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Darcy Mathews

Archaeologists and others have long overlooked ecosystems stewarded by Indigenous Peoples on the Northwest Coast of North America due to colonial perspectives on food-procurement strategies. As a result, these places remain largely... more
Archaeologists and others have long overlooked ecosystems stewarded by Indigenous Peoples on the Northwest Coast of North America due to colonial perspectives on food-procurement strategies. As a result, these places remain largely overlooked and unprotected in present-day conservation and cultural resource management. Further, identifying, understanding, and revitalizing these systems are key to supporting the food security, cultural identity, and inter-generational knowledge transfer of Indigenous Peoples. This is the case with the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking Songhees First Nation (Coast Salish/southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia), where colonialism has severely impacted traditional knowledge about estuarine root gardens. To address this issue, and the desire of the lək̓ʷəŋən to revitalize these sites, this study employs a novel interdisciplinary methodology to evaluate a potential garden on the archipelago of Tl’chés. By combining archaeology, ecology, and pedology, and conducting ecological surveys, soil analysis, and archaeological excavations, we found that past cultivation practices have left measurable impacts at the site more than 100 years after management ceased. We conclude that evidence of estuarine root garden management is present in the Coast Salish, and that it is possible to identify sites in areas where they are no longer known by the community, re-integrating them within traditional food systems and re-defining archaeological approaches to their study.
Revitalizing Indigenous land-based practices are acts of resurgence and resistance. The presence of Indigenous bodies occupying land to nourish and strengthen themselves through ancestral practices is a political act. These cultural... more
Revitalizing Indigenous land-based practices are acts of resurgence and resistance. The presence of Indigenous bodies occupying land to nourish and strengthen themselves through ancestral practices is a political act. These cultural systems of knowledge and practice are in opposition to historical and ongoing colonial attempts to dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their connections to land. Indigenous People have undergone changes in diet and land access, including cultivating and harvesting plants for health and wellbeing. Recognizing and understanding the impacts and implications of colonization on land-based knowledge is fundamental in carrying out meaningful work within Indigenous communities in the field of ethnobotany. Much of the literature and media on Indigenous issues continue to uphold trauma narratives. When working with Indigenous communities on projects, it is essential to understand the history, impacts and ongoing struggles related to colonization and genocide in Ameri...
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people, an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound was at one time an ubiquitous... more
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people, an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound was at one time an ubiquitous feature of the landscape around Victoria. These precontact burials, essentially consisting of rock and soil structures built on the ground surface over a single body, were often prominently placed along the coastline of southwestern Vancouver Island. As they were situated on ridges overlooking Cadboro Bay and crowning the top and sides of Beacon Hill and other local landmarks (Figure 2), these burials were well-known to the early residents of Fort Victoria and the subsequent arrivals from abroad. Although recent field research has been conducted on burial cairns and mounds in the Fraser Valley on the mainland of British Columbia (for example Lepofsky et a!. 2000), and in a general theoretical sense in the larger Strait of Georgia region (Thqm 1995), ...
Twenty-four new radiocarbon dates from isolation basin cores, excavations and natural exposures, and an archeological site, constrain relative sea-level change since the last glaciation in the northern Strait of Georgia, British Columbia.... more
Twenty-four new radiocarbon dates from isolation basin cores, excavations and natural exposures, and an archeological site, constrain relative sea-level change since the last glaciation in the northern Strait of Georgia, British Columbia. Relative sea level fell rapidly from about 150 m elevation to 45 m elevation from 11 750 to 11 000 BP (13 750 to 13 000 cal BP), then its rate of fall slowed. The initial rapid emergence began soon after the transition from proximal to distal glaciomarine sedimentation, when the glacial front retreated from the Strait of Georgia and the Earth’s surface was unloaded. A sea-level lowstand a few metres below present-day sea level may have occurred in the early Holocene, but sea level was near its present level by 2000 BP. Sea-level change in the northern Strait of Georgia lagged the mid Strait of Georgia, 80 km to the south, by a few hundred years during initial emergence. The lowstand in the northern strait was later and probably shallower than in th...
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people. an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound. a phenomenon occurring... more
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people. an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound. a phenomenon occurring 1500-1000 years before present, consist of an ...
Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter their dead within funerary petroforms. These burials, consisting of patterned arrangements of stone and soil built over the dead, marked a... more
Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter their dead within funerary petroforms. These burials, consisting of patterned arrangements of stone and soil built over the dead, marked a dramatic transition from below ground burials within the village, to above ground cemeteries located around village peripheries. This upward and outward movement of the dead is exemplified at the Rocky Point Peninsula on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island. It is one of the largest mortuary landscapes on the Northwest Coast of North America, with 515 visible funerary petroforms distributed within and between two large neighbouring cemeteries. Catherine Bell’s (1992) notion of ritualization challenges us to consider what the building of funerary petroforms accomplished that previous funerary practices did not. While funerals are times of grieving, they may also be ritual actions in which the dead are transformed from corpse to ancestor and the fami...
For many Indigenous peoples, their traditional lands are archives of their histories, from the deepest of time to recent memories and actions. These histories are written in the landscapes' geological features, contemporary plant... more
For many Indigenous peoples, their traditional lands are archives of their histories, from the deepest of time to recent memories and actions. These histories are written in the landscapes' geological features, contemporary plant and animal communities, and associated archaeological and paleoecological records. Some of these landscapes, recently termed " cultural keystone places " (CKPs), are iconic for these groups and have become symbols of the connections between the past and the future, and between people and place. Using an historical-ecological approach, we describe our novel methods and initial results for documenting the history of three cultural keystone places in coastal British Columbia, Canada: Hauyat, Laxgalts'ap (Old Town) and Dałk Gyilakyaw (Robin Town) (territories of Heiltsuk, Gitga'ata, and Gitsm'geelm, respectively). We combine data and knowledge from diverse disciplines and communities to tell the deep and recent histories of these cultural landscapes. Each of CKPs encompasses expansive landscapes of diverse habitats transformed by generations of people interacting with their surrounding
For many Indigenous peoples, their traditional lands are archives of their histories, from the deepest of time to recent memories and actions. These histories are written in the landscapes' geological features, contemporary plant and... more
For many Indigenous peoples, their traditional lands are archives of their histories, from the deepest of time to recent memories and actions. These histories are written in the landscapes' geological features, contemporary plant and animal communities, and associated archaeological and paleoecological records. Some of these landscapes, recently termed " cultural keystone places " (CKPs), are iconic for these groups and have become symbols of the connections between the past and the future, and between people and place. Using an historical-ecological approach, we describe our novel methods and initial results for documenting the history of three cultural keystone places in coastal British Columbia, Canada: Hauyat, Laxgalts'ap (Old Town) and Dałk Gyilakyaw (Robin Town) (territories of Heiltsuk, Gitga'ata, and Gitsm'geelm, respectively). We combine data and knowledge from diverse disciplines and communities to tell the deep and recent histories of these cultural landscapes. Each of CKPs encompasses expansive landscapes of diverse habitats transformed by generations of people interacting with their surrounding
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Increasingly, it is recognized by ethnoecologists, anthropologists and conservation biologists that Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest Coast and neighbouring regions have been astute stewards and managers—not just harvesters and... more
Increasingly, it is recognized by ethnoecologists, anthropologists and conservation biologists that Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest Coast and neighbouring regions have been astute stewards and managers—not just harvesters and consumers—of the resources and ecosystems on which they have relied. Over thousands of years of residence along the coast, these peoples have developed diverse approaches and protocols that have not only sustained, but enhanced, resource species both in quantity and in quality. These are based on long-term observation and experience, and are embedded in belief systems, ceremonies, dances, art, and in narratives. Here we provide an overview of marine and coastal resource management systems that have been documented to date, and then cite three case examples in more detail: clam gardens, salmon production, and estuarine root gardens. These different production systems do not function alone but are components of an entire system of land and resource management extending across the marine and terrestrial landscapes, “from ocean bottom to mountaintop.” These traditional management systems have been seriously disrupted since the arrival of European newcomers and the resulting impacts on key habitats from settlement, and land encroachment, to industrial scale exploitation. Today, efforts are underway in many cases to recognize and restore these critically important Indigenous production systems and associated practices as a means of ethnoecological restoration, habitat enhancement, and food system revitalization.
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Human occupation is usually associated with degraded landscapes but 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia's coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity. This is... more
Human occupation is usually associated with degraded landscapes but 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia's coastal First Nations has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity. This is particularly the case over the last 6,000 years when intensified intertidal shellfish usage resulted in the accumulation of substantial shell middens. We show that soils at habitation sites are higher in calcium and phosphorous. Both of these are limiting factors in coastal temperate rainforests. Western redcedar (Thuja plicata) trees growing on the middens were found to be taller, have higher wood calcium, greater radial growth and exhibit less top die-back. Coastal British Columbia is the first known example of long-term intertidal resource use enhancing forest productivity and we expect this pattern to occur at archaeological sites along coastlines globally.
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Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter their dead within funerary petroforms. These burials, consisting of patterned arrangements of stone and soil built over the dead, marked a... more
Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter their dead within funerary petroforms. These burials, consisting of patterned arrangements of stone and soil built over the dead, marked a dramatic transition from below ground burials within the village, to above ground cemeteries located around village peripheries. This upward and outward movement of the dead is exemplified at the Rocky Point Peninsula on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island. It is one of the largest mortuary landscapes on the Northwest Coast of North America, with 515 visible funerary petroforms distributed within and between two large neighbouring cemeteries.

Catherine Bell’s (1992) notion of ritualization challenges us to consider what the building of funerary petroforms accomplished that previous funerary practices did not. While funerals are times of grieving, they may also be ritual actions in which the dead are transformed from corpse to ancestor and the family from mourner to inheritor. It was in the authority of tradition that funerary ritual served as a process for both enacting and contesting relationships of power within and between the two neighbouring communities at Rocky Point.

Foregoing excavation, Coast Salish protocols of working with their dead challenged me to consider how the external and material attributes of funerary petroforms worked through space and time to produce a landscape inhabited by these durable, ancestral agents. Focusing on the mesoscale encompassing these two large cemeteries, this dissertation is an analysis of the depositional practices employed by the Rocky Point peoples in the burial of their dead. Tacking between an ethnographic thematic analysis of Coast Salish ritualization, a body of social theory, and the archaeological record, I used a novel suite of quantitative analyses to identify patterns in how these burials were made, in addition to how they were placed relative to one another on the landscape. Results point to a fundamental bifurcation in funerary petroform morphology and placement, in part, differentiating communities of ritual practice at Rocky Point. In particular, the results highlight the social significance of the spaces between the burials, as much as the burials themselves. This is exemplified by a perceptual paradox in which these above ground features, built according to shared dispositions of practice and placed on distinctive landscapes, are simultaneously and intentionally hidden from day to-day movement between villages. This Rocky Point sense of monumentality speaks to the liminality of their most powerful dead, anchored at the threshold of the living.

Funerary petroforms have a persistent power to entangle the living and the dead in oblique relationships of power. The resilience of this memory work, however, is not limited to the past. At Rocky Point and other cemeteries throughout the Salish Sea, these ancestral places provide living descendants with a tangible connection to family and community history. Possessing a durability that continues to enmesh people and places through time, funerary petroforms are one of the fulcrums upon which relations of power are presently balanced between Coast Salish and settler communities in British Columbia.
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The remains of the Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį man were found on a glaciated and windswept pass between the Samuel Glacier and the headwaters of Fault Creek, a tributary of the O’Connor River. While seemingly remote, hostile and inaccessible in... more
The remains of the Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį man were found on a glaciated and windswept pass between the Samuel Glacier and the headwaters of Fault Creek, a tributary of the O’Connor River. While seemingly remote, hostile and inaccessible in today’s terms, the mountainous homelands of the Dän (Tutchone), Tagish and Tlingit are full of glaciated landscapes, and the oral history of these peoples recount the use of glaciers as travel routes. One hypothesis is that the Long Ago Person Found was walking a travel route between the lower Chilkat River and an inland destination when he died, with his body then becoming incorporated into perennial snow and glacial ice. To better understand the Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį man’s travel route, the alpine portion of his last day was retraced on foot. Photographs from that effort illustrate the route he would have seen. As the discovery site and surrounding area is officially closed to visitors, our reconnaissance effort ended one kilometre before the actual site where the body was found, but we nonetheless traversed a major lobe of the Samuel Glacier, the more difficult section of his journey.