Format:
1 online resource (361 pages)
ISBN:
9781897425091
Content:
At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwestern Alberta, Aboriginal people practiced a form of group hunting for nearly 6,000 years before European contact. The large communal bison traps of the Plains were the single greatest food-getting method ever developed in human history. Hunters, working with their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour, drove their quarry over a cliff and into wooden corrals. The rest of the group butchered the kill in the camp below. Author Jack Brink, who devoted 25 years of his career to "The Jump," has chronicled the cunning, danger, and triumph in the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported. He also recounts the excavation of the site and the development of the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, which has hosted 2 million visitors since it opened in 1987. Brink's masterful blend of scholarship and public appeal is rare in any discipline, but especially in North American pre-contact archaeology.
Content:
Cover Page -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- CHAPTER 1: THE BUFFALO JUMP -- Communal Buffalo Hunting -- Not Just Any Cliff -- The Site -- The Cliff -- How Long Have Buffalo Jumped? -- Blood on the Rocks: The Story of Head Smashed-In -- CHAPTER 2: THE BUFFALO -- Is it Bison or Buffalo? -- In Numbers, Numberless -- Tricks of the Trade -- The Fats of Life -- CHAPTER 3: A YEAR IN THE LIFE -- Calves -- Mothers -- Fathers -- The Big Picture -- Science and the Historic Record -- The Seasonal Round -- The Season of Buffalo Jumping -- CHAPTER 4: THE KILLING FIELD -- Finding Bison -- Drive Lanes -- Points in Time -- Ancient Knowledge -- Back to the Drive Lanes -- Deadmen -- In Small Things Forgotten -- CHAPTER 5: ROUNDING UP -- The Spirit Sings -- The Nose of the Buffalo -- Fire this Time -- Luring the Buffalo -- Buffalo Runners -- Lost Calves -- Billy's Stories -- The End of the Drive -- Of Illusions, Pickup Trucks, and Curves in the Road -- CHAPTER 6: THE GREAT KILL -- Leap of Faith -- Overkill? -- Drop of Death -- Bones on Fire -- Let the Butchering Begin -- Bison Hide as Insulator -- Back to the Assembly Line -- CHAPTER 7: COOKING UP THE SPOILS -- The Processing Site -- Day Fades to Night -- Dried Goods -- Grease is the Word -- High Plains Cooking -- Hazel Gets Slimed -- Buffalo Chips -- Hot Rocks -- Time for a Roast -- Where Are the Skulls? -- Packing Up, Among the Bears -- CHAPTER 8: GOING HOME -- Buffalo Hides -- Pemmican -- Snow Falling on Cottonwoods -- CHAPTER 9: THE END OF THE BUFFALO HUNT -- The Skin of the Animal -- The Last of the Buffalo Jumps -- Rivers of Bones -- Final Abandonment of Head-Smashed-In -- CHAPTER 10: THE PAST BECOMES THE PRESENT -- Beginnings -- A Beer-soaked Bar Napkin -- Cranes on the Cliff -- A Rubber Cliff -- And a Rubber Dig -- The Blackfoot Get Involved -- Meeting with the Piikani -- Joe Crowshoe.
Note:
Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9781897425046
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe ISBN 9781897425046
Language:
English
Keywords:
Electronic books
URL:
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