Reconstructing human-environment relationships through archeology

An archeological researcher at Washington State University is blending geochemistry and Indigenous oral stories to reexamine how humans have interacted with their surrounding environment.

Jordan J. Thompson is a PhD candidate in archeology investigating lithic technologies, or the production of tools from stone, across the southern Columbia Plateau. This summer, Thompson spent three weeks with a WSU-led excavation team in the western Bitterroot Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border. Her goal was to understand more about past human-environment relationships in mountain settings.

"I'm interested in how high elevation landscapes factored into the Nez Perce seasonal subsistence cycle," said Thompson. "Usually, high elevation sites are located on erosional landscapes, so they don't really preserve the archeological record well. But some of the sites around the Clearwater River are located in floodplains that preserve a longer record of archeological materials."

Areas where an accumulation of various stone raw materials are transported from their source location by human use and travel are known as conveyance zones. These locations can help researchers understand prehistoric movement and the utilization of landscapes.

Thompson's summer excavations were primarily located at the Kelly Forks Work Center, an archeological site near the Upper North Fork of the Clearwater River. Her previous research has focused on toolstone sources of vitrophyre, a volcanic rock that differs visibly from obsidian. Both are igneous and formed from cooling lava, but vitrophyre includes large partially-formed crystalline structures known as phenocrysts, which results in a mottled appearance in the rock.

"Vitrophyre hadn't been very well researched in this region, but vitrophyre tools are commonly found across the Clearwater Region," said Thompson. "There's one source along the Lochsa River, and another source in Montana, and I've found about a 50/50 distribution of these two vitrophyre materials along the North Fork corridor." Thompson surmises that this evidence demonstrates a long-standing connection to the Bitterroot Mountains.

I'm working with Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) elders to look at place names, oral histories, and traditional stories, and seeing whether there are any links that can be made to the archeological record or the environmental record of the past.

Alongside assessing the geochemistry of found artifacts, Thompson is also advancing new lines of inquiry and methodologies into her investigation. She is utilizing an approach known as ethnogeology, which refers to the scientific study of human relationships with geological processes through the context of specific communities or cultures such as Indigenous nations. This interdisciplinary field of study enables these communities to share their conceptualization of the ecosystem they inhabit and how they refer to particular geological features or resource locations.

"I'm working with Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) elders to look at place names, oral histories, and traditional stories, and seeing whether there are any links that can be made to the archeological record or the environmental record of the past," said Thompson.

Thompson's landscape walks with Nez Perce elders have been co-operatively funded by the WSU Office of Research, the Partnership INSPIRE! Graduate Student Community Engaged Research Grant and by the National Science Foundation Traineeship at the WSU Center for Environmental Research, Education, and Outreach (CEREO) Rivers, Watersheds, and Communities (RWC) program.