Bjerck et al./Marine Ventures, 8. Exploring Trajectories towards Social Complexity

This paper explores the progressive views that frame the history of marine foragers from simple to complex organizations. Based on the ethnographic and archaeological records of the complex hunter-gatherers in the Northwest Coast of North America, three evidences are normally discussed to recognize complexity: Settlement patterns, decoration on portable objects and fishing intensification. This paper compares these archaeological measures between the Northwest Coast and two other landscapes with similar natural settings: The marine hunter-gatherers in Mesolithic Norway and the Beagle Channel in southernmost Argentina. Since the criteria used to assess the archaeological record vary between regions and scientific traditions, the evaluations of changes towards complexity are many-sided and ambiguous. In this paper the following arguments are supported: 1. Structural changes are not always seen in settlement patterns among these societies and when these changes are observed in some areas, they do not reach the same archaeological measures as identified for the Northwest Coast; 2. Structural changes in settlement patterns are not always accompanied by changes in other social complexity markers (e.g. art production, fishing intensification, etc.); 3. Social complexity is not the only condition for the production of decorated artefacts; 4. Not all high latitude marine hunter-gatherers that intensified fish resources may classify as 'complex' or ‘semi-sedentary’ societies.