raw materialsand foodstuffs has been identified directly from lithic rawmaterials such as obsidian and Knife River flint and fromcorn starch grains imbedded in northwestern Plains pottery(e.g., Brink and Dawe 1989; Davis 1972; Zarrillo and Kooy-man 2006; Zedeno et al. 2010). Exchange of ritual knowledge,on the other hand, may be visible in the arrangement ofobjects that compose ceremonial bundles common to upperand middle Missouri River basin groups and even Cahokia,where bundles are represented archaeologically in variouscontexts (Pauketat 2012).

In sum, bison procurement in the northwestern Plains in-tensified through time regardless of climate, but the concom-itant increase in group size, decrease in mobility, and sociallyinvested communal hunt appear to have been restricted tolate Prehistoric period groups in Alberta and particularlyMontana (Cooper 2008). We hypothesize that the adoptionand year-round commitment to the functions of esoteric so-cieties and bundle groups responded to the intensification ofbison harvests in order to support a larger and increasinglycircumscribed population and to engage in long-distancetrade. This development, in turn, could have had multipleconsequences for the social and political goals of individualsand sectors of the population. First, it would have strength-ened political alliances within and between bands through theparticipation in integrative rituals, exchange of goods andinalienable possessions, and the communal hunt. And, sec-ond, it would have created the need for individuals to seeksources of wealth and prestige to be eligible for inductioninto exclusive societies. Individuals could have also challengedthe status quo by starting new societies or taking over alter-native political offices. Political leaders and society leadersmay have sought means to gain non-kin labor and controlover the hunt by brokering ecological and ritual knowledgeand by linking the hunt with the sacred domain. A cursoryoverview of organizational complexity among the historicBlackfoot, for whom ritual wealth and bison wealth werecentral to replicating and restructuring social and politicalinstitutions and relationships, provides insight into ancestralconnections between their institutions and the specific tra-jectories of those groups who immediately preceded them.

Bison Wealth and Ritual Wealth: TheBlackfoot Model

When J. C. Ewers published The Blackfeet: Raiders of theNorthwestern Plains (1958), he outlined what would becomea standard model of bison-hunter lifeways that may, or maynot, help to fully characterize prehistoric group trajectories




across the Plains (Bamforth 1988, 2011; Cooper 2008). Fromhis and other studies (Ewers 1955; Kehoe 1993; McClintock1999; Schultz 1962; Wissler 1916a), it is clear that Blackfootspeakers variously exhibited structural conditions of egalitar-ianism, affluence, and complexity (after Arnold 1996; Kelly2007:294; Kornfeld 2003; Rowley-Conwy 2001). For example,the Blackfoot were seasonally mobile people organized insuprafamily bands. They focused their annual cycle of eco-nomic activities on bison and the processing of storable andtransportable by-products such as pemmican and hides. Theywarred with their neighbors. Blackfoot speakers kept closepolitical and kinship alliances among four geopolitical divi-sions of which the Pikaani (also known as South Peigan orBlackfeet) were the largest, numbering almost 3,000 individ-uals in 1800 (Dempsey 2001; Jackson 2000:35).

The earliest historical accounts (1691–1791) describe notonly a wealth of bison in Blackfoot territory (Bell 1928;MacGregor 1954) but also the existence of powerful regula-tory institutions, such as esoteric societies and bundle groups,and of leadership lineages in certain bands (Ewers 1955:248;Tyrrell 1916:346). At the time of contact, tools, weapons, andother means of production were individually owned (Klein1983:151; Tyrrell 1916:363), but the large jump sites belongedto specific bands that wintered in their vicinity (Schaeffer andSchaeffer 1934). The right to own knowledge of the hunt wasworn as a badge of honor, as indicated in men’s ceremonialshirts that depict bison drive lines and corrals (Pitt RiversMuseum, image 1893.67.1), in the possession and transfer ofbison-calling bundles, and in the ownership of buffalo paintedlodges and ceremonies (McClintock 1999), among other man-ifestations.

Among the Blackfoot confederacy, the Pikaani showed thestrongest tendency toward social heterogeneity (Bamforth1988:123) and visible, but not extreme, differential accu-mulation of power, prestige, and wealth. They self-describedas having three social classes: “the rich, the poor, and the inbetween” (Ewers 1955:240). Unequal access to material goodsand social benefits crosscut gender and age groups, with pow-erful families dominating the less fortunate (Nugent 1993; cf.Klein 1983:152). Adoptive children were part and parcel ofPikaani life because they replaced group members lost to warand disease, while captive wives added to the labor poolneeded in processing meat and hides (Jackson 2000). One ofthe group’s greatest assets was the possession of a territoryhighly attractive to bison (Arthur 1975; Bamforth 1988:119;Schultz 1962:30). In addition to providing meat and hides toconsume and trade for agricultural products, weapons, rawmaterials, and ritual objects and knowledge, bison wealthopened the door to leadership positions in band politics, theorganization of the hunt, warfare, and religion. Esotericknowledge could be manipulated by individuals to achieveprestige and material wealth. It was obtained through indi-vidual visions, secret society induction, and highly formalizedceremonial bundle transfers within and between ethnicgroups, all of which required rituals, feasting, and gifting

(McClintock 1999; Wissler 1916a). Because Blackfoot esotericsocieties that controlled the communal hunts crosscut age,gender, bands, and geopolitical divisions, they provided a for-mal means to unify people when subsistence and warfare(among other things) required it. These institutions were sta-ble and active throughout the year and persisted throughgenerations, as indicated in first accounts (MacGregor 1954;Molenaar 2000; Tyrrell 1916), historic journals (Witte andGallagher 2008); and ethnographies (McClintock 1999;Schaeffer and Schaeffer 1934; Wissler 1916a; Zedeno 2008).

Plains scholars have traditionally attributed many of theaforementioned characteristics to the adoption of the horsein the mid-eighteenth century and a newly found access tothe global exchange economy (Nugent 1993). Without ques-tion, the horse had significant impacts on land-use patterns,wealth accumulation, warfare, and mechanics of the hunt(Ewers 1955; Frison 1971; Hamalainen 2003; Oliver 1962;Osborn 1983). For example, while horses allowed huntinggroups to travel farther and faster, they also confined themto areas where abundant pasture and water were found, suchas river valleys and coulees (Landals 1995). With the horse,communal summer hunts and group ceremonies such as theSun Dance, which attracted hundreds of distant participantsfrom different groups, became the norm (Kehoe 1993; Schultz1962:30). On the other hand, the demands of horse husbandrymade it difficult for owners to aggregate for long periods oftime, especially during the winter when pastures were dor-mant and covered with snow. Despite these contrasts, weargue that the seeds of the equestrian Blackfoot society—bisonwealth and ritual wealth—were sown centuries earlier, whenthe monumental, engineered landscape became a commonsight along the northern Rocky Mountain foothills. Pedestrianhunters continued to use the drive-line and jump systems(particularly in winter) until they obtained and trainedenough buffalo horses to make the surround a more practicalmass kill method than the jump (Ewers 1955:164–165). Andperhaps most importantly, the Rocky Mountain foothills re-mained the territorial core of at least the Pikaani division ofthe Blackfoot confederacy.

It has been argued that ritual power, when linked to thesuccessful reproduction of staple resources, can influence therestructuring of social relations and provide opportunities forpolitical action and wealth accumulation (Aldenderfer 1993,2010; Hayden 1995). This may well be the case for the Black-foot, where the three most powerful esoteric institutions—the Matoki, or Buffalo Women society; the Beaver Bundlesociety; and the Buffalo Chaser society—controlled the ritualknowledge and rules of the communal hunt. For example,according to the witness account of a Blood Sun Dance byPrince Maximilian of Wied in 1833:

When they [Matoki women] finish the dance on the final

day, they imitate the buffalo park. The men, children, and

others form two diverging lines. Several men imitate buffalo

bulls, whom the women initially drive back. Then, [a] fire




is started upwind, just as during the hunt; when they scent

the fire, the women withdraw into the lodge, and this con-

cludes the ceremony (Witte and Gallagher 2008:435).

This account is important in three ways. First, it describesthe ritual enactment of the communal hunt in an integrativeceremony, where people actually lined up to symbolize therock piles of the drive-line funnel found in Old Women’sphase sites and thus sanctified it. Second, it shows a planned,formalized segregation between integrative space, where es-oteric reproductive rituals transpired, and hunting space,where the bison-calling rituals were performed, usually by theowners of the Black and Yellow Buffalo tipis (Duvall 1910).And, third, it indicates that control of the communal hunttranscended gender differences. The purposeful constructionof consecrated space for symbolic enactments of the huntreveals that formal gatherings functioned as political theaterswhere the roles, status, and wealth of individuals, esotericsocieties, and other sectors of the group were made explicitto the public. The collusion of sacred space, spectacle, andsocial power was characteristic of groups whose decision mak-ers employed ritual to integrate people and manage conflict(Inomata 2006). It helped to maintain the status quo by bind-ing community identity to the hunting ground and limitingthe number of individuals who could question or change theliturgy and politics of the hunt.

That esoteric societies and leadership lineages were alreadyin existence at the time of first contact with European ex-plorers certainly supports the notion that important elementsof organizational complexity seen in the Equestrian perioddeveloped out of a much older, highly ritualized, bison-basedpolitical economy. This economy seemingly required com-munity-wide social investment at various scales as well asplanning and deliberation at the hands of the experts. TheOld Women’s phase occupation of the Two Medicine RiverValley in north-central Montana lends support to these pointsthrough its engineered landscape.

Planning for the Future: Late PrehistoricBison Hunters of the Two Medicine RiverValley

The Two Medicine River is one of three major southwest-northeast trending streams that connect the Rocky Mountainsto the grasslands and parklands of the Marias River Basin inMontana, cutting across 150 km of glacier till and Cretaceousformations (fig. 2). The river lies between two of the mostextensively occupied drainages in the region: the Milk Riverto the north and the Sun River to the south. Available dataon settlement patterns along the Two Medicine River suggeststhat this watershed was explored and sporadically utilizedsince at least the early Holocene (Davis 1972; Kehoe 2001).After AD 900, however, the basin underwent a process ofcolonization and entrenchment by communal bison hunterswho permanently modified its landscape in ensuing genera-

tions (Ballenger, Zedeno, and Miller 2012; Kehoe 1960, 1967;Zedeno et al. 2010).

Although this area is not generally included in discussionsof Avonlea and Old Women’s phase culture history (e.g., Coo-per 2008; Peck 2011; Vickers and Peck 2009), its Late Pre-historic sites exhibit the phase’s diagnostic site layouts, lithictechnologies and side-notched projectile points, surface stonearchitecture, Blackfeet or Ethridge pottery (Ewers 1945; Kehoe1959), stone effigies, and ammonites or Iniskim (marine fossilsused ritually to attract bison) in archaeological contexts (Peck2002). Thus, we targeted this little-known but heavily occupiedregion with the explicit purpose of ascertaining the nature andstructure of Late Prehistoric bison-hunter organizational com-plexity, with particular attention to archaeological evidence oflandscape engineering as its proxy measure.

The “Two Medicine Lodge” River is critical to understand-ing the developmental trajectory of the Pikaani (Blackfeet),from both native and scientific perspectives. Well before Max-imilian’s time, the river was named after two Okan or SunDance lodges that were built across from one another. It isclosely associated with Pikaani versions of the origin storiesthat pertain to the Iniskim, the origin of the Buffalo Chaserssociety, and the birth of the culture hero Kutoyis, or BloodClot (Bullchild 2005; Duvall 1910; Grinnell 1962). Two bands(300 people each)—Grease Melters and Lone Eaters—histor-ically wintered in the valley and owned the bison jumps(Schaeffer and Schaeffer 1934). The central part of the valleywas named Motaatusi or “Place Where the Bundle OwnersLive.” It is plausible, then, to derive an ancestral relationbetween prehistoric and historic Blackfoot speakers here, justas has been done in Alberta (Peck 2011:419).

The massive bison kill sites that existed in the remote foot-hills of Pikaani territory were barely known to Europeanswhen Merriwether Lewis came to the Two Medicine River in1805 and described the horrible stench of bison carcasses. In1833, Maximilian obtained from a trader the first map of theMarias River basin and its named tributaries (Witte and Gal-lager 2008:490). Explicit mention of archaeological remainsof hunting and habitation in the valley first appeared in theanthropological literature in the late nineteenth century(McClintock 1999; Wissler 1910). Reconnaissance surveys ofbison kill sites were carried out in the 1920s (Barrett 1922)and 1940s (Lewis 1947). Wissler and Lewis explored andmapped the bison jump site we have named Kutoyis andcommented on its impressive size and strategic location.Schaeffer and Schaeffer (1934) recorded important ethno-graphic information associated with bison and antelope hunt-ing sites in the valley, including the names of Pikaani bandsto whom the kill sites and winter camps belonged. Althougha few of the major kill sites were hit by bone collectors in the1930s (Davis 1978), enough intact deposits remain as evidenceof their significance.

In the 1950s, Tom Kehoe (1960, 1967) combined site sur-veys and interviews with Blackfeet elders to locate a largenumber of habitation, kill, and other sites in the Blackfeet




Figure 2. The Two Medicine River landscape (photo by M. N. Zedeno). A color version of this figure is available online.

Indian Reservation. Of the 54 bison kill sites he visited orrecorded from interviews, 16 had evidence of a single rockalignment or double rock lanes, and five had no evidence ofdrives or bone beds. He noted, however, that between CutBank Creek and Two Medicine River, and between this riverand Birch Creek, there are numerous drive-lane segments inaddition to the known major and minor habitation and killsites (Kehoe 1967:83). Although Kehoe (1960:421, 1967:10)did not personally visit all the sites, he used interview datato map the location of 18 campsites on both banks of theTwo Medicine River as far east as the mouth of Little BadgerCreek, 14 bison kill sites along Two Medicine River to itsmouth, and numerous other sites on its southern tributaries—Little Badger, Big Badger, and Birch creeks. Kehoe’s (1967)excavation of the Boarding School Bison Drive site on thesouth bank of Cut Bank Creek has contributed substantiveinformation on stratigraphy, site structure, and artifact var-iability of a late prehistoric bison kill site of comparable ageand significance to other Avonlea–Old Women’s sites in Al-berta and Montana. More recent archaeological studies of theTwo Medicine River include two Cultural Resource Manage-

ment surveys by Ferguson (2007) and by Comer et al. (2010).Relevant data from these reports were incorporated into ourstudy.

Two Medicine River Survey and Excavations

Systematic mapping of surface stone architecture and exposedbison bone beds along the Two Medicine River was under-taken from 2007 to 2012 by members of the Kutoyis Ar-chaeological Project (KAP). The survey was designed to re-locate and map known sites and utilize resulting data on theassociation between these and the local topography to identifyadditional localities with high archaeological potential. Thesurveyed area comprised the upper and middle portions ofthe Two Medicine River Valley and adjacent uplands, fromthe mouth of the South Fork of Two Medicine to the mouthof Badger Creek (42 km in Euclidean distance). The lowervalley was explored but deemed of low potential for site re-covery because of extensive agricultural activity on the up-lands and flood damage. Of the four bison jump sites pre-viously reported below Badger Creek (Kehoe 1960; Lewis




1947), only one site located at the mouth of the river (ThirtyKnot; Ferguson [2007]) was included in our study.

The integrated KAP survey resulted in the detailed mappingof more than 14,000 cairns, rock rings, and ancillary features,and the recording of 11 archaeological sites (fig. 3). Theseare, from west to east, six drive-line systems (South Fork,Stranglewolf [ca. AD 1468], Runningfisher, Racine [ca. AD1556], Mission, Spring Coulee, and Lower Badger [ca. AD956]; four hunting complexes (Magee, Two Medicine/Schultz[ca. AD 1544], Kutoyis [ca. AD 1210–1886], and Thirty Knot);and an encampment with 211 structures located on East Mis-sion Lake, 8.5 km east of Two Medicine/Schultz and withinits viewscape. Of these, the Kutoyis jump site has been ex-tensively investigated through subsurface mapping and ex-cavation (Ballenger et al. 2008; Jones et al. 2010; Zedeno etal. 2010). Paleoenvironmental studies to determine whetherfire was used to manage bison herds and grassland, as assertedin Blackfoot tradition (Yellowhorn 2002), are ongoing at Ku-toyis, Stranglewolf, and Spring Coulee (Roos 2011).

Drive-Line Systems

The architecture of drive-line systems on the Two MedicineRiver conforms to the funnel-shaped ceremonial enactmentof the Matoki society that Maximilian sketched (fig. 4A). Atits simplest, a funnel connected a bison herd’s gathering basinto a corral or “pound” or to a cliff or “jump.” Among theBlackfeet, corrals were also built under some jumps (Wissler1910:36). In practice, the system as a whole involved theconstruction of numerous component parts that facilitatedherd manipulation—notably, splitting lines, extensions, rein-forcements, barriers, and signaling cairns (Ballenger, Zedeno,and Miller 2012). Simple funnels (fig. 4B) consist of two maindrive lines built of small rock piles placed equidistantly fromone another, usually 3–5 m apart; rock piles were used byhunters to support scarecrows or to stalk bison without beingseen. Funnels vary in length and width from about severalhundred meters to several kilometers; the largest and mostcomplex funnels recorded thus far are Kutoyis (4 km in lengthand 16 sq km in area) and Mission (5 km in length and 20sq km in area). Funnels could also include a third drive line(fig. 4C, 4F) used to split a large herd into smaller, moremanageable units (Wissler 1910:36–38), although in archae-ological reality splitting lines are difficult to distinguish fromrealignments.

Heavily used drive-line systems exhibit extensions and re-pairs and alternate jump locations. Extensions expand thereach of a funnel into gathering basins and herd pathwayslocated at some distance from the jump (fig. 4D, 4E). Exten-sions may incorporate earlier features, such as short segmentsfrom discontinued funnels, into a single system. Occasionallythey superimpose features unrelated to the drive itself, suchas older campsites; however, contemporary elders attributethe presence of one or more rock rings (anchor structures forbison hide dwellings called “tipis”) close to the cliff top or at

the end of the lines to the painted buffalo tipi owners. Drive-line reinforcements appear in areas prone to erosion or thatoffered bison an easy escape, where hunters placed rock pilesin close intervals to form a continuous line of rock parallelto the main drive line. Realignments are associated with theuse of a common gathering area to feed two or more jumps(see figs. 4D, 7). Most are likely the product of system main-tenance and reuse over a long period of time, while othersmay have been built to offset or enhance the particularitiesof a given landform or to adjust to weather conditions andherd behavior.

Short, isolated, single lines functioned as more distant vi-sual barriers, and these may be located hundreds of metersfrom the drive lines, or next to them. In some cases, barrierswere located to prevent bison from jumping off the wrongcliff, as at the Two Medicine/Schultz site (see fig. 4F), or fromstraying away from the funnel through chutes and swales. Thebarriers we identified in the survey area are associated withlarge and repeatedly used kill sites. Barriers were also observedin areas where drive lines came in close proximity to en-campments. Also unattached to drive lines are cairns or rockpiles at least twice the size of those forming the drive lineitself. Such “mega-cairns” are found alone or as part of acluster or line; they seem to be deliberately located in high-visibility landforms (fig. 5). In an area where massive glaciersshaped the undulating terrain, mid-distance visibility is alwaysproblematic; hunters likely had to create means of commu-nicating with one another during the communal hunt. Well-preserved cairns are indeed visible from different locations.In the ancestral Blackfoot territory, mega-cairns are also as-sociated with burials.

Topographic and EnvironmentalConsiderations

The most salient topographic features of the upper and middleTwo Medicine River where the drive-line systems are locatedare the high, steep ridges and sandstone cliffs that confinethe valley (up to 35–40 m above the valley floor). Extendingaway from the river are vast, undulating uplands characterizedby kettle lakes and springs that often form small drainages,or coulees, which could be used as natural traps. The uplandsare covered with numerous species of short grass that sup-ported the bison herds through the fall, winter, and earlyspring (Knapp et al. 1999). The widest floodplain and mostextensive terraces occur in the middle portion of the valley;above South Fork and below Badger Creek the river cuts toodeeply into its bed to offer good driving opportunities. Me-ander scars indicate that fluvial processes have modified thevalley considerably since it was last used for pedestrian hunts,but areas suitable for the construction of drive-line systemsand pounds are still evident in the landscape. Variables suchas the westerly direction of prevailing winds as well as theimmediate availability of construction materials, firewood,



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Figure 4. Drive-line system components: (A) Maximilian’s Plan of buffalo park or pound and of the ceremony related to it: “b” and“c” lead out from the medicine lodge, “a,” from which the women crawl out on all fours, imitating buffalo cows. Witte and Gallagher2008, fig. 13.12); (B) simple funnel remnant, Racine; (C) possible splitting line remnant, Magee complex; (D) multiple funnels,extensions, and repairs, Mission; (E) realignments, Stranglewolf site; (F) barriers, Two Medicine/Schultz site.




Figure 5. Kutoyis mega-cairn remnant; Badger Creek and Lower Badger site in the background (photo by M. N. Zedeno). A colorversion of this figure is available online.

berries, roots, and medicines on the sheltered bottoms madethe valley attractive for cold-season habitation.

The highest density of drive-line systems is found betweenSouth Fork and Badger Creek. Regularities in orientation,exposure, elevation, and angle of the slope leading to the jumpshaped decisions about funnel layout and hunting tactics andhelped to predict future system uses (Ballenger, Zedeno, andFenner 2009). Of the Two Medicine River systems, Strangle-wolf has a northwest-facing cliff, while the adjacent Run-ningfisher has an east-facing cliff and funnel that parallel theriver. A pattern of multiple funnels that shared a gatheringbasin required ideally located cliffs and valley floors and wasthus not possible everywhere. All but one funnel lead down-slope to a cliff; in contrast, the Two Medicine/Schultz system,which was one of the most heavily utilized, runs gently up-

slope from the gathering basin to the edge of a high precipice.Height of the jump varies from site to site, but generally TwoMedicine River jumps are 20–30 m in height, from the topof the cliff to the bottom of the talus slope.

The effective gathering, moving, and jumping of bison wasonly part of site selection criteria. The bottom of the cliffrequired suitable land to work and camp in the winter. TheTwo Medicine Valley is characterized by vertical cliffs thatconfine a meandering river channel; floodplains are generallysmall and temporary. Cliffs overlooking water would be un-suitable, and the seasonal meander of the channel would havedecommissioned some funnels and necessitated the designand construction of new ones; beaver activity alone couldruin a kill location. Not surprisingly, short-lived funnels inthe Two Medicine Valley lead to high-energy fluvial settings,




whereas complex systems with bone beds overlook protectedterraces and wide floodplains.

No doubt, trial and error played a part in the construction,reuse, and abandonment of drive-line systems, as we foundvariation in funnel area, in number of component features,and in size of the bone beds. Of the sites mapped and testedby the KAP, Kutoyis, Lower Badger, Two Medicine/Schultz,and Racine have substantial bone beds; Stranglewolf has ar-ticulated, well-preserved bone found in shovel tests, but it isdeeply buried. While bank erosion may account for the ab-sence of substantial bone beds in some sites, we suspect thatthere were localities where bison drives were simply unsuc-cessful. For example, the shale-capped slopes of the uppervalley are so high and steep and that drives like South Forkmay have been used only incidentally.

Overall, site density and diversity as well the temporal depthrepresented in multiple, stratified bone beds at Kutoyis, TwoMedicine/Schultz, and Lower Badger indicate that huntergroups who colonized the middle valley after AD 900 metwith early success. In turn, success led them to structure futureopportunity by adapting the funnel-shaped template to theparticularities of this landscape. Funnels were laid out in sucha way that bison herds could be driven from connected gath-ering basins into any one or more accessible jumps. In fact,McClintock (1999:438) was told by Blackfeet buffalo huntersthat switching from one jump to another was common prac-tice among Two Medicine River bands; this practice likelyresponded to the hunters’ need to adapt tactical decisions toweather conditions and herd behavior.

The Complex

“Complexes” on the Two Medicine River are foci of bison-hunter occupation that comprise clusters of surface stonearchitecture, artifacts, and other objects associated with hunt-ing facilities, kill events, domestic life, and religious worship.Such complexes have been described throughout the area oc-cupied by Old Women’s phase hunters, notably at Head-Smashed-In (Brink 2008), on the Milk River (Deaver, Peter-son, and Roberts 1999), Sun River (Fawcett 1987), and ThreeForks of the Missouri River (Davis et al., forthcoming). Un-fortunately, lack of appropriate mapping and dating tech-niques has resulted in incomplete knowledge of how thesecomponents worked together. With access to satellite cartog-raphy and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) datingtechniques for stone architecture (Feathers 2012), it is nowpossible to explore the nature of these complexes and theirspatial and temporal associations (see supplement tables A1,A2; available online). In addition to Thirty Knot (Ferguson2007), the KAP recorded three complexes on the middle TwoMedicine River—Magee, Two Medicine/Schultz, and Ku-toyis—the latter of which we also excavated. Additionally,other drive-line systems along the river, including Strangle-wolf and Mission, exhibit a partial inventory of componentfeatures and sites. Magee and Kutoyis represent two ends of

a continuum in frequency and intensity of occupation alongthe valley.

The Magee Complex

Magee is located on a high ridge on the north bank of theriver and directly across from Stranglewolf (fig. 6). Two rel-atively well-preserved drive lines begin atop the ridge on thegathering basin and run north-south between deep coulees,blocking escape routes as they lead onto a cliff. A third linewas partially destroyed and rebuilt during the constructionof a wagon road at the turn of the twentieth century. The170 m difference in elevation from the gathering basin on theridge top to the cliff edge makes this the steepest of the drivesin the central valley; driving a herd down this ridge likelycarried a high risk of panicky behavior and accidents, thusincreasing driving difficulty and danger to hunters. Absenceof a significant bone bed below the jump could be attributedto infrequent use of this site, to postdepositional channelmigration that cut into the bank, or both. Immediately to thewest of the drive-line system and separated from it by a deepcoulee is a large campsite with 96 rock rings arranged in smallclusters that fill the few flat areas suitable for habitation onthe lower portion of the ridge. A snake-like effigy was builton one of these flats. Other features include cairns, a cobble-paved area, and a possible fasting circle on a high ridge abovethe campsite. No dates are available for this complex.

The Kutoyis Complex

Kutoyis is the largest complex on the Two Medicine Riverwith over 3,000 well-preserved rock features and bone scattersextending across 16 km2 on the plateau overlooking the riverand in its floodplain (fig. 7). The complex rests mostly onthe south bank of the river above the mouth of Badger Creekbut also has a campsite directly across the river from the killsite. The kill site below the main drive-line system containsstratified evidence of repeated communal bison-hunting ep-isodes, a primary butchering area, a processing area, and anencampment that extends across the floodplain (fig. 8). Eigh-teen calibrated radiocarbon dates on bone collagen, blowflypupae, and annuals from stratified contexts range between ca.AD 1210 and AD 1886, with 10 stratified dates clustering inthe mid-AD 1500s. OSL samples taken from the surface be-neath cairn rocks dating between ca. AD 1270–1850 indicatethat the drive-line system was constructed to perform theearliest kills and was reused and expanded through time untilit reached 4 km in length by the historic period. Reinforce-ments and repairs of the drive lines show that slope erosionand river meandering during the lifetime of the site may haveforced hunters to abandon one cliff and realign the funnel atleast once.

Partial destruction of the primary butchering area adjacentto the kill site was determined through excavations at thebottom of the slope, where intact bone beds were cut through




Figure 6. Magee complex.

by a large hole; a piece of modern wire was found inside it.Shallow pits next to dirt piles also reveal bone-hunting ac-tivity. Yet, intact bone deposits excavated beneath the cliff andbeside disturbed areas clearly show that Kutoyis was utilizedrepeatedly, with at least three palimpsest-like bone layers, sep-arated by silt deposits, dating to the mid-sixteenth century.These layers are so dense that it is difficult at best to estimatethe number of kill episodes each layer represents. Early eye-witness accounts describe instances of the intentional burning

of kill sites (e.g., Tyrell 1916). Although natural fires cannotbe discounted at such sites (Kornfeld, Frison, and Larson2010:280), human action could be responsible for the isolatedpatches of intense burning that calcined the bone of nonfleshyelements. These are interspersed with extensively carbonizedbone deposits, a pattern we attribute to the location of stom-ach contents and intact tissues (Ballenger et al. 2008). Oursample from the Kutoyis bone beds is too limited to determinethe number of bison contained in each burn event, but we




Figure 7. Kutoyis complex.

suggest that several dozen animals were killed at once, as wasthe case at the well-known Boarding School site, which islocated 40 km to the north (Kehoe 1967). Where not burned,the bone beds have such excellent preservation that it waspossible to recover patches of bison hide, hair, and denseconcentrations of blowfly pupae.

Gradiometry revealed discrete clusters of potential heat fea-tures scattered across the entire floodplain below the jump(Jones et al. 2010). Test pits and areal excavations confirmedthat these clusters corresponded to living quarters as well asdiscrete, stratified processing areas, each with evidence ofquartering, marrow extraction, bone crushing, boiling, andmeat roasting. Fat-rendering evidence is particularly impor-tant, as large quantities of it were required in the productionof pemmican (e.g., Quigg 1997). Kutoyis not only exhibitsthick deposits filled with crushed bone next to a boiling pitbut also has stone “berry mashers.” Recovery of bone tools,bone beads, projectile points, lithic tools, and debitage in-dicates that the hunting community engaged in tool repair,bead making, and paint preparation aside the bison-process-ing work in the floodplain encampment (Curry 2011; Richard2011). Bison tooth eruption and wear schedules point to late

fall–early winter harvests of cows and calves 1.5 years in agewhile preliminary analysis of developed fetus bone indicateswinter-spring kills (Ballenger, Zedeno, and Miller2012; Bal-lenger et al. 2008). These findings, in turn, support oral his-tory accounts that describe the Two Medicine River as a win-tering ground for Blackfeet bands.

The enduring presence of the hunting community at thecomplex is further suggested by the sheer size of two campingfacilities in close spatial and temporal association with the killsite. Lower Kutoyis (fig. 9) is a 651-structure campsite locatedon the ridge directly across the river from the kill site. Thearea of the site farthest from the river was destroyed by roadconstruction, thus it potentially had many more structuresthan those currently preserved. Rock rings are arranged in afew large clusters that could indicate multiple discrete oc-cupations. Numerous ancillary features point to outdoor ac-tivity areas; social engagements were perhaps associated withthe construction of cairns and alignments attached to rockrings, which may represent burials and memorial monumentsfor important individuals (Brumley 1988; Kehoe 1954).Within the rings there are stone-lined hearths and distinctlypatterned vegetation disturbance that suggests the presence




Figure 8. Kutoyis kill site (photo by M. N. Zedeno). A color version of this figure is available online.

of additional features, such as shallow pits near the entrywayand domestic altars on the opposite side (e.g., Oetelaar 2003).Rings vary in size, ranging from 3–9 m in diameter (fig. 10).Three sets of double rings are also present at the site; eth-nographically, double rings and oval rings were associatedwith polygamous households, society leaders, and feastingoccasions (Schaeffer and Schaeffer 1934), but they must beexcavated to determine association. OSL dates and one ra-diocarbon date placed the site between AD 1230 and 1770,which is the same age range as the kill site and drive-linesystem. Seasonality of occupation is not yet known.

Upper Kutoyis is located upstream from the kill site on thesouth bank of the river (see fig. 7). It is formed by 248 pre-served rock rings; fluvial activity, road construction, and plow-ing have taken a toll on the site, but the remaining structurescover two river terraces. Two OSL dates for Upper Kutoyisfall around AD 1560 and AD 1760. The encampment is ad-jacent to a presumed ceremonial area, which is located onthe northwest corner of the complex and on the first riverterrace. It consists of a circular structure with two concentricrings and a linear alignment, thought to be a kind of memorialmonument or ceremonial area known as a “medicine wheel”(Brumley 1988; Kehoe and Kehoe 1979; Vickers and Peck

2009). It is flanked by two large rock rings or “lodges” (10–12 m in diameter) on either side. An additional 24 rings arearranged in a rough circular pattern (see fig. 7), which wascharacteristic of Blackfoot ceremonial encampments (Banksand Snortland 1995; Kehoe 1960). Two lodges at this site aredated ca. AD 1350; that is, they fall within the early use ofthe kill and camp sites, but the medicine wheel is more recent,with a date of ca. AD 1590. Medicine wheels in Alberta areknown to have been used ceremonially during the OldWomen’s phase (Peck 2011:418); Blackfoot elders now at-tribute these features to cosmological events described in theStar Stories. Without additional dates, questions remain aboutthe relationship between the campsite and the ceremonialfeature at Kutoyis.

In sum, the Two Medicine River archaeological landscapeexemplifies a regional pattern of communal hunts, most ofwhich took place between AD 1400 and 1600. This is dem-onstrated by the presence of at least 11 drive-line systemslocated within a few miles from each other and by kill sitesutilized multiple times during this time span. Some kill siteswere extensively and repeatedly burned, perhaps intentionally,to accelerate decomposition so the site could be reused, re-sulting in the absence of blowfly pupae in bone beds and




Figure 9. Lower Kutoyis campsite.

carrion reduction. The presence of multihousehold huntergroups in the valley is accounted for in campsites that arefive- to ten-times larger than the largest single-occupationsites recorded in the northwestern Plains (Deaver 1989; Oete-laar 2003). This in turn hints at population increase, periodicreoccupation, or both. Campsites are in close proximity tokill sites and along physiographically diverse rivers and riverconfluences with high potential for multiseason bison har-vests—a pattern typical of the Late Prehistoric period (Reher1983; Walde, Meyer, and Unfreed 1995). Elsewhere in theregion, these patterns, together with effigies, medicine wheels,rock art, and vision quest sites, have been proposed as in-dicators of social change in the centuries before contact (Faw-cett 1987; Kehoe and Kehoe 1979; Walde 2006).

Other than participation in interregional trade networks(suggested by the presence of artifacts made of red pipestone,obsidian, and Knife River flint), a number of factors couldhave propelled the construction of numerous and massivebison-procurement facilities within close proximity to oneanother. These include (1) an increase in the size or numberof hunting bands exploiting the same bison range (Reeves1990:185), (2) a period of climate cooling (Little Ice Age)beginning in the fourteenth century that attracted bison herdsand stimulated the growth of nutritious grasses along the

foothills (Bamforth 1988:72–74), (3) a purported northwardexpansion of Shoshone groups into central Montana (Kehoe1960:440), and (4) the arrival of Middle Missouri immigrantsto southern Alberta shortly before contact (e.g., Binnema2004:77; Byrne 1973:481; Walde 2006). Any of these condi-tions could have brought opportunities as well as real orperceived threats to both the land and the resource base ofbison hunters, thus motivating them to seek better ways toensure a year-round supply of bison. The location of the TwoMedicine River and the abundance of its resources likely madeit ideal for regular habitation and for refuge, while climaticconditions during the height of its occupation were well suitedfor managing bison and grassland through fire (Roos 2011).

If economic intensification in the northwestern Plains wasindeed a response to internal or external factors or to far-reaching influences from the east, then, sometime during theLate Prehistoric period more efficient bison-hunting strategiesthat involved not just the opportunistic drive or trap butcarefully planned harvests became requisite. On the Two Med-icine River, access to multiple drive-line systems reportedlyallowed hunters to maximize the success of the hunt. Whileresource diversification was certainly a viable complement tobison, the regional bone record shows that Old Women’sphase hunters were intent at expanding bison harvests (Peck




Figure 10. J. R. Murray and tribal monitor record a memorial monument at the Mission Lake campsite (photo by M. N. Zedeno).A color version of this figure is available online.

2011:378), which yielded quantities of storable, transportable,and exchangeable by-products. Planned communal huntsalong the foothills would have been needed to support grow-ing local bands during the cold months of the year and todecrease the cost and risk of moving often—hence the needfor an engineered landscape that promoted efficient bisonmanagement while permitting hunters to remain in placelonger and to invest at length in social, political, and ritualengagements.

Toward a New Vision of Pedestrian Big-GameHunters

One of the most challenging issues in resolving organizationalanomalies among Late Prehistoric pedestrian bison hunters

is how these people confronted the need to secure present

and future affluence while decreasing uncertainty. One logical

solution is that mobile hunters satisfied this need by creating

conditions for group permanence in a given area. This could

be achieved through inscription of essential knowledge on the

landscape; retention of hunting-ground ownership rights

through kinship, lineage, and band structure; management of

staple prey and its environment; and integrative rituals,

among other strategies (e.g., Turner 1979). Because sighting

and driving bison did not always lead to success (e.g.,

MacGregor 1954; Molenaar 2000), economic diversification

was a likely option for bison hunters elsewhere in the Great

Plains but not necessarily for the bison wealthy.

The archaeological record indicates that Old Women’s




phase bison hunters did not seek diversification as a pro-ductive alternative to bison although the means were at hand(e.g., game that shared bison ranges). On the contrary, theybanked on bison wealth in choice areas, as the location ofmonumental surface stone architecture, together with histor-ically documented Blackfoot landscape knowledge and prac-tice, indicate. Our interpretation of the Two Medicine Riverarchaeology in regional context is that landscapes were en-gineered by hunting bands to create conditions for long-termpermanence and short-term sedentism in areas previouslyused by dispersed groups. They were structuring opportu-nities for hunting success by establishing territorial cores andpathways of movement between them (Zedeno and Anderson2010). Taking Reher and Frison’s (1980) notion of cyclic pres-ence of hunter and prey on specific locales and times as adeparting point, one may begin to outline the characteristicsof bison-hunting temporality that led to the formation ofdefendable territories before European contact.

Preparing the communal hunting ground involved logis-tical variables, such as: access to sheltered campsites near crit-ical resources; selection of suitable kill and processing loca-tions in proximity to encampments; layout, construction, andmaintenance of drive lanes that connected two or more av-enues of herd movement to gathering basins and kill sites;construction of corrals adjacent to the kill sites; processingand storage of meat and hides for consumption and trade;and improvement of the short-grass prairie through pre-scribed fires. While not every hunting site implied this levelof commitment to a particular location, Kutoyis and manyof the largest Old Women’s phase sites do, suggesting that,to make long-range investments worthwhile, territorial con-trol would have been requisite for securing future use of thesefacilities.

We interpret territorial organization as one important mea-sure of emerging complexity, as it is strongly associated withcircumscription (e.g., Aldenderfer 2010:82; Fitzhugh 2003:111).Exploration and experimental utilization of promising huntingand living areas is likely responsible for the ubiquitous, low-density record of bison hunting that consists of isolated arti-facts, small clusters of surface features, and ephemeral boneaccumulations scattered across much of the Plains. However,along the southern Alberta-Montana foothills, the high den-sity of surface stone features and bone beds on primary andsecondary watersheds indicates that this landscape was col-onized and entrenched by people who shared a cultural logicand a distinctive tradition of landscape engineering. Thistime-averaged archaeological record was cumulatively shapedthrough persistence or place reuse and repeated movementacross pathways that connected sacred sites, living areas, re-source locales, and other meaningful places (Dooley 2004;Oetelaar 2006; Oetelaar and Meyer 2006; Oetelaar and Oete-laar 2006; Zedeno and Anderson 2010). Movement, in turn,reified tradition and at the same time expressed rising pro-cesses of differentiation. This social juncture may be repre-sented archaeologically in the segregation of domestic spaces

(e.g., Quigg 1983), pictorial demarcation of meaningfulplaces, erection of monuments, and creation of spaces forpublic gathering (fig. 10; Mirau 1995; Zedeno and Bowser2009).

The cyclic, habitual geography of bison hunters, who overcenturies imprinted the land with their practices and, recur-sively, were shaped by the intended and unintended conse-quences of their actions and decisions, highlights processesof territory formation and long-term planning strategiesaimed at controlling the hunting ground. A bird’s eye viewof the engineered landscape further insinuates that the nat-uralization of territorial identity was achieved by emplacingdiverse and monumental structures in an area large enoughand lush enough that it could support substantial bison herdsand large bands during the nongrowing season. This areaextends from the North Saskatchewan River in Alberta to theThree Forks of the Missouri River in Montana (Cooper 2008;Vickers and Peck 2009).

The second challenging issue deals with the nature anddegree of social change that economic intensification and spe-cialization both required and produced. Drawing once againfrom the Blackfoot model and northwestern Plains archae-ology, another logical solution is that hunters devised meansto recruit and organize kin and non-kin labor to take ad-vantage of bison wealth. Historically, this task fell in the handsof two distinct offices: the esoteric societies, whose year-roundrituals were essential for encouraging the return of the herdsto the core territory and charming bison into the drive; andthe leaders of the hunt, who were warrior hunters of greatprowess, whose achievements were sometimes memorializedin monuments (Dempsey 1956; Kehoe and Kehoe 1959;Mirau 1995; Quigg 1978). While this office was temporaryand changed hands often, the institutional role of the societieswas enduring, as it ensured that the fundamental knowledgeneeded to succeed in the hunt was reproduced in a formaland exacting way, by creating and enacting hunting rituals indedicated public spaces and transferring knowledge throughhighly regulated rituals. An unintended consequence of thisprocess may have been the progressive accumulation of ritualwealth by a few initiated individuals and families, thus in-creasing internal differentiation and inequality.

Last, we suggest that the most voluminous, albeit indirect,evidence of ritual wealth is the construction of monumentalhunting facilities, as they imply the need and ability to or-ganize and integrate labor under a shared worldview thatsanctified order and compliance while helping to retain thehunting ground. The construction of geographically and func-tionally connected drive-line systems, each uniquely suited tothe local topography but all responding to the overarchingprinciples that reified sacred knowledge, provided means tomanage not only the movement of the bison herds acrossgathering basins but also the flow of friend and foe throughprime hunting grounds (e.g., Joyce, Hendon, and Lopiparo2009:70). Opportunity, therefore, was structured so that hunt-ing facilities would be known and accessible to generations




of culturally related hunters utilizing different areas of theirhunting territory. For example, the earliest accounts of Hud-son Bay Company traders traveling alongside Blackfoot hunt-ers describe familiarity with, and use of, drives and jumpsalong distant trails (Molenaar 2000). By the same token, alandscape engineered under readily recognizable cultural orethnic imperatives could have helped deter the flow of un-related people through the territory.

In closing, we propose that organizational complexityamong Late Prehistoric bison hunters emerged among in-creasingly large hunting bands in the course of structuringopportunity to sustain or improve conditions for permanencein areas frequented by large herds. Big-game hunters engagedmillenary technological, ecological, and ritual knowledge inevery hunting episode, but the communal hunt required pe-riodic social and political adjustments that allowed people todeal with growth and conflict and to carefully control theoutcome of the hunt and its by-products. Individually andsocially, hunters overcame uncertainty by simultaneously rep-licating ancient landscape knowledge and transforming so-ciopolitical relationships in order to secure access to the bestbison habitats. Their social investment in hunting is thusembodied in the engineered landscape—a resilient setting cre-ated for this task through the construction of permanent stonefeatures and manipulation of people and resources.

Hitherto buried under an exaggerated attention to singlekill sites and lithic technology, the multifaceted nature of theengineered landscape is beginning to reveal the profound ef-fect that bison hunting had on land and social institutions.A focus on the materiality of social investment can thus helpupdate traditional models of terrestrial hunters that, by jux-taposing snapshot events onto long-term culture histories,overstress homogeneity and conservatism. But as Sassaman(2005:336) points out, what seems homogeneous and unran-ked at one scale becomes ranked and heterogeneous at an-other, and we think this is precisely the case for northwesternPlains bison-hunter society and culture.

Acknowledgments

This article is the result of a multiyear collaborative partner-ship between the University of Arizona and the BlackfeetTribal Historic Preservation Office, which focuses on docu-menting multiple facets of past and present human-land in-teraction in the Blackfoot aboriginal territory. The KutoyisArchaeological Project (KAP) received funding from the Na-tional Science Foundation (BCS-0918081 and BCS-1266118)and the National Park Service Tribal Heritage Program (grants30-07-NA-3015 and 30-09-NA-3017). We acknowledge thesupport of the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council and tribalmembers who worked on the KAP, especially Dale Fenner Sr.Jo’Etta Buckhouse (Bureau of Indian Affairs) secured fundsto establish the Tribal Para-Archaeology Field School at theKutoyis site. Colleagues and friends who contributed to the

KAP include Vance Holliday, Christopher Roos, Geoff Jones,Sara Chavarria, Wim van Leeuwen, and Steve Shackley. With-out University of Arizona doctoral students Brandi Bethke,Ben Curry, Kacy Hollenback, Nick Laluk, Shane Miller, Mat-thew Pailes, and William Reitze, the KAP would not havesucceeded. Undergraduate students Don Luchetti and AndyRichard worked on the excavation of the kill site, as did tribalfield school students. Constructive reviews by Jack Brink,Doug Bamforth, Anna Prentiss, Ken Sassaman, and an anon-ymous reviewer helped immensely with the final outcome ofthis article. Inspiration came from conversations with Black-foot elders over many years, and to them we remain indebted.

Comments

Guy Bar-Oz and Dani NadelZinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905,Israel ([email protected]). 14 IV 13

During most of human evolution, hunting was typically prac-ticed by individuals or small kin-related groups, commonlytargeting one or very few prey animals at a time. The devel-opment of strategies and techniques for mass hunting of un-gulates became widespread across several continents only dur-ing the Terminal Pleistocene and more vigorously in theHolocene (papers in Bar-Oz and Nadel 2013; Smith 2013).These mass kills not only provided large quantities of meataccompanied by a plethora of essential raw materials (e.g.,hides, fur, antler, sinews, etc.). They also had direct impacton group organization, seasonal and year-long planning ofroutes, as well as on social life and territoriality. The two moststudied areas with evidence for complex landscape structuresdevised to lead herds into mass killing locales (e.g., cliffs,pounds, etc.) are North America, where bison were the targetprey (Speth 2010, 2013, and references therein) and the desertsof the Near East, where gazelles, onagers, and other specieswere harvested in large numbers (Bar-Oz, Zeder, and Hole2011; Bar-Oz et al. 2011; Zeder, Rufolo, and Hole 2013). Theadvantage of the first area is found in the historical accountsthat provide firsthand data regarding the construction andoperation of the complex drives and associated features. Sim-ilar accounts are missing in the second area, with no directcontinuity from the archaeological periods unto recent his-torical times.

Within the framework of many North American studies,this paper by Zedeno, Ballenger, and Murray stands out asan original contribution focusing on social complexity andthe evolution of group organization entwined with the in-creasing reliance on mass bison kills. The specific contributionof this paper is in its fine-tuning and zooming into the TwoMedicine River archaeological landscape, demonstrating thediachronic intensification of communal hunts. The numberof drive lines located near kill sites, the number of specimens





harvested, the intensity of bone processing to obtain greaseto produce pemmican, and the size of the sites that wererepeatedly occupied reveal an increase and intensification ofbison hunting. The compellingly rich ethnographic data onthe late hunters provide further vivid information on thehunting methods; season of hunt; the social (and sometimesalso the spiritual) organization of the hunt; and the ways meatwas processed, utilized, and redistributed. Significantly, thegeographical position of the bison jumps, associated with sub-stantial structural modification of the landscape, which in-cluded the construction of multiple drive-line systems nearjumps to enhance management and harvest of bison re-sources, is important in reconstructing land use and the socialnetwork of the hunt.

What we find missing are sufficient basic archaeologicaldata, needed for a better characterization and understandingof the described complexes, especially the architecture andthe faunal assemblages. For example, our excavations in theNegev desert of Israel revealed sophisticated planning of thedrive lines and kill sites, including pit digging and ramp build-ing (Bar-Oz et al. 2013; Nadel et al. 2010). Here, we couldnot find a detailed description of the drive lines and the cairns.How many (if at all) were excavated? Where are the metricdetails? Some intriguing features are mentioned, though nodata, photos, or plans/sections are provided (e.g., lodges, med-icine wheel, snake-like effigy). These are probably understoodby local scholars, but for most of us they remain vague thoughapparently very important components of the studied com-plexes.

Most importantly, we would have expected the paper toprovide more “meat” and display knowledge of bison taphon-omy, including the population structure (mortality and de-mography) of the bison death assemblages. These data are animportant proxy for reconstructing population dynamics inthe kill localities, season of hunt, and increase in huntingpressure through time. Was hunting designed to harvest com-plete herds or aimed to catch selected individuals? It wouldhave been interesting to learn more if sustainable hunting waspracticed and how bison resources were secured for futuregenerations. Age distribution analyses can tell if the bisonpopulations underwent rapid turnover as might be inducedby high-hunting pressure. This is especially important giventhe fact that there is no evidence for economic diversificationamong late hunters. In this respect the ecological behavior ofthe bison herds should be considered and used as an addi-tional tool to explore the change in land use through time.

Though the paper reflects a great deal of knowledge, a largebody of field data, a comprehensive cultural-historical frame-work, and a novel approach to a fascinating issue, we feel thatadditional data regarding the architecture and faunal assem-blages would have been useful. Such data are needed for local,continental, and even intercontinental levels of analysis andcomparisons.

Lucas BuenoUniversidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil([email protected]). 1 VII 13

In this comment I would like to emphasize three points: thearchaeological visibility of the material remains dealt with inthis paper and some of the consequences related to it; theperspective of research about the relation between landscapeand memory; and the integration of ethnography, ethnohis-tory, and archaeology to the understanding of long-term pro-cesses. Besides the discussion about landscape and its im-portance to the understanding of human society throughtime, it is still common to see in Brazilian archaeology projectsthat deal with sites as isolated entities in a sense that humanactivity is spatially confined and restricted to specific pointsin the landscape. Those works tend to focus on traditionalartifacts, identified by “clear” patterns of human-made origin,which means human-made transformations in formal prop-erties. What this paper is showing is that such an approach,for both site and artifact scales, is not sufficient to identifyand to understand human interaction and construction oflandscape. But more important, it is exactly such interactionsthat give us clues to understand political and cultural dynam-ics in a prehistoric period. This paper is essentially based onwhat the authors call “landscape engineering.” The most strik-ing evidence to characterize it is the intensity of acquisitionand transportation of different kinds of rocks to constructdrive-line systems that oriented bison herds to cliff jump. Ifwe take those rocks in isolation they will not show us anyclear modification pattern—there is no human-made tech-nique applied to modify their shape. They are “just” trans-ported. In this way, this work advises us to open our eyesand minds to identify, amplify, and incorporate broader cat-egories of remains in our research.

Regarding the site scale, in this case, the classic archaeo-logical features are the massive kill sites. But, this is just thevisible part of the iceberg. There is an intense planification,preparation, and transformation of the landscape to producesuch sites. There are hundreds of kilometers used to articulateand integrate different kinds of activities performed in thissocial practice. All these features are regarded as evidence oflandscape engineering. There is not a point in the landscape,or a specific or most important place, because each place gainsmeaning in relation to the other. This is a central questionbecause it is exactly these features that are utilized by the authorsto discuss variability in prehistoric bison hunting and, in thiscase, a proxy measure of organizational complexity. And thisis a really interesting point: there are different ways, specifichistorical trajectories, and a wide variety of material evidenceto discuss the process of organizational complexity. To perceiveand understand such a process, we need an integrative ap-proach that deals with ecological, social, political, and ritualaspects, articulated to define specific historic contexts.

According to Zedeno, Ballenger, and Murray, the planifi-cation of the landscape is a social practice that at the same





time acts as a drive-line system to “capture” bison herds andas a way of giving “land rights” for people and to inscribememory in the landscape. But more than that, it is a way ofplanning for the future. Memory is constructed and inscribedin the landscape by social practice but not only one thatconstantly reconstructs a discourse of the past in the presentbut a practice that involves a planification for the future. Suchpractice, and its materialization in the landscape, could bethe clue for us to deal with long-term process, where internalcultural structures are maintained through time. On this pointwe could make a parallel with M. Heckenberger’s research inUpper Xingu, where site planification, land transformationfor planting, site communication, and fish consumption areessential characteristics of human occupation from AD 800until the present. And as in Zedeno and colleagues’ paper,this is not to say that we have stabilized societies or that thereare no changes. We do have changes, but we do have con-tinuities too. There are a lot of political transformations, andwe have different ethnic formations, but there is some kindof permanence besides these demographic, social, and polit-ical modifications. This brings us to the last point: the im-portance of articulating ethnohistory, ethnography, and ar-chaeology to understand human society in the long-termprocess. One question that always arises when talking aboutethnographic contexts in the Americas is the impact and in-tensity of European invasion of the Americas by AD 1500.Research such as this and that by Heckenberger (2001, 2005)or by Neves (1999), both in the Brazilian Amazon, show thatindigenous societies have perceived and interacted with thisprocess in different ways. There are no homogeneous re-sponses. Despite its intensity, this was incorporated as onemore thing in a long historical process, and even when andwhere it caused drastic transformations, especially in demo-graphic terms, it is possible to identify structural permanencewithin the indigenous societies’ organization. In both cases,the authors stress that the people engaged in this process werealways agents of their own history. It is a history of contact,interaction, and innovation, and is deeply inscribed in thelandscape. This landscape can be seen as evidence of the ma-teriality of social investment and as a way of integrating thepast, present, and future in the process of perceiving, owning,negotiating, and transmitting territorial knowledge.

Jonathan DriverDepartment of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby,BC, V5A 1S6, Canada ([email protected]). 20 IV 13

The authors report some significant archaeological results andinterpretations that have broad relevance and value. First, theyprovide comprehensive documentation of landscape use andmodification over many centuries by pedestrian bison hunt-ers. Second, they add further weight to the position that en-vironment, culture history, and adaptive responses in the

northwestern Plains and adjacent regions were not homo-geneous across space and time. Thus, local histories are con-tingent on a wide range of factors that must be investigatedthoroughly before developing narratives of cause and effect.Third, they show that archaeological data can expand theunderstanding of foraging societies beyond the limits laiddown by ethnographies of the last few centuries. Fourth, theyset a high standard for landscape-based archaeological fieldresearch that should be emulated by others in the region. Mycomments identify a few points of disagreement and suggestfuture research directions.

I am not convinced that the use of the term “monumental”is appropriate to describe landscape features reported here.In my opinion, this term should be reserved for structuresand features that required significant investment of labor tobuild and maintain. The authors offer no labor estimates, butI would expect that 10 kilometers of drive lanes could beconstructed with less than 5,000 person hours of work, as-suming that rocks were available nearby. As the drive laneswere not necessarily built in a single year, this is a low levelof commitment, even for bands numbering in the hundreds.I agree with the authors that drive lanes and the accompanyingstone cairns and effigies, wooden structures such as lodges,and even the bison jumps themselves would have been highlyvisible, and that high visibility may have sent important signalsto neighboring groups. We need a better term for these kindsof environmental modifications than “monumental.” Perhaps“landscape engineering,” a term that the authors themselvesuse, is a better descriptor.

Although the intensity of bison hunting and processingover the last 2,000 years is well documented (Reeves 1990),there is good evidence that earlier periods were more variedthan the authors suggest. It is not correct that earlier killsonly consisted of traps with small numbers of animals. Head-Smashed-In extends the use of bison jumps back into mid-Holocene times; some early kill sites, such as Olsen-Chubbock(Wheat 1972), contained large numbers of animals, and somelocalities have histories of repeated use. As the entire Holocenehistory of human-bison relationships is gradually revealed inmore detail, we can anticipate that a less unilineal accountwill emerge.

I suggest a few directions for future research. If drive lanesand associated stone features were a way of documenting agroup’s claim to long-standing use of a locality, would thelegitimacy of the claim have been enhanced by the construc-tion of features that looked complementary to natural land-forms, such as ridges and swales? Such a correspondencemight suggest that the natural landforms and the featuresassociated with bison driving had equally long histories andthat perhaps supernatural or ancestral actions were involvedin the creation of both the landscape and the features andstructures. If the Pikaani made such a claim, it would havebeen enhanced by the fact that lichen-covered cobbles andboulders are a natural component of the landscape of thenorthwestern Plains.





Although the prairie topography has probably remainedstable since the end of the Pleistocene, understanding settle-ment patterns of even the last 2,000 years requires an appre-ciation of dynamic geomorphological change in river valleys,as the authors note. Understanding even earlier times will re-quire comprehensive assessment of river valley dynamics andarchaeological site visibility. Michael Wilson demonstrated thisin his detailed study of the Bow River valley in Alberta (Wilson1983), but few other attempts have been made.

The paper mentions a number of hypotheses for the in-tensification of bison hunting and processing, includingmovement and changing dynamics of human populations,environmental change, adoption of the bow and arrow, andtrade. Closer examination of the archaeological record will berequired to establish local and regional cultural and environ-mental histories. The authors have shown the value of inten-sive mapping, strategic excavation, and close attention tochronology. More work of this type is needed and could beaugmented by lithic studies to establish seasonal rounds andtrade strategies; detailed studies of bison seasonal movementsthrough stable isotope and trace element analysis; reconstruc-tion of bison population history through DNA; and moreintensive and more precise dating projects to better under-stand temporal continuity and discontinuity in the use of sitesand “engineered landscapes.”

Ben FitzhughDepartment of Anthropology, University of Washington, Box353100, M32 Denny, Seattle, Washington 98195-3100, U.S.A.([email protected]). 22 VII 13

Zedeno, Ballenger, and Murray are to be congratulated onproviding an original, comprehensive, and stimulating ex-amination of the evolution/development of social complexityin the Late Prehistoric era in the northwest Plains region. Thelandscape scale examination and comparison of bison drivecomplexes (drive lines, deadfalls, processing features, camps,and ceremonial emplacements) along the Two Medicine Riverregion allows the authors to develop a comprehensive casestudy of hunter-gatherer social change. Importantly, the ar-ticle makes and supports the case that the northwest Plainsdid develop a degree of complexity not previously recognizedby prior scholars of the region. The nature of that complexityand the causes for its development are modeled through acombination of archaeological evidence, ethnographic detail,and logical inference. The model is both sophisticated andchallenging. The inclusion of a wide range of structuring var-iables, from demography to ritual knowledge, recognizes theinherent complexity of social processes and is far from thedeterministic and mono-causal accounts of the past. The pro-ject is ambitious and necessarily incomplete with both logicaland empirical loose ends and ambiguities, but the overarchingarticulation of a plausible account for emerging social com-

plexity that combines material, social, and ideological vari-ables is refreshing and at times inspired.

From the account presented, I am convinced that hori-zontal dimensions of complexity expanded in the late pre-historic phase as manifested in the construction of “monu-mental” drive-line features, repeated utilization of huntingcomplexes, intensified use of bison products, and elaboratedritual practices with differentiation of social roles in huntingand ritual. These are clearly indicators of increasingly complexeconomic and social organization. The degree to which ver-tical complexity (institutional inequality) emerged through atthe same time is less convincingly argued.

Assuming that the origins of the (ethnographically docu-mented) system of sacred knowledge date to the developmentof intensive bison driving after AD 900, as the authors spec-ulate, the challenge for me comes in how one might under-stand the social acceptability of that new system of authority.Perhaps the control/creation of sacred knowledge was suffi-cient to compel social cohesion, especially if the result wasadvantageous to the group as a whole. The authors proposethat differential social power emerged with the institution-alization of sacred knowledge held exclusively by a subset ofactors in the bison hunt ceremonies and the hunt itself. Wemight expect that rank-and-file bison hunters would be happyto go along with such a development if the result was goodfor all. However, the extent to which sacred knowledge hold-ings would translate into power beyond the enactment of ahunting ceremony—that is, into institutional social inequal-ity—remains unclear. The implication in this argument is thatritual authority translated into social and material benefits. Ifso, the questions remain: on what basis did sacred knowledgeholders gain access to knowledge, and how did they leverageit into exclusive benefit? The authors explore potential causes,such as environmental change, increased social networkingwith agriculturalists to the east, and circumscription by neigh-boring groups. Any of these might have been a sufficientincentive, each has testable implications, and each would beclarified with more attention to the logic of causal relation-ships and empirical expectations.

I am struck by the observation that Two Medicine Riverhunters intensified their exploitation of bison but did notappear to diversify to include other resources commonly ex-ploited elsewhere in the Plains. Economically, it only makessense that bison hunters would forego other resources if andwhen bison (and their by-products) were always available andalways more profitable than other resources at times whenother resources could have been taken. The development ofintensive drive systems implies that ancestral and less spe-cialized hunting strategies were inadequate and would needto be supplemented with other resources or changed. If thedevelopment of the drive systems rendered supplementaryresources unnecessary, we would have to conclude that stan-dards of living improved across the system. If so, there wouldbe incentive to support the social organization that made itpossible, including the social divisions of labor and roles in





the hunt. It is less clear whether well fed people (in relativelysmall-scale and intimate communities) would support sig-nificant power inequality. If they did, we would like to knowthe mechanisms by which ritual status translated into tangiblesocial power. If they did not, we might interpret the TwoMedicine River case as one of emergent horizontal/organi-zational complexity in the absence of tangible vertical com-plexity. Perhaps the bison hunters of the Two Medicine RiverValley maintained relatively egalitarian social relationsthroughout the intensification of a socially and infrastruc-turally complex drive-hunting system. In this case, social re-lations might have been held in balance by the tensions be-tween a collective need for leadership in communalengineering and hunt coordination balanced by individualtendencies to avoid subordination when possible.

Trevor R. PeckASA, Historical Resources Management Branch, Old St. Stephen’sCollege, 8820-112 Street, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2P8, Canada([email protected]). 22 IV 13

Zedeno, Ballenger, and Murray have written a thought-pro-voking paper on the nature of complexity among Late Pre-historic Period (LPP) bison hunters on the northern Plains(NP). They propose that decisions in the past, beyond eco-nomic and reproductive pursuits, also focused on politicalgoals such that organization complexity emerged among in-creasingly large hunting bands to sustain or improve condi-tions for permanence in areas frequented by large bison herds.They claim that material clues of this complexity can be foundin landscape engineering. Their paper can be appreciated onat least two levels: addressing the development of complexityprior to the adoption of the horse during the LPP on the NP(Plains scholars have traditionally attributed many of thecharacteristics of complexity to the adoption of the horse)and relating the development of complexity to material cluesfound in landscape engineering. This response will first crit-ically examine some of the basic tenets about NP archaeologythat underlie their arguments and then will briefly discuss thearticle’s perspective on material clues to emerging complexity.

Zedeno et al.’s position is that complexity is a LPP phe-nomenon. The Old Women’s phase, considered ancestral toBlackfoot speakers, is characterized as unrivaled in frequency,size, and elaboration as illustrated by cairn-lined bison drives.This position is founded on the tenets that, prior to this timeperiod, (1) kills lured few animals, (2) there were no signssuggesting an increased labor pool, and (3) kill sites exhibitedlow carcass processing intensity. While there is no doubt thatthe LPP represents a pinnacle in bison kill sites, there is ampleevidence to indicate an emergence of the aforementioned in-dicators of complexity dating back to at least 2800 BP (Peck2011:256–281). Most of the large bison kill sites on the NPbegin their “continuous” use cycle during the Bracken Phase

(2800–2100 BP). Sites used at this time include Head-Smashed-In, [Old] Women’s, Walt Felt, and Keaster BuffaloJump, to name a few (Peck 2011). These were large kills: forexample, EgPn 362 is a single event Bracken Phase pound inmodern Calgary that took a least 145 bison. In terms of in-creased labor pools, the first large stone circle campsite inAlberta—Bow Bottom—consists of 16 buried, contempora-neous stone circles aligned in a row along the north bank ofthe Bow River. Few processing pit features have been iden-tified, but intensive bone smashing and substantial fire brokenrock scatters are evidenced at many of these large kill sites,suggesting moderate-to-heavy processing. These large, oftenrepeatedly used kill sites allowed for more people to remaintogether for longer periods of time than in previous eras. Thepattern Zedeno et al. find in the LPP is an emergent phe-nomenon from the Late Middle Prehistoric Period (cf. Brinkand Dawe 1989; Walde 2006:291, 298).

Furthermore, the article’s argument that population pres-sure led to increases in group size, decreases in mobility, andsocial investment in communal bison hunting with the ul-timate unintended consequences of accumulation of ritualwealth and internal differentiation is not entirely satisfactory.I would argue that the material clues of ritual intensification,differentiation, and integration have more time depth thanthose associated with the actual pragmatics of the bison hunt.For example, Majorville medicine wheel and cairn is knownto have been created accretionally from a small boulder pilestarting 5500 BP. The items within the cairn have largely beeninterpreted as offerings, some of which are thought to berelated to bison procurement. There are numerous large cairnsof this nature throughout Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Mon-tana. Interestingly, during the Bracken Phase, when the firstintensification of bison driving begins, the cairn fell into dis-use. Still, as Zedeno et al. suggest, the pinnacle of bison hunt-ing is recorded in the outermost layers of the Majorville cairnby highly increased numbers of offerings including Iniskim(buffalo-shape fossils related to bison procurement during theOld Women’s phase). The intensification, diversification, andintegration of ritual practice related to bison hunting, as rep-resented by these large features, actually precedes that of thepragmatics of bison hunting. Is it not reasonable to suggestthat much of Late Middle Period ritual complexity was presentwhen population pressure promoted the intensification, dif-ferentiation, and integration of pragmatic bison hunting?

Zedeno et al. have written a valuable and thoughtful studythat will most certainly stimulate discussion of the nature ofcomplexity in NP bison-hunting groups. I appreciate theirstance that bison-hunter complexity arose before the intro-duction of the horse, but I do not believe that this complexitybegan during the LPP. Rather closer scrutiny of the data mayindicate that population pressure in the Late Middle PrehistoricPeriod actually led to pragmatic bison-procurement intensifi-cation and the beginning of visual clues on the landscape, thepinnacle of which is seen during the Old Women’s phase. Fur-thermore, ritual complexity, which leaves few physical clues





behind, may be found to predate pragmatic bison-procurementintensification and its related engineered landscapes.

Anna Marie PrentissDepartment of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula,Montana 59812, U.S.A. ([email protected]). 12 IV 13

With publication of “Landscape Engineering and Organiza-tional Complexity among Late Prehistoric Bison Hunters ofthe Northwestern Plains,” Zedeno et al. have firmly placedthe people of the northwestern Plains at center stage in dis-cussions of emergent socioeconomic and political complexityamong hunter-gatherer societies. As they aptly point out, therehas been a long-standing assumption that bison-hunting peo-ple during pre-horse times were effectively foragers (per Bin-ford 1980) and thereby lacking the trappings of horizontaland vertical social complexity more typical of their complexforager-fisher neighbors on the plateau (Prentiss and Kuijt2012) and Northwest Coast (Matson and Coupland 1995) oragriculturalists to the east (Pauketat 2004). While this mayhave been true for the Great Plains region during much ofthe Upper Pleistocene and Holocene (e.g., Bamforth 1997),it is clear that the assumption can no longer be maintainedfor the area of the northwestern Plains north of the MissouriRiver during the past 1,500 years. The challenge now concernsmeasurement of temporal and spatial variability in the manycultural practices identified in the ethnographic record. Ze-deno et al. offer one useful pathway into this problem viaexamination of landscape modification in the form of tipiring villages, drive-line systems, stone effigies, vision-questingsites, and large cairns.

Zedeno et al. take us beyond simply documenting the pres-ence of complex hunter-gatherers in late Holocene Montanaand Alberta. They engage in a discussion of a number ofcritical factors associated with the evolution of social com-plexity. First they are concerned with the evolutionary un-derpinnings of the communal bison-hunting strategy. Theysuggest that innovations of the Besant and Avonlea complexesthat included driving technology, storage technology, and bowand arrow under optimal grassland conditions after 2000 BP(Peck 2004) were enough to stimulate large-scale bison hunt-ing associated with the major landscape modification andeventually emergent social complexity of the Old Women’scomplex. Drawing from innovation theory (e.g., Johnson2010), I would suggest that they are effectively recognizing a“platform” from which later innovations evolved. However,with the exception of the bow and arrow, the greatest packageof innovations favoring communal bison hunting had alreadycrystallized during the earlier dating portion of the PelicanLake complex of ca. 2000–3500 BP. Archaeological sites be-longing to Pelican Lake are nearly as abundant as those ofOld Women’s and far more abundant than Besant and Avon-lea combined. Pelican Lake sites include tipi villages of a

variety of sizes (Foor 1982), large- and small-scale bison kills(Davis and Stallcop 1965; Foor 1982; Reeves 1983b), spe-cialized bison-processing camps (Burns et al. 2004), basecamps in high-elevation valleys (Prentiss et al. 2008), caveand rock-shelter camps (Frison 1965; Husted and Edgar2002), and hard rock quarries (Foor 1982). It is impossibleto avoid the fact that Pelican Lake hunter-gatherers operatedan annual cycle that included dispersed and aggregated camps,communal bison hunts, logistical organization, food storage,and mass production of goods (e.g., lithic tools) for transportand exchange under generally excellent range conditions ofthe Neoglacial period. Consequently, I would suggest thatsocioeconomic evolution on the northwestern Plains washighly complex and worthy of significant further study.

The greater contribution of this paper concerns sociopo-litical evolution. Zedeno et al. offer a sophisticated consid-eration of historical/evolutionary factors that favored theemergence of the complex social traditions associated withthe classic bison hunters of the Late Prehistoric and earlyHistoric/Colonial periods. Most critically, Zedeno et al. avoidthe pitfalls of neofunctionalism and vitalism in their modelof emergent social inequality that emphasizes historical tra-jectories involving situational decisions and unintended con-sequences. Their model asserts that wealth-based inequalityevolved as a by-product of differential participation in esotericsocieties and hunting leaders associated with the operation ofcommunal bison drives in circumscribed environments. Ze-deno et al. join a growing number of scholars viewing in-equality as not an inevitable outcome of cultural evolutionaryprocess but as one possible outcome in a range of possibilities.I (2011) have argued that inequality in the Pacific Northwestprobably had its historical origins in simple variability in thesize and economic wherewithal of households. Rosenberg(2009) recognizes emergent inequality in the extrapolation ofwartime powers beyond the military arena. But inequality isnot necessarily a requirement for organizing large-scale co-operative labor. For example, Ortman and Kidder (2013) im-plicate significant landscape modification and implied oper-ation of sophisticated ritual activities without archaeologicalobvious markers of social inequality at Poverty Point.

Ultimately this paper takes us into a new arena to debatesocial evolution and offers a provocative vision of the evo-lutionary process. I suggest that we consider the critical rolesof evolutionary platforms and exaptations as we craft newdiachronic visions of the past and ponder our future.

Peter Rowley-ConwyDepartment of Archaeology, Durham University, South Road,Durham DH1 3LE, U.K. ([email protected]). 22 IV13

It is always pleasing to see archaeology employed to add atextured time-depth to the otherwise ahistorical “ethno-






graphic present.” It is particularly so when archaeology revealsthat things were rather different in the most recent past thanthe ethnographic present has been taken to imply. That is thecase in this remarkable paper. Nomadic and pedestrianhunter-gatherers in continental interiors are often assumedto be, in James Woodburn’s (1982) terms, “immediate return”(IR), with rather little resource storage, territorial ownership,or concomitant social differentiation and hierarchization. Thearchaeological study described here reveals something quitedifferent over the past thousand years: a “delayed return”(DR) society, based on the mass killing of bison. The majorbison drive lines, involving thousands of individual structures,are the dry-land equivalents of Woodburn’s large fish traps,classic ingredients in many DR economies. The DR patternis completed by territorial ownership of the drive lines andsuitable areas of terrain, the single-episode killing of largesurpluses, the storage of meat and hides, and social hierar-chization. To this commentator, a European, the sheer scaleof the landscape engineering that the drive lines involved iseye-opening.

In their initial discussion of the Blackfoot DR system, theauthors highlight three things: ecological change, specificallychanges in grass growth encouraging bison herds to winterin the Rocky Mountain foothills; social change; and inter-action with Middle Missouri farmers. Later in the paper itbecomes clear that they regard social changes—the elabora-tion of social hierarchization, esoteric societies—as resultingfrom economic intensification, and probably few peoplewould disagree. Ecological change emerges as the major caus-ative variable. This, however, raises the issue of directionality,specifically the way in which the authors view the “emergingcomplexity” that they describe. The radiocarbon dates placethe Kutoyis site firmly within the last millennium. How (andhow well) the other sites in the area are dated is not im-mediately clear—where does a date like “ca. AD 956” for theMission, Spring Coulee, and Lower Badger sites come from?—but assuming that they are indeed broadly similar to Kutoyis,it is clear that the last thousand years on the northwesternPlains saw the development of something substantially dif-ferent to what went before.

“What went before” is not the focus of this paper, so di-rectionality is not explored. But one possible impression couldtherefore be that all earlier inhabitants of this region were IRhunter-gatherers. This in turn could imply that the changefrom IR to DR in the last millennium is viewed as a “stepup the ladder” of social evolution. To be fair, the authorsnowhere say this, and indeed their emphasis on ecologicalconditions as a major contributing factor suggests that theywould take the opposite view: that socioeconomic organiza-tion might fluctuate between IR and DR depending on theprevailing conditions. If this is the case, DR systems mighthave appeared in previous ecological episodes that favoredthem—is there any sign that drive lines might have existedat times in the more distant past? As such episodes ended,more IR-focused systems would reestablish themselves, and

the drive lines fall into disuse and disrepair. If the twin con-tingent events of the arrival of the horse and the arrival ofEuropean colonists had not interrupted the most recent DRphase, that too might have come to an end.

Finally, I am intrigued by one aspect of the situation, men-tioned but not much elaborated: the role of contact betweenthe Blackfoot and the Middle Missouri farmers. In Europesuch contacts between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neo-lithic farmers across static boundaries between the two arecommonly regarded as having a transformative effect on thehunter-gatherers: vying with each other for imports from thefarmers, hunter-gatherers indulged in competitive feastingand social hierarchization as they become forest clients of thefarming communities. However, this conception is probablyrooted far too much in the recent past, when European voy-agers supplied steel axes and knives, dyed cloth, and coloredglass beads to awestruck savages. But when neither party hasdyed cloth or glass beads, and both make serviceable ground-stone axes, and nobody has steel ones to trade, then relationswill be characterized by a greater degree of technological sym-metry. Which group, if either, would then become the clients?The archaeological record described in this paper would seeman ideal arena in which to explore this.

Kenneth E. Sassaman1112 Turlington Hall, P.O. Box 117305, University of Florida,Gainesville, Florida 32611-7305, U.S.A. ([email protected]). 30 VI13

The authors make a compelling case for locating culturalcomplexity in the temporality of futures planning. The mer-ciless tendency to classify mobile hunter-gatherers as “simple”societies is usually associated with a sense of immediacy thatwould exclude not only preoccupation with the past but noreason for looking beyond the here and now. Arguably, thispresentist temporality exists only as a rhetorical (not empir-ical) benchmark for simplicity, against which complex sensesof time stand in contrast. Taking the rhetoric further, anysociety that planned for its futures was somehow more com-plex than one that did not.

The complexity of northwestern Plains bison hunters ofthe Old Women’s phase resided in communal efforts to en-gineer the landscape to ensure future success in hunting, andit was embedded in ritual and medicines that continuouslyreproduced, through practice, the rationale for cyclical socialgatherings. As the authors argue, the material evidence forthis complexity spans multiple sites and facilities, encom-passing landscapes commensurate with the spatial scale of theprey they sought. Invested with so much material and ritualcapital, this engineered landscape took on a life of its own.Of course, Plains bison hunters have long been known tobuild facilities whose return on investment was protractedover generations, and they routinely planned for overwinter-





ing by dispatching and processing lots of bison. However, thematerial dimensions of these endeavors have not always beensituated in appropriately large and long-term scales to perceivethe complexity, if not the hierarchy, of the social bodies in-volved. The archaeological data backing up the authors’ ar-gument are robust and intriguing.

My only conceptual quibble with this paper is its perpet-uation of the concept of “territorialism.” I understand thatthis term has a deep and enduring history of use in Plainsarchaeology and ethnohistory. However, the mainstream con-notation of territory—the resource purview of a corporategroup centered in a space/place they mark, defend, and drawon for identity, vis-a-vis “others”—may not apply here. Thiscase study invites serious consideration of the multiculturaland translocal nature of “territory.” Is the constellation ofdrive lanes, villages, ritual sites, and intervening spaces ofbison and human movements a “meta-territory”? I loatheneologisms when perfectly good, commonplace terms areavailable, but the case described here arguably falls well out-side the bounds of “territorialism” and not only because it ismanifested in relational places spread out over land used ha-bitually by people who may not interact with one another allthat often but also because it is actuated and reproducedthrough movement. This poses something of a contradictionbetween the argument that facilities helped to ensure the fu-ture viability of particular places of aggregation and dwelling,and the reality that people and bison were in flux, at timesunpredictably. But that is what is original about this particularhistory, and it deserves even more theorizing. Eastern NorthAmerican archaeologists have a similar challenge in describingthe moundscapes of Adena and Hopewell, even the earth-works of the Archaic era. What used to be considered terri-torial markers are now seen as points of gathering betweenlocations of dwelling. One may presume that such gatheringsinvolved people of distinctive dialect, if not language, or atleast people who did not coreside outside of ritual aggrega-tions.

This case study takes us much farther than anything in theEast because it is grounded in the economy and ecology ofsubsistence. In this regard, it may be worth considering thatthe intensification of bison hunting after about AD 900 wasinfluenced at least indirectly by the goings-on around it. Theprocesses in motion at this time in the Midwest, Southwest,and Southeast involved large, intricate webs of interactionsand movements, from migrations, to exchanges, to pilgrim-ages. This is not to say that the northwestern Plains historyoutlined in this paper involved the coming and going of par-ticular persons or communities from without, only that themassive, interregional ritual economies of afar could havepenetrated local economies in subtle ways to stimulate in-creased production.

A final point worth considering is the way that long-termcycles affecting bison ecology (e.g., precipitation patterns)structured futures planning. Were parts of an integrated, en-gineered landscape activated in serial but regular or cyclical

fashion (e.g., Fawcett 1987) and over cycles greater than an-nual? If so, was this expressed metaphorically in ritual per-formance, encoded in bundles, or marked in ritual landscapefeatures? And if so, were they related in any fashion to themovements of celestial bodies, a potential atlas for locatingtime in space? In this sense it may be useful to see if large-scale movements of people and bison and the constellationof places in this landscape were referencing things in the skythat people distributed across the greater region could ex-perience simultaneously and hence fall into place all at once.

Of Anomalies and Alternatives

Laura L. ScheiberDepartment of Anthropology, 701 East Kirkwood Avenue, StudentBuilding 130, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405,U.S.A. ([email protected]). 1 V 13

The authors of this thought-provoking article tackle what maybe the most enduring icon of North American Plains ar-chaeology: the bison jump. They follow a century-long tra-dition of ethnographers and archaeologists working withinBlackfoot communities, notably Clark Wissler and SamuelBarrett in the 1910s and 1920s, John Ewers starting in the1940s, and Thomas Kehoe and Alice Kehoe starting in the1950s. During the last several years, the authors have docu-mented a truly amazing precontact hunting landscape inten-sively used for some 500 years. With at least 11 drive-linesystems, numerous stratified kill-butchery sites, ritual locales,and nearly a thousand tipi rings, these are some of the mostelaborate hunting features on the North American Plains. Theauthors propose that the complex hunting landscape of theTwo Medicine River Valley is evidence of an organizationalanomaly among Late Prehistoric pedestrian hunter-gathererswho developed complex political, social, ritual, and economicmeans of capitalizing on the predictably large herds of bisonby engineering the landscape for future returns. They pre-viously described these features as examples of horizontalmonumentality (Ballenger, Zedeno, and Miller 2012).

The strength of this article for me lies in three primaryareas: collaborative archaeology, surface architecture, and pre-contact baselines. First, this research is a compelling exampleof community-based archaeology involving the insights, opin-ions, and participation of descendant peoples. The authorspresent innovative interpretations of hunting landscapes thatconvincingly incorporate indigenous knowledge of the land.They connect archaeology and ecology to place names, cul-tural narratives, and esoteric societies. Two Medicine figuresprominently in origin stories and remains extremely impor-tant to the Blackfoot people. This project serves as a modelfor contemporary archaeology. Hopefully we will continue tosee more of these collaborations in the future, on the Plainsand elsewhere (Scheiber et al. 2011).





Second, the authors make sophisticated arguments aboutpalimpsest surface stone architecture that is nearly lacking inthe archaeological literature of hunter-gatherers. Cairns, drivelines, and stone circles (tipi rings) are ubiquitous on thenorthwestern Plains, but they are rarely associated with ar-tifacts, leaving unknown relationships between rock structuresadjacent to one another. Therefore, research of stone archi-tecture on the Plains is underdeveloped and poorly theorized.One of the most impressive aspects of the archaeology at TwoMedicine is the scale. The authors convincingly argue thatlong-term hunter-gatherer decision making can be viewedthrough complex landscape engineering. I encourage moreresearchers to adopt similar broad landscape perspectives evenin smaller-scale contexts. For instance, in southern Montanawe have documented a nearly continuous stone circle land-scape interspersed with drive lines and cairns and rock ar-chitecture for several kilometers following Bighorn Canyon.Our best interpretations come from combinations of multi-ple-scale analyses and perspectives from Crow communitymembers, not from viewing these sites separately (Scheiberand Finley 2010).

Third, the authors establish a critical precontact baselinefor considerations of long-term culture change and param-eters for purely indigenous economic intensification (Mitchelland Scheiber 2010). The characteristics of bison hunting onthe northwestern Plains of Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, andSaskatchewan have been attributed to the adoption of thehorse in the 1700s. The way archaeologists understand lateprehistoric hunting societies is influenced by an overemphasison the later effect of the horse. The authors demonstrate asolid foundation for pedestrian hunting that was in placecenturies before equestrian patterns emerged.

Zedeno, Ballenger, and Murray propose that the southernAlberta/Montana foothills landscape indicates a shared cul-tural logic and distinctive traditions of landscape engineering.I would argue that this kind of knowledge and tradition isalso indicated at other Late Prehistoric sites, such as the mul-tiple component Vore site in northeastern Wyoming (Reherand Frison 1980). Additionally, evidence for other traditionsof landscape engineering, such as high-altitude wood-huntingfeatures, may have already disappeared (Frison, Reher, andWalker 1990). The Two Medicine River Valley is clearly a placecharacterized by persistence. Many other people also practicedplace reuse and repeatedly moved along pathways that con-nected meaningful places. The concept itself is not unique onthe Plains, but the way it was manifested among the ancestralBlackfoot in northern Montana appears to have been. Thesesites still represent palimpsests, and connections among fea-tures even a few meters away from each other remain tenuous.Multiple re-occupations cannot be separated from contem-poraneous ones.

Place does matter, and focal points on the land to whichpeople repeatedly return provide important windows for ex-ploring the junctions between everyday practices and gen-erational traditions. Too often archaeologists are concerned

with removing the cumulative effects of land use in order toget to single occupations. This article emphasizes that pal-impsest deposits can be a starting point (or creation) for newinterpretations, not just as destruction or loss of data aboutparticular events. The hunting landscape that remains todayis indeed impressive. One wonders whether continued con-temporary land-use practices, including mineral extraction,will soon destroy what remains.

Dale WaldeDepartment of Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Al-berta T2N 1N4, Canada ([email protected]). 11 IV 13

Zedeno and coauthors provide an important reminder thatthe complexity of prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies variedwidely in time and space. Their cultures, while intimatelyconnected to their natural environments, were not entirelycontrolled by them. Rather, they lived in culturally con-structed environments over which they exerted a certainamount of control and into which they built both cosmo-logical and physical structure. The authors use the exampleof the prehistoric northwestern Plains of North America tosupport their contention that landscape engineering—“theintentional modification of place and resource networksthrough sequences of actions and inscriptions”—provides im-portant clues to emerging complexity there. They are espe-cially interested in exploring the roles of extensive rock con-figurations in not only facilitating large-scale communal bisonhunting but also as constructed sacred spaces that integratedpeople and communities.

Overall, I welcome this approach to understanding certainlate prehistoric cultural dynamics on the northern Plains, al-though I do think they began earlier than suggested. It isdifficult in a continuum of change to select a starting pointfor a particular process, but it seems clear to me (and others)that the beginnings of routine communal bison hunting onthe northern Plains generally are to be found about 2,500years ago with Besant groups. However, the authors are quitecorrect in suggesting that complexity and intensity of land-scape engineering increased through time. Their approach ispart of an increasing acceptance and deeper understandingin the archaeological community of the relatively sophisticatednorthern Plains cultures (e.g., Brink et al. 2003; Brumley andDau 1988; Duke 1991; Quigg 1983; Reeves 1983a; Walde2006).

I do wonder, however, about the authors’ concentration onthe northwestern Plains to the apparent exclusion of the re-mainder of the Canadian Plains. This may be due in part tothe subject matter of the work, namely, a deeply and locallycontextualized report on survey results of the Two MedicineRiver Valley in the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. How-ever, one is left with the impression that complexly organizedbison-hunting cultures with their extensively constructed





monuments were restricted to the northwestern Plains of

southwestern Alberta and western Montana. Zedeno et al. do

not quite state this, but the implication feels very apparent.

And it is this issue I address in this brief comment.

We must acknowledge that the past Canadian Plains cul-

tural landscape has been heavily edited by cultivation, dam

construction, deliberate destruction, and so on (Wilson 2004).

Many areas in which the landscape and its monuments have

been preserved are in widely separated areas of sparsely pop-

ulated nonarable land that have been minimally impacted by

postcontact development. Nonetheless, remnant traces of a

complex and enduring Canadian Plains cultural landscape

suggest that the complexly organized communal bison-hunt-

ing tradition with associated constructed spaces described by

Zedeno et al. was more widely spread among multiple groups

than they appear to suggest. The Jelly Ranch site of south–

central Saskatchewan with its very large complement of stone

circles, rock alignment, effigy, and medicine wheel is but one

example. The Big Muddy Valley area of southern Saskatch-

ewan is characterized by multiple bison jumps, stone effigies,

boulder alignments, tipi ring sites, and ceremonial circles (e.g.,

Brace 2005; Larsen 2012), and similar concentrations of

cairns, tipi rings, ceremonial circles, and rock alignments are

being recorded in the Cabri Lake area of southwestern Sas-

katchewan (e.g., Kennedy, Foley, and Foley 2013). Surface

reconnaissance in the Grasslands National Park in the extreme

south of Saskatchewan also revealed a highly complex built

cultural environment of stone features (e.g., Adams 1986),

and concentrations of ceremonial circles and medicine wheels

are evident in southeastern Saskatchewan (e.g., Brace 2005;

Kehoe and Kehoe 1979). The foothills example discussed by

Zedeno et al. is part of a larger pattern common throughout

much of the Canadian Plains. I must note as well, that this

cultural pattern was present historically in the parklands of

north-central Saskatchewan and Alberta, although communal

bison-hunting structures there were generally constructed of

wood and leave no material trace in the archaeological record.

Zedeno et al. quite correctly discuss the socially unifying

aspect of communal bison hunting, but I must wonder if they

underestimate the role of late precontact warfare in increasing

social complexity on the northern Plains. With the first shield-

bearing warrior motifs appearing in rock imagery as early as

the first century AD (Keyser and Klassen 2001), I suspect

intersocietal rivalries may have played an important role in

developing complexity. The authors note the importance of

trade with larger horticulturalist social formations during late

prehistoric times (see also Lints 2012), and it is well known

from the historic record that raiding and warfare were often

intimately associated with trading relationships. External pres-

sures were probably at least as important as internal factors

to the development of complex social organizations on the

northern Plains.

Reply

The intent of this article is to reignite discussion about theorganization of pedestrian bison hunting from a contemporaryperspective that emphasizes connections among technology, rit-ual, and the sociopolitics of the hunt. Our arguments arefounded upon material evidence for the development of a vastand sophisticated landscape that uniquely captures many ofthese connections. From this vantage point, it is possible tobuild a case for emergent complexity among Late Prehistoriccommunal bison hunters of the northwestern Plains. Becauseour case rests on the production of bison wealth and ritualwealth, we employ a broad-stroke layout that integrates eth-nohistory, ethnography, and archaeology; a forthcoming tech-nical report will address data gaps noted by our colleagues.Nevertheless, the comments received demonstrate that wehave achieved our goal, as they bring new, intriguing aspectsof bison-hunters’ complexity to the table—each worthy of itsown scholarly essay.

The most rewarding result of this forum is the widespreadacknowledgment that bison-hunter societies exhibited char-acteristics of emergent complexity. But because the articleaddresses only the last 1,000 years of a specialized bison-hunting trajectory (250 of which are historical), the tempo-rality of this process is a major concern among the com-mentators. This is a reasonable concern, for bison huntingwas an ancient, multiscalar, and multidimensional way of life;the knowledge, practices, and resources it encompassed havediverse origins and trajectories. While certain expressions ofcomplexity, including technological innovation and huntingintensification, may have evolved in the deep past, as AnnaPrentiss, Trevor Peck, Dale Walde, and Jonathan Driver pointout, the substance of bison-hunters’ organizational changedid not materialize until other components emerged centuriesor millennia later. Such components include demography,warfare, corporate ritual, and opportunity for economic gain.

To the cultural history of communal bison hunting onemust add climate and its effect on local and regional con-ditions for the hunt. Guy Bar-Oz and Dani Nadel note thatour study has not addressed bison ethology vis-a-vis climateand human impact; research by Peck (2004) and Cooper(2008), which the article discusses in some detail, certainlyhelps to clarify this crucial relationship. Peter Rowley-Conwysuggests that, given adequate technology and organization,the ebb and flow of climatic and environmental conditionssuitable for intensifying bison hunting may have led to cyclesof complexity. Prentiss makes a compelling argument for ex-cellent natural and social conditions for complexity amongPelican Lake people (1500–1BC), whose hunting complexesexisted multiple generations before the rise of Late PrehistoricOld Women’s phase hunters (AD 1000–1750). Likewise, Peckand Walde contend that the underpinnings of complexity dateat least to the Late Middle Prehistoric period, or 2,000 ago,




with the Old Women’s phase hunting complexes representingthe culmination of an earlier trend. Cyclical complexityamong hunter-gatherers is predictable and has been docu-mented elsewhere (e.g., Habu 2002), thus it merits seriousconsideration.

Taken together, our data and these comments suggest that,since the early Holocene, there may have been two or threejunctures in the evolution of bison hunting when conditionswere ripe for innovation and economic intensification, even-tually leading to the emergence of complex organization. Sucha deep time frame must be qualified by placing each elementof complexity in its proper time, place, and cultural context.Processes of intensification, circumscription, and differenti-ation that characterized the emergence of hunter-gatherercomplexity as outlined by Ben Fitzhugh (2003) probably dif-fered from earlier to later cycles by several orders of mag-nitude, if they were at all present. Furthermore, social in-vestments that were necessary not only for achieving successin isolated hunting events but also for building a viable andresilient way of life with promising future returns were notcoeval but exhibited diverse temporal ranges (Zedeno andAnderson 2010:16).

In all likelihood, investments derived from ecological, tech-nological, and cosmological knowledge associated with bisonhunting are the most ancient (Barsh and Marlor 2003). Letus reemphasize that the seeds of big-game hunting technol-ogies such as the construction of game drives in North Amer-ica go back to the Paleoindian period (O’Shea, Lemke, andReynolds 2013). Evidence of bison drive-line and corral orpound construction abounds during the Middle Prehistoricperiod (Kornfeld et al. 2010; Peck 2011); as Prentiss stresses,3,000 years ago bison hunters already had a fine understand-ing of ecology and topography of not only the prairie butalso the mountains, and they used these environments indiverse ways. Yet, the strategic construction of two or moredrive-line systems, which connected multiple gathering basinsand water bodies to high jumps and could be used in tandemto ensure repeated success in large-scale communal hunts,was simply absent before AD 1000.

Such an engineered landscape with vast horizontal archi-tecture that multiplied earlier hunting returns required timeand labor in its construction and multigenerational mainte-nance and repair. Monumental architecture is a feature ofcomplex societies around the world, and its creation typicallysymbolizes prestige and power (Trigger 1990). Horizontalmonuments such as drive lines and memorial features maylack the flagrant symbolism of power characterized by ver-ticality, but they transform physical and social landscapes witha scale and efficiency that cannot be realized by vertical mon-uments. Driver dissents from calling cairn architecture “mon-umental,” but other commentators recognize that it is hardnot to be awestruck by drive-line systems that covered severalthousand acres each and maximized access to bison herds.Survey data show that the Two Medicine River and adjacentdrainages and lake basins were connected by numerous bison

drive lines composed of tens of thousands of individual cairnsand that perhaps their creation symbolized a level of authorityand power comparable to mounds and other vertical mon-uments (Ballenger, Zedeno, and Miller 2012). Ken Sassamanasks whether these drive-line systems were subjected to serialuse in a regular cycle; it is certainly possible, given the numberof sites in the valley and adjacent streams, but many moreabsolute dates are needed to pinpoint use cycles.

Stone tool technology is another long-range investment.Atlalts and dart points were the hallmark of communal bisonhunting for millennia. The relatively rapid adoption of thebow-and-arrow approximately 2,000 years ago, coupled withthe development of food-storage technology, paved the roadto intensification because it increased the effectiveness of masskills and processing of large quantities of meat and hides forstorage, transport, and trade (Reeves 1990). Yet, the true im-pact of these innovations is nowhere as extensive as duringthe Old Women’s phase. Apparently, the Late Prehistoric com-munal bison-hunting complex was designed for delayed con-sumption, Rowley-Conwy observes. Delayed consumptionwas not only limited to the preparation of food stores fortimes of need but also for commodity exchange; it also ex-tended to ceremonial foods, such as bison tongues. Tongueswere procured during the winter harvests, dried, and con-sumed the following summer at the Blackfoot Okan or SunDance (Allan Pard, personal communication, 2013). Storagefacilities, or what contemporary Blackfoot call “ice-houses,”were requisite for mass harvests. Thus, uninterrupted accessto productive hunting grounds in the winter and to areassuitable for winter encampments that could sustain multi-family bands for several months of the year must have beenessential to the success of this mode of production.

A second aspect of emergent complexity deals with de-mography and circumscription. Complexes ancestral to theOld Women’s phase—Besant and Avonlea—presumably rep-resent people of different origins, geographies, and ethnicitieswho nonetheless contributed key pieces of technologicalknowledge that made large-scale harvesting possible. Whilefew sites in the northern Plains document their overlappingpresence and the transition to more recent hunters (Cloutier2004), there is no integrated database about population dy-namics that would explain the formation of large groups suchas those recorded at the time of European contact. We secondLaura Scheiber’s observation that the Plains archaeologicalpalimpsest has presented unique methodological challenges,namely, difficulties in dating surface stone architecture andmapping them accurately without a Global Positioning Sys-tem. Two Medicine River campsites are significantly largerthan any site previously mapped in the region; statewide clear-ance surveys, while constrained by the nature of right-of-wayresearch, do provide comparative statistics on campsite sizeand age (e.g., Deaver, Peterson, and Roberts 1999). With fewexceptions, the number of domestic structures in sites pre-dating the Old Women’s phase in Montana is rarely largerthan 40, whereas campsites mapped and dated by the KAP




are no smaller than 40; this statistic does not include all thecampsites recorded by Tom Kehoe (1960) in the valley andadjacent streams. If data from the Canadian Plains were tobe added to those from the Montana-Alberta foothills, asWalde suggests should be done, a far stronger demographicpattern for the Late Prehistoric period than the one we presentwould surely emerge.

Thus, while the size and diversity of Middle Prehistoricperiod sites and individual complexes may indicate a richtapestry of economic and social practices among bison hunt-ers, we think it is legitimate to question whether a populationthreshold high enough to warrant investment on intensiveand sustained bison harvesting and processing existed beforethe climatic and ecological bonanza of the last 1,000–1,500years. All we can propose, on the basis of incomplete surveydata but detailed records of Blackfoot wintering grounds(Schaeffer and Schaeffer 1934) is that, for the better part ofthe last millennium, each major valley that irrigated the RockyMountain Front and drained into the Missouri River washeavily inhabited and utilized by communal bison huntersduring the cold months of the year. This may well be the casefor Blackfoot wintering grounds to the north and northeastof the upper Missouri.

The effect of valley-wide population aggregation and longerperiods of cohabitation of bison and people on the regulationof harvests, labor, and other areas of social life has yet to bemeasured for the entire region. We echo the observation byLucas Bueno and Laura Scheiber that large-scale archaeolog-ical approaches must incorporate native landscape logic toreveal meaningful land-use patterns among hunter-gatherers.The construction and long-term maintenance of multipledrive lines leading to jumps on the high ridges of the RockyMountain foothills and adjacent prairies strongly suggest thatan overarching pattern of colonization and development ofareas suitable for mass harvesting came into place during theLate Prehistoric period. Higher population density likely pre-sented challenges and opportunities due to competition forlocalities with ideal conditions for large-scale bison drives; onthe other hand, it furnished a large pool of non-kin labor.Radiocarbon and OSL assays for the Two Medicine RiverValley (supplement tables A1 and A2) support our contentionthat this area was colonized by specialized bison hunters atthe turn of the last millennium but was exploited most in-tensively and extensively during the Little Ice Age (ca. AD1400–1800), when climatic conditions were optimal for largegrazers.

Walde observes that processes of emergent complexity mustbe understood in a broader context than the northwesternPlains. We wholeheartedly agree, because bison-hunting tra-jectories were punctuated periodically by participation inlong-distance interaction. It has been suggested that inten-sification beginning in the Late Middle Prehistoric period wasassociated with this interaction (Reeves 1990). There is someevidence of trade in copper and stone possibly for hides anddried meat earlier on, but a spike in bison hunting beyond

local needs and the onset of pemmican production was likelyassociated with participation in Cahokia’s long-distance ex-change networks, through which hunters obtained plant foodsamong other things (Brink and Dawe 1989:297–303). It ispossible that population aggregation at key localities and con-comitant need for regulatory institutions arose around thistime. On the other hand, protohistoric-period conflict andinteraction along the Missouri River and across the RockyMountains was decidedly different than previous trans-Mis-sissippian relations, particularly in regard to the identity ofpartners and competitors.

Sassaman questions the need for a discussion of hunter-gatherer territoriality, at least as the conventionally defined“perimeter defense.” While we agree with him and Buenothat hunter-gatherer territories must be redressed and theo-rized from a standpoint that emphasizes movement (see Ze-deno and Anderson 2010), territorial circumscription is animportant component of emerging complexity. Warfarewaged by the Blackfoot against the Shoshone and Kootenaiis well documented historically and generally attributed tocompetition for the control of European trade networks(Moore 2012). Yet, such animosity may have been rooted incompetition for prime hunting grounds, leading to the for-mation of social and political boundaries. During the OldWomen’s phase, specialized bison hunters had to contendwith other ethnic groups that customarily crossed the RockyMountains to obtain bison and other resources along theeastern foothills. Elsewhere, we combined information on thedistribution of protohistoric Shoshone material culture (New-ton 2011), Old Women’s phase material culture (Vickers andPeck 2009), and Kootenai precontact boundaries in Montanato make the argument that specialized bison hunters were underthe pressure of territorial circumscription along the front priorto the arrival of the horse (Zedeno et al. 2013). Given the recentdiscovery of Plains warrior rock art just 12 km northwest ofthe 30 Knot complex (see fig. 3), we now think, like Walde,that warfare was a significant component in emergent com-plexity and acknowledge that the analysis of landscape en-gineering with defensive functions in mind must be developedfurther.

The defense of core hunting grounds and access routes fromintruding neighbors takes a decidedly new twist if we add thefactor that mass harvests were at least partially geared towardcommodity exchange. Interaction and trading partnershipswith the more distant Middle Missouri farmers is poorly doc-umented, even though it may have begun as early as 2,500years ago (Foreman 2010). Nevertheless, this interaction likelyprovided opportunities for sustained exchange of not onlyfoodstuffs and material goods but also esoteric knowledgeand valuable ritual objects (Catlin 1965 [1841]). The docu-mented presence of Middle Missouri immigrants in the ab-original Blackfoot territory during the Protohistoric period(or earlier) is suggestive of close ties among these people(Zarrillo and Kooyman 2006). From a different perspective,Binemma (2004) goes as far as to propose that a push from




the Middle Missouri region may have encouraged Blackfootancestors to colonize the Missouri River headwaters beforethe arrival of the horse. Clearly, much more research on theexchange of commodities and ritual knowledge and objectsshould be undertaken to ascertain the relationships amonghunting intensification, trade partnerships, and the rise ofcorporate organization in the Late Prehistoric period.

The third aspect of emergent complexity is differentiation.Although domestic stone architecture and memorial monu-ments provide a glimpse into social differentiation, a satis-factory argument must also incorporate ethnography. Thereis little doubt that Blackfoot corporate organization, in theform of age, class, and gender sodalities, as well as societiesthat crosscut not only age and gender groups but also bandand division membership, was in place by the time of firstcontact with European traders in the late eighteenth century(Tyrrell 1916). Fitzhugh and Prentiss ask whether and howthese institutions exerted effective power over the group be-yond the actual hunt. Societies regulated the communal hunt-ing cycle, of course, but other aspects of life including pro-tection from intruders, marriage rule observance, law andorder, sacred tobacco planting, and the annual movement toand from the winter camps, were part of their duties. Chal-lengers were punished with ridicule, expulsion from the com-munity, or death in extreme cases. That much can be said ofother Great Plains tribes who practiced mixed subsistenceeconomies (Wissler 1916b). Among the Blackfoot, however,there were also esoteric or secret societies of expensive andexclusive membership that co-opted ritual knowledge asso-ciated with the reproduction and calling of bison, drive-linelayout, and corral construction, as well as other realms of lifeand death; the community at large had no ready access tosuch knowledge.

In addition to these institutions, there were individuallyowned ceremonial painted lodges and bundles that could becombined with society privileges on and off the huntingground. In other words, ritual power was both corporate andindividually held; it was cumulative, and it was hierarchical.Fitzhugh inquires how ritual knowledge came to be: it wasoriginally obtained through the vision of an individual, whoreceived power from supernatural forces or beings. Thereafter,this individual could transfer his knowledge in exchange forgoods or new ritual knowledge. Vision seeking goes back un-told years, but at some point it became the means to establisha corporate institution (Duvall 1910). Esoteric societies ownedliturgy, songs, and bundles that legitimized their supernaturalpower to accomplish specific tasks. Their leaders would eval-uate individuals’ visions for compliance with tradition andthen endorse them (or not).

In closing, we suggest that the pivot of the Blackfoot reg-ulatory system revolved around the abduction of hunting rit-ual and technology by exclusive institutions and certain bun-dle and lodge owners. In Blackfoot tradition, abduction canbe traced back to the adoption of the bow and arrow, whichis regarded as a gift from the Sun. This event belongs in the

suite of Star Stories, which postdate the creation of the world,its re-creation after the great flood, and the Blackfoot ethno-genesis. Star Stories are populated by gods, demigods, andBlackfoot culture heroes at a traditional time when social andmoral rules were being established (Hernandez 1999). Arrowmaking was imbued in ritual. Ceremonial bow-and-arrow setsthat belonged in bundles once used in the hunt and in theSun Dance were still ritually active in the twentieth century(Duvall 1910:172). In answer to Sassaman’s inquiry about therole of cosmology in emerging complexity, celestial knowledgeand celestial people played a central role in the organization ofcommunal hunting symbolically, by providing moral justifi-cation for the abduction of technology, among other things,and logistically by marking the passage of ritual and huntingcycles (e.g., the position of the Big Dipper on the horizon).That the knowledge bison hunters presumably had held incommon for millennia eventually became a ritual privilegethat could only be obtained through formal transfer, is a formof power that speaks loudly of social differentiation beyondthe mere act of hunting. The most obvious benefits of par-ticipation in such a system were social prestige, entitlement,and acquisitive freedom, which often went hand-in-hand withpositions of political leadership (Ewers 1955).

While it is indeed difficult to establish how the relationshipsbetween the have- and the have-nots played out from thePlains material record, it is clear from contact-period obser-vations that Blackfoot society was divided by economic wealth(Nugent 1993) and that bison was the main source of thatwealth (Schultz 1962). An explanation for how corporate or-ganization translated into effective decision-making powermay be found in the fact that ritual knowledge (and bison-hunting knowledge) was both a gift from the higher powersand a commodity used to access foodstuffs, raw materials,prestige goods, and even higher ritual knowledge (Lokens-gaard 2010). Finally, we propose that a society built on bisonwealth could partake of that wealth if its members submittedto the ritual system regulated by individual and corporatepower. In turn, this system restricted access to knowledgeessential to the reproduction of wealth and punished com-munity detractors who challenged it by hunting outside thesanctioned cycle. It was a complex and self-perpetuating sys-tem with diverse social institutions, many of which have out-lasted the demise of bison hunting—a system we have onlybegun to imagine in an archeological framework.

—Marıa Nieves Zedeno, Jesse A. Ballenger,and John R. Murray

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Documents

Landscape Engineering and Organizational Complexity among ... · reformulation of the temporality and spatiality of late pre-historic communal bison hunting. And, following Scheiber