Social complexity and corporate households on the southern Northwest Coast of North America, A.D. 1450--1855.

Abstract

This study addresses anthropological debate about the role of corporate groups in the evolution and reproduction of complexity in middle-range societies, particularly the importance of control over production versus control over exchange as determinants of corporate group prestige, power, and wealth. Discussions of these issues frequently reference the multi-family Native household of the Northwest Coast of North America; these households were corporate groups and are often presented as an example of the corporate group in middle-range society. Despite this theoretical dependence on Northwest Coast data in general studies, current views of Northwest Coast households and societies are limited by extensive reliance on ethnographic and historical documents. This research addresses these limits to our understanding of Northwest Coast corporate households through analyses of archaeological data from the Lower Columbia River Valley, located on the southern Northwest Coast and historically occupied by Chinookan peoples. The study analyzes links between corporate household prestige, production, and exchange on the Lower Columbia from the late pre-contact through early post-contact periods (ca. A.D. 1450--A.D. 1855) based on archaeological and documentary data. The archaeological component involves analyses of two sites---Cathlapotle (45CL1) and Clahclellah (45SA11)---each containing remains of multiple households. The analyses evidence hierarchies among corporate households in prestige, production, and exchange within each community. While production and exchange were foundations of corporate household prestige in both communities, the importance of exchange relative to production was greater at Clahclellah than at Cathlapotle, most likely due to differences in geography, mobility, access to trade centers and travel routes, and community history. In both towns, the importance of exchange as a basis of household prestige may have increased during the post-contact period due to Native-Euroamerican interaction. These results suggest that models of complexity in Northwest Coast societies and in middle-range societies generally need to more fully consider variability in the relationships between corporate group prestige, production, and exchange.