The rise of social complexity in the Salish Sea region has long been linked to the development of salmon based economies, first amongst Downriver and Island Halkomelem groups, and then by Straits Salish groups roughly 1000 years later. More recently, it has been suggested that the rise of social complexity was linked to linguistic affiliation and ethnographic access to the salmon fishery of the Fraser River (Mitchell 1971), to patterns of resource ownership, and to a generalized intensification of resource exploitation (Clark 2010) which developed amongst the Downriver and Island Halkomelem speakers around 2000 BP. Increased access to salmon alone is, I believe, an unsatisfactory explanation for such culture change. Downriver and Island Halkomelem speakers both inhabit areas with extensive wetland features which were vastly bioproductive, while the territory of Salish speakers has relatively few.
This paper examines evidence from the Cowichan Valley, on the south-east coast of Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. Traditional knowledge and oral traditions of the Cowichan First Nation indicate that their history has been deeply tied to the wetland features in their landscape. Although several archaeological sites in the Cowichan Valley have been investigated, the results have not been incorporated into regional or sub-regional studies. Conclusions about the rise of
social complexity have been extended to this area despite their exclusion from previous studies.
This paper examines available archaeological, oral historical, and traditional knowledge in order to identify the nature of the Cowichan relationship with their wetland features, and re-evaluates conclusions about the path to social complexity amongst other Halkomelem speakers in the Salish Sea region.

Location

Norcroft Centre, University of Bradford