Early Peoples in the Plateau: Nimíipuu Knowledge and Landscape Adaptation in the Bitterroot Mountains

Mountain environments and resources have played a significant role in Indigenous cultural and subsistence lifeways and knowledge systems yet remain underrepresented in landscape research. Recent archaeological evidence points to the Southern Columbia Plateau as an early entry point for the Peopling of the Americas. Understanding the landscape is essential to adaptation in new and changing environments, and archaeological methods combined with Indigenous knowledge are uniquely positioned to investigate these human-environment relationships. Indigenous oral narratives, correlated with geologic processes, reveal a deep record of landscape knowledge that may offer insight into early migration, environmental adaptation, and landscape exploration. In this talk, I will present on collaborative research which integrates geoarchaeology and ethnogeology to examine how land use, mobility, and placemaking shaped the establishment of seasonal subsistence cycle among the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce). Ethnogeology foregrounds Indigenous perspectives of place, complementing archaeological investigation by contextualizing the cultural meanings of stone artifacts. This talk…