Smoke on the water: uncovering a socially complex pre-contact Babine fishing village at Nass Glee (GISQ-4)

• Other Authors: Hackett, Cory (Author), Rahemtulla, Farid (Thesis advisor), Binnema, Theodore (Thesis advisor), University of Northern British Columbia College of Arts, Social, and Health Sciences (Degree granting institution), Sharp, Karyn (Committee member)
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: University of Northern British Columbia 2017
• Subjects: Babine Lake; Babine River; First Nations
• Online Access: https://arcabc.ca/islandora/object/unbc%3A17389; https://doi.org/10.24124/2017/1404

For the last century there has been very little modification to the geographic boundaries for the Northwest coast culture area, as defined by anthropologists. Moreover, complex hunter-gatherer models, which identify the hallmarks for social complexity of coastal First Nations, tend to exclude inland and up-river societies. Although academics recognize a post-contact complexity at Babine Lake, they have relied primarily on ethnographic sources which implied that ranked and socially stratified societies emerged only in response to the social and economic influences of the fur trade. However, recent research indicates that Babine society possessed complex trade networks, ranked houses, inherited lineages, individual wealth, and status inequality long before the fur trade era. Excavations at the salmon fishing village GiSq-4, on the Babine River, indicate that these social attributes have a much greater antiquity than the proto-historic era. . Babine River salmon fishing village