Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear : Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Rocky Mountains and Borderlands

Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear explores advances in the prehistory and early history of Numic hunter-gatherers in the Rocky Mountain West through the presentation and analysis of archaeological and historic research on the period from the earliest established presence in the Rockies and its borderlands more than a thousand years ago to the forced removal of Ute, Shoshone, and other tribes to reservations in the mid-nineteenth century.

New research into Numic archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography is significantly changing the understanding of migratory patterns, cultural interactions, chronology, and shared cultural-religious practices of regionally defined Numic branches and non-Numic populations of the American West. Contributors examine case studies of Ute and Shoshone material culture (ceramics, lithics, features and structures, trade and seasonal migration), chronology (dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence), and subsistence systems (hunting camps, game drives, faunal and botanical evidence of food sources). They also delineate different hunter-gatherer “ethnic groups” who co-occupied or interacted within one another's territories through trade, raiding, or seasonal subsistence migrations, such as the Late Fremont/Ute and the Shoshone or the early Navajo/Ute and the Shoshone.

With a strong emphasis on diverse cases and new and original archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic lines of evidence, Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear interweaves anthropological theory and innovative applications of leading-edge scientific methodologies and technologies. The book presents a cross-section of field, laboratory, and ethnohistoric studies—including indigenous consultation—that explore past, recent, and ongoing developments in Numic cultural history and prehistory. It will be of interest to scholars of Southwestern archaeology, as well as private and government cultural resource specialists and museum staff.


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