Bison hunting as social institution: a bird’s-eye view

María Nieves Zedeño, University of Arizona professor of anthropology, will present a free Department of Anthropology Distinguished Archaeologist lecture, “Bison Hunting as a Social Institution: A Bird’s Eye View,” at 7 p.m. on Feb. 2, at the Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, Hale Science Building, room 270.

Through Indigenous Archaeology, Zedeño believes it is possible to recast the prehistoric ancestral Blackfoot bison hunting tradition of the northwestern Plains (AD 1000-1750) as an institution based on religious principles and corporate forms of social and political control rather than as an economic pursuit. She explains, “New advances in theory and method used to date stone surface architecture and map it at unprecedented scales reveal that bison hunting involved extensive labor management and landscape engineering that can legitimately be called monumental.”

Zedeño’s early professional activities were motivated by her interest in ceramic technology, population movement, regional interaction, and ethnic co-residence in the American Southwest. Recently she has been devoted to understanding traditional land use history vis-à-vis past and present community identity and social cohesion. She has secured research funding from federal and private sources and completed collaborative projects with numerous tribes representing Pueblo, Numic, Algonquian and Siouan languages and ethnic groups in the United States and Canada.

The Hale Science building is located at 1350 Pleasant. The cost for parking on Saturday at all CU parking lots is $3. The campus is easily accessed by bike, B-cycle, foot, and bus (Pleasant and Broadway/Euclid stop).

This lecture is co-sponsored by the University of Colorado Anthropology Department, the Archaeological Institute of America, and the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.

For information on the Archeological Institute of America (AIA) contact Boulder AIA President Steve Lekson at lekson@colorado.edu or 303-492-6671. For information on the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, to receive exhibit, talk, lecture, Family Day and workshop invitations and to sign up for regular museum updates visit: http://CUmuseum.Colorado.edu or call 303.492.6892.

Feb. 1, 2013