Keatley Creek is a large hunter-gatherer-fisher village site, one of a handful of large villages located near the Fraser River on the Canadian Plateau of southwest British Columbia. Believed to have been occupied between about 2600 and 400 years ago (ca 350 BC-AD 1600), Keatley Creek was a winter salmon-fishing village of at least 115 houses, with an estimated peak population of some 1200 people. The major core of Keatley Creek was abruptly abandoned ~AD 1000, although smaller isolated residences continued to be used intermittently for some centuries afterward.
Living at Keatley Creek
Keatley Creek houses were semi-subterranean pithouses, made of wooden posts. These houses were occupied during the winters on the Fraser River. The people who lived at Keatley Creek relied primarily on stored salmon, supplemented by roots, berries, deer and some small mammals. Varieties of salmon recovered from the site include sockeye, chinook and coho salmon, available from August to October; researchers believe that the salmon were accumulated in the summer, and dried and stored for use throughout the winter.
Keatley Creek housepits vary in size between 5 meters to 20 meters in diameter. Some evidence suggests that social ranking is in evidence, and that the four largest houses represent the residences of corporate leaders, multi-household clans or otherwise higher status social groups. The largest houses have the highest storage capacity, a higher frequency of prestige foods (chinook salmon) and artifacts (made of hard-to-get materials such as obsidian, steatite and nephrite).
Why Hunter-Gatherer Villages at Keatley Creek?
Typically, hunter-gatherers do not settle in villages--hunting and gathering requires following the movements of animals and the ripening of plants (what archaeologists call "seasonal mobility". Although there is some debate, the Keatley Creek village and others in the Fraser Valley appears to have grown to their largest size during a significant climatic warming event, that changed vegetation and reduced salmon populations. Excavators agree that the conglomeration occurred so that people could protect the salmon fishing resource base; WC Prentiss believes that occurred when the salmon were disappearing.
On the outskirts of the most densely occupied zone of Keatley Creek are very large houses which have been variously interpreted. Some authors have argued that these houses are multi-family dwellings. Excavator Brian Hayden has argued that they were secret society meeting-houses or cult facilities for feasting.
Dating Keatley Creek
The major occupation of Keatley Creek is called the Classic Lillooet phase, seen in sites throughout the Fraser valley. The two main excavators of Keatley Creek (WC Prentiss and B Hayden) disagree about the dating of the Classic Lillooet phase, with Hayden arguing that the large village emerged between 2600-1000 BP (ca 400 BC-AD 1000) and Prentiss arguing for a more recent date of 1200-800 BP (ca AD 800-1200).
There is no disagreement about the abrupt abandonment of Keatley Creek and other villages in the region, which occurred sometime between AD 1000-1200. This has been atttributed to a catastrophic landslide affecting the Fraser River salmon runs; however, the dating of the geoarchaeologically identified Texas Creek landslide is far too early to have affected the abandonment.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to American Archaic, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Hayden B. 2005. The Emergence of Large Villages and Large Residential Corporate Group Structures among Complex Hunter/gatherers at Keatley Creek. American Antiquity 70(1):169-174.
Hayden B, Bakewell E, and Gargett R. 1996. The world's longest-lived corporate group: Lithic analysis reveals prehistoric social organization near Lillooet, British Columbia. American Antiquity 61(2):341-356.
Kuijt I. 2001. Reconsidering the "Cause" of Cultural Collapse in the Lillooet Area of British Columbia, Canada: A Geoarchaeological Perspective. American Antiquity 66(4):692-703.
Morin J. 2010. Ritual architecture in prehistoric complex hunter-gatherer communities: A potential example from Keatley Creek, on the Canadian plateau. American Antiquity 75(3):599-625.
Prentiss AM, Lyons N, Harris LE, Burns MRP, and Godin TM. 2007. The emergence of status inequality in intermediate scale societies: A demographic and socio-economic history of the Keatley Creek site, British Columbia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26:299–327.
Prentiss WC, Lenert M, Foor T, and Goodale NB. 2005. The Emergence of Complex Hunter-Gatherers on the Canadian Plateau: A Response to Hayden. American Antiquity 70(1):175-180.
Prentiss WC, Lenert M, Foor TA, Goodale NB, and Schlegel T. 2003. Calibrated Radiocarbon Dating at Keatley Creek: The Chronology of Occupation at a Complex Hunter-Gatherer Village. American Antiquity 68(4).
Speller CF, Yang DY, and Hayden B. 2005. Ancient DNA investigation of prehistoric salmon resource utilization at Keatley Creek, British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Archaeological Science 32(9):1378-1389.
