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Chapter 12 - Afterword

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2021

Douglas B. Bamforth
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
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Summary

I began this volume by noting the disconnect between widespread and long-standing views of the indigenous people and environment of the Great Plains and the reality of the character and history of that region. Mounted bison hunters like the ones we often visualize did live on the grasslands, but they existed for little more than a century and a half and many of the most famous groups who lived this way migrated to the Plains during the Colonial Era. Focusing on them neglects not only the farmers who dominated the Plains for a millennium but also the diversity of hunter-gatherer ways of life that people have lived there for perhaps 15,000 years or more. Like human history throughout North America, human history on the Plains is not a story of an unchanging way of life fixed for centuries in the forms that Euroamericans encountered; it is a story of constant change and interaction between human beings and the region’s potentials and limits. It is also a story that is difficult to understand without thinking about how Plains people reached out beyond the grasslands, establishing social and economic connections that spanned much of North America.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Afterword
  • Douglas B. Bamforth, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Book: The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains
  • Online publication: 19 November 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139029728.012
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  • Afterword
  • Douglas B. Bamforth, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Book: The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains
  • Online publication: 19 November 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139029728.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Afterword
  • Douglas B. Bamforth, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Book: The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains
  • Online publication: 19 November 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139029728.012
Available formats
×