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This chapter focusses on the Journey Home Project carried out between the Sto:lō Xyolhmet S’olhetawtxw Sq’eq’ip Committee (Sto:lō House of Respect Caretaking Committee), the Sto:lō Research and Resource Management Centre, and the Laboratory of Archaeology at the University of British Columbia. The discourse of prescription, legislation, and best practices about repatriation may imply that there is only one path and that at the end of the pathway is repatriation, journey’s end. Setting one’s sights on repatriation it is possible to forget that the journey informs the process and is as important as the end. The journey is where process is negotiated, preconceptions are challenged, and relationships are forged. Those actively engaged in repatriation are well aware that every step represents variation and potential challenges to long-held perceptions, assumptions, and understandings. Repatriation, as a process, is a potential point of entry and means by which Indigenous communities and cultural heritage institutions have the opportunity to work together, establish common ground, create relationships, and move forward towards future joint destinations.

Our research, teaching, and outreach engagements with descendant communities are identifying a therapeutic role for archaeology. We argue that community-based archaeology—meaning community-directed studies of ancestral places practiced by invitation—can improve individual and communal health and well-being. Archaeology has untapped potential to elicit and confirm connections among people, places, objects, knowledges, ancestries, ecosystems, and worldviews. Such interconnections endow individuals and communities with identities, relationships, and orientations that are foundational for health and well-being. In particular, archaeology practiced as place-focused research can counteract cultural stress, a pernicious effect of colonialism that is pervasive among indigenous peoples worldwide. A Sto:lō–Coast Salish model of health provides a baseline for assessing and guiding community-based archaeology and related pursuits. Three cases of community-based archaeological practice among the Coast Salish of southw...

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, and relation. This paper presents an ontology of the Sq’éwlets Virtual Museum of Canada Website Project, a project that has focused on creating a digital community biography of the Sq’éwlets First Nation ( www.digitalsqewlets.ca ). Based on several decades of community archaeology and the recent production of short video documentaries, the website presents a long-term perspective of what it means to be a Sq’éwlets person and community member today. We explore how this project came to focus on the nature of being Sq’éwlets; how community members conceived the nature, structure, and nomenclature of the website; and how this Sq’éwlets being-ness is translated for outside audiences. We suggest what lessons this approach has for anthropological conventions of naming and knowing as they relate to Indigenous histories, and consider how archaeological knowledge can be transformed into a digital platform within a community-based process.

Tensions exist in the relationship between indigenous people and colonial-based authorities regarding the definition, recognition, and treatment of public heritage. This chapter takes an auto-ethnographic and self-reflexive approach to the exploration of current issues at the heart of such relationships in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. Case studies focus on Stó:lō-Coast Salish cultural sites including archaeological and heritage landscape features. This approach to dialogue is structured around the interplay between concepts of metamorphosis and transformation, drawn from Kafka’s literary work and Stó:lō oral history. Professional ethical guidelines and a framework of Indigenous-colonial relationships are proposed as means of addressing and reconciling current points of contention in the realm of public heritage.

The identification of earthen house floors or living surfaces during archaeological field investigations can be hampered by the scale of excavation, variable fieldworker experiences, and any number of site formation processes. Furthermore, although time- and context-sensitive sampling protocols (e.g., those required of macrobotanical and microartifact data collection) rely on in-the-moment identifications of floors, strong empirical evidence for the presence of house floors often comes well after the field season has concluded. Pocket penetrometers—inexpensive instruments that measure the compaction strength of soil—can lend empirical support to decisions about sampling procedures during onsite investigations. In this study, we present findings from the analysis of 4,463 penetrometer readings recorded during the excavation of residential and non-residential architecture at Welqámex, a Stó:lō-Coast Salish settlement in southwestern British Columbia. We show how pocket penetrometer data reveal quantifiable differences in the compaction of floors and other cultural deposits. We argue that compaction measurements can provide an additional line of data (ratio scale) to affirm or challenge onsite interpretations of stratigraphy based on other tactile and observational data, particularly as such interpretations pertain to surfaces expected to have been exposed to recurrent foot traffic

Maps and mapping are fundamental to archaeology. Archaeologists sometimes fail to recognize that the maps we use and create are fraught, like material culture, with interpretive complexities. These complexities arise from the fact that maps are created with social meaning dependent on the context in which the map was created and used. Here, we relate our experience with maps and mapmaking at the pithouse settlement of Sxwoxwiymelh, in southwestern British Columbia. We review the mapping history of the site, highlighting the contexts in which the maps were constructed and how they influenced subsequent interpretations of the site. We describe our deconstruction of these earlier maps and how we combined them to create a more accurate and detailed map that presented a rendition of the site as it was prior to significant modern development. This process of map deconstruction and construction allowed us to see several previously unknown details about the ancient settlement (e.g., house form, relative h...

Social scientists recognize a complex and iterative relationship between the built environment and social identities. Here, we explore the extent to which household and settlement remains may be used as archaeological correlates of collective identities among the Stó:lō-Coast Salish peoples of the Fraser River Valley. Using data from six recently tested archaeological sites we begin with the household and explore expressions of identity at various social-spatial scales. The sites span the period from 4200 cal B.C. to the late A.D. 1800s and include settlements with semi-subterranean houses of different forms as well as aboveground plank houses. Across this timeframe we see both change and continuity in settlement location, layout, size, and house form. Our data suggest that although group identities have changed over the millennia, selected social units have persisted through many generations and can be linked to present-day identities of the Stó:lō-Coast Salish.

Whether or not traditional centralized leadership existed among the central Coast Salish of the Gulf of Georgia-Puget Sound Regions is a topic of ongoing interest and debate among archaeologists, social anthropologists, ethnohistorians, and Aboriginal communities. Recent findings in the lower Fraser River Canyon of British Columbia of a unique class of archaeological site—rock fortifications, newly identified on the Northwest Coast—present an opportunity to address this discussion. Description of these features and analysis of their situation within the physical and social landscapes of the Fraser Canyon provides insight into the nature of Stó:lō warfare and defensive strategy. I propose the existence of a multivillage defensive network aimed at regulating access to the entire “Canyon watershed” rather than simply defending individual settlements. I present a “corporate family group” model of sociopolitical organization through which this defensive system operated—representing a minimum level of intercommunity governance traditionally known to the Sto:Lō of the Gulf of Georgia Region. This proposition provides an alternate view to the long-held belief that individual households were the traditional centers of economy, and by extension, of political authority among the Aboriginal peoples of the Northwest Coast. These results affect the current understanding and reconstruction of traditional expressions of Stó: Lō identity engrained in sociopolitical organization.

This study, co-developed by David Schaepe, Director,Stó:lo Research and Resource Management Centreand Susan Rowley, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, stems from the Journey Home Project, a repatriation of ancestral remains from the UBC Lab of Archaeology (LOA) to theStó:lo Nationof southwestern B.C. For the Stó:lo, knowing as much as possible about these ancestors informs their process.How can scientific research address Stó:lo questions and aid this repatriation?Opportunity recently arose for scientific study, stimulating a Stó:lo-LOA dialogue touching on multiple issues of scientific process, knowledge production and intellectual property.What types of anthropological research and scientific analyses can be applied to answer community-based questions? What are the details and cultural implications of analyses — both destructive and non-destructive? Who decides which questions to ask and which means of research to implement? Who interprets the results? Who owns those data? How do ‘scientific’ and ‘cultural’ ways of knowing relate? Who is allowed to share in and benefit from this knowledge? These questions are central to the Stó:lo ’s relationship with both their ancestors and LOA. This study aims to provide guidelines for generating knowledge within a mutually acceptable framework of authority, control, and use. These critical issues are at the forefront of our conversations as we work together to complete The Journey Home.

Despite its ubiquity in residential middens at many North American archaeological sites, thermally modified rock (TMR) is among the least studied elements of the archaeological record. TMR assemblages, however, may provide key insights into routine cooking practices, patterns of refuse disposal, and midden formation processes. This article outlines the results of experimental research aimed at understanding the conditions by which TMR assemblages were created in residential settlements in the Pacific Northwest. We present baseline data addressing the thermal properties of the hearth, the rate and circumstances of cobble fracturing, the extent to which different kinds of cobbles break when exposed to heat for varying durations, and the effectiveness of hot cobbles at achieving cooking temperatures.

In the Journey Home project, the question was not whether ancestral remains should be repatriated from the University of British Columbia Lab of Archaeology to the Stó:lo Nation, but rather how to do things right, regardless of timeframe. For the Stó:lo, knowing as much as possible about these ancestors informs their process.How can scientific research address Stó:lo questions and aid this repatriation? What types of anthropological research and scientific analyses can be applied to answer community-based questions? What are the details and cultural implications of analyses — both destructive and non-destructive? Who decides which questions to ask and which means of research to implement? Who interprets the results? Who owns those data? How do ‘scientific’ and ‘cultural’ ways of knowing relate? Who is allowed to share in and benefit from this knowledge? These questions are central to the Stó:lo ’s relationship with both their ancestors and LOA. Ultimately, this IPinCH Community Initiative provides mutually acceptable guidelines for repatriation, addressing complex questions related to the production of knowledge, authority, control, and ongoing relationships with ancestors.