Assess sociopolitical complexity of Coast Salish groups through defensive sites and practices. Aim is to show how fortifications materially exhibit the tensions of Coast Salish sociopolitical organization, revealing a fluidity and flexibility of sociopolitical forms.
Despite paradigmatic statements arguing for a collaborative archaeology, little agreement exists concerning how it should be practiced. In our experience, the relationships between archaeologists and the communities we serve are multi-faceted, and often develop under significant constraints concerning project goals and methodologies. Recognizing this, here we focus on the nature of relationships on the ground between archaeologists and indigenous communities. We argue that two principles should guide our practices. First, archaeologists should pursue horizontal relationships with First Nations that build and expand egalitarian contexts within the otherwise hierarchical political structures of modern nation states. Second, it is through building long-term relationships with communities, and the negotiations these require, that horizontal relations can best be established. Both can help improve archaeological practice. We outline two cases of collaboration involving Coast Salish and Interior Salish groups to illustrate our approach.
Throughout human history, people have lived in societies without formalized government. We argue that the theory of anarchism presents a productive framework for analyzing decentralized societies. Anarchism encompasses a broad array of interrelated principles for organizing societies without the centralization of authority. Moreover, its theory of history emphasizes an ongoing and active resistance to concentrations of power. We present an anarchist analysis of the development of social power, authority, and status within the Coast Salish region of the Northwest Coast.
<p>Coast Salish peoples exhibited complex displays of chiefly authority and class stratification but without centralized political organization. Ethnographically, their sociopolitical formation is unique in allowing a majority of "high- class" people and a minority of commoners and slaves, or what Wayne Suttles described as an "inverted-pear" society. We present the development of this sociopolitical structure through an analysis of cranial deformation from burial data and assess it in relation to periods of warfare. We determine that many aspects of Coast Salish culture include practices that resist concentrations of power. Our central point is that anarchism is useful for understanding decentralized (or anarchic) networks-those that allow for complex intergroup relations while staving off the establishment of centralized political authority.<p>
