A Complex Culture of the British Columbia Plateau: Traditional Stl'atl'imx Resource Use

Barbara Angel teaches Native studies at the University of Manitoba.

This collection of articles on resource use among the Lillooet peoples
of the interior plateau of British Columbia presents the cumulative
results of several years of research undertaken by scholars from a wide
variety of disciplines, including archeology, anthropology, ethnobotany,
and linguistics. Editor Brian Hayden, a professor in the Department of
Archeology at Simon Fraser University, has assembled a book of vital
importance for specialists in these areas, as well as for scholars
interested in subsistence strategies among Native peoples in other parts
of North America.

Hayden and his collaborators address questions of change over a
4000-year period in the relationship between the ecological environment
and the prehistoric culture of aboriginal groups living in the middle
Fraser Canyon. Hayden’s major premise is that the dramatic shift from
a generalized hunter/gatherer society to a more complex hunter/gatherer
society came about because of increased specialization in resource
exploitation, which led to the emergence of socioeconomic inequality
based on restricted access to resources, and the development of notions
of private property and corporate social structures. Hayden argues that
these characteristics were not a result of diffusion from coastal
peoples, but rather a consequence of advances in the techniques for
drying and storage of salmon and the geographical location of the
Lillooet people at the hub of an extensive trade network between coastal
and plateau groups.

The restricted size of the core study area (530 sq. km) and the
emphasis on a single theme—resource use—make this book of primary
interest to specialists. Not surprisingly, given that nine different
authors are represented in 11 chapters, the overall impact of the book
is uneven. While many of the articles contain valuable and hitherto
unpublished data, greater editorial control would have helped to
eliminate repetition of material both within and between articles. The
introductory and concluding chapters by Hayden are important for an
appreciation of the theoretical implications of the research. The most
readable and informative chapters, by Steven Romanoff, deal with salmon
fishing and the cultural ecology of hunting and potlatches among the
Lillooet. In sum, this book makes an important contribution to a
little-known area of precontact culture, notably in the wealth of detail
it provides for future researchers.