CANCELLED Constructed Coastlines of the Salish Sea

Mar 19, 2020
  • Capacity: 51
  • 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
  • Location:
    Peter Wall Institute Seminar Room
    6331 Crescent Rd
    Vancouver, BC

Unfortunately, this event has been postponed. We will make an announcement once it has been rescheduled. 

Prior to contact with European settler populations, the Salish Sea was already an anthropogenic place. Its coastlines and landscapes had been constructed and engineered for millennia, and its resources managed for at least 5,000 years. 

Focusing on two decades of research in the southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia, in this presentation Colin Grier will consider the importance of these “coastscaping” practices and examine the social dimensions of how landscape construction and resource management systems operated in the past. He will illustrate how an understanding of such long-term practices can directly inform how we might re-establish a resilient and sustainable Salish Sea.

 

Colin Grier is a Professor of Archeology at Washington State University and a Peter Wall Institute International Visiting Research Scholar. His research focuses on the emergence of supra-household institutions in small-scale societies, including the formation of large households, structured communities and regional sociopolitical systems.