Geographical Areas of Specialization:
North America, Plains
Topical Interests:
Zooarchaeology, Faunal Analysis, North American Archaeology, Native
American Ethnohistory, Culture Contact, Archaeological Theory and
Practice, Historical Anthropology, Landscapes, Identity, Archaeological
Fiction
Current Courses: P360 Archaeology of North America, E104 People and Animals
Profile:
In my research, I address long-term social
dynamics on the North American Plains by considering culture contact
studies, household production, and micro-scale daily activities.
My specialty is the identification and analysis of large mammal
bones, particularly bison. I consider processes of production, transportation,
processing, and discard.
Since
1990 I have been studying the intersection between food processing
and cultural identity during the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric
periods, trying to unravel relationships between High Plains hunter-gatherers
and Central Plains villagers. With the help of countless students,
I am analyzing faunal material from several sites, including the
Donovan site, a hunting camp in northeastern Colorado , A.D. 1000-1300,
the Albert Bell site, a farmstead in western Kansas , A.D. 1300,
and the Little River Site 14RC410, a Protohistoric Wichita farmstead
in south-central Kansas , A.D. 1450.
I
recently initiated an archaeological research project exploring
Social and Historical Landscapes of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
It consists of two spatially separate locations around the Bighorn
Basin of northern Wyoming and southern Montana , one adjacent to
the Crow Indian Reservation on the western slope of the Bighorn
Mountains and the other in the Shoshone homeland of the Absaroka
Mountains . This is collaborative research with Northwest College
in Powell , Wyoming , the National Park Service, and the U.S. Forest
Service. I wish to address historical and cultural topics, by examining
the ways that Native American inhabitants of the Rocky Mountains
crafted social identities, manipulated material culture, and situated
themselves within the broader landscape.
The
first of these locations is at the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation
Area. My focus is on the domestic architecture of stone circles,
the former locations of tipis. Many of these sites are located along
the Bad Pass Trail, a National Register site in Bighorn Canyon constructed
during prehistoric times and used by numerous Native American tribes,
early 19 th century trapping expeditions, and U.S. army patrols
during the Plains Indian campaigns. By combining traditional mapping
techniques with digital technology (integrating GIS, GPS, geophysical
survey, and artifact and feature attribute data), our collective
data provide a comprehensive package for understanding domestic
space and everyday lives.
This
project has expanded to the Washakie Wilderness area of northwestern
Wyoming , where I am investigating Shoshone campsites associated
with mountain sheep traps that were occupied between A.D. 1600 and
1900. Because the residents of these sites were pushed into this
remote mountainous location by expanding American Indian and Euroamerican
populations, virtually nothing is known about them.
The
material inventory includes a wide range of both aboriginal and
introduced materials, many of which date to the fur trade era. The
materials are clustered into distinct activity areas, such as tool
manufacture, animal butchery and bone processing, cooking facilities,
and craft production. This reveals information about the relationships
among the artifacts and the spatiality of everyday practice. The
exceptional range of aboriginal and introduced materials at these
sites is the only example of its kind in the west.
As part of this research, I also teach a summer archaeological fieldschool http://www.northwestcollege.edu/area/anthropology/wy07fs.html . Come see us sometime!
Selected Publications:
| n.d. |
Scheiber, Laura L. The Economy of Bison Exploitation on the Late Prehistoric North American High Plains. Accepted to Journal of Field Archaeology. |
| 2007 |
Scheiber, Laura L. and Charles A. Reher. The Donovan Site (5LO204): An Upper Republican Animal Processing Camp on the High Plains. Plains Anthropologist 52(203):337-364. |
| 2006 |
Scheiber, Laura L., Skeletal Biology: Plains. In Handbook
of North American Indians: Environment, Population, and Origins,
Volume 3, edited by Douglas Ubelaker. Smithsonian Institute
Press, Washington DC (in press) |
| 2006 |
Scheiber, Laura L., The Late Prehistoric on the High Plains
of Western Kansas. In Kansas Archaeology, edited by Robert
J. Hoard and William E. Banks, pp. 133-150. University of Kansas,
Lawrence |
| 2005 |
Scheiber, Laura L. Late Prehistoric Bison Hide Production
and Hunter-Gatherer Identities on the North American Plains.
In Gender and Hide Production, edited by Lisa Frink and Kathryn
Weedman, pp. 57-75. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California.
In Gender and Archaeology Series, edited by Sarah M. Nelson. |
| 1997 |
Scheiber, Laura L. and George W. Gill, Bioarcheology of the
Northwestern Plains. In Bioarcheology of the North Central United
States, edited by D. W. Owsley and J. C. Rose, pp. 88-114. Arkansas
Archeological Survey Research Series, No. 49. |
| 1995 |
Wyatt, Deborah J. and Laura L. Scheiber, Squatting Facets
on the Northwestern Plains Collection: Postural Habits and Ethnic
Diversity. Wyoming Contributions to Anthropology 4:39-49. |
| 1995 |
Reher, Charles A. and Laura L. Scheiber, Tree Growth on the
Snake River Floodplain, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. US Army Corps
of Engineers, Wetlands Program Technical Report WRP-RE-9. |
| 1994 |
Scheiber, Laura L., A Probable Early Nineteenth Century Crow
Burial: The Pitchfork Rockshelter Reexamined. Plains Anthropologist 39(147):37-51. |
