Beyond Activity Areas: Structure and Symbolism in the Organization and Use of Space Inside Tipis

Abstract

Although often overlooked in recent studies of symbolism in the built environment, the domestic architecture of nomadic hunter-gatherers serves more than the utilitarian functions of providing shelter for people and their possessions and as a setting for domestic activities. As illustrated from ethnographic data, the shelters used by the Plains bison hunters also encode and communicate much information about the social and symbolic traditions of the group. Although designed to be practical and portable, tipis are also cultural constructs which simultaneously serve the symbolic, structural, proxemic and ergonomic needs of the occupants. The present study outlines a methodology that allows archaeologists to access the symbolic and structural principles underlying the organization and use of space inside tipis by examining the locations of refuse clusters relative to the entrance, hearth, and altar. This approach not only provides descriptive information on the nature and location of activity areas but also offers social and symbolic reasons for their specific placement within the tipi. Such reconstructions of the social and symbolic organization of space add human agency to the interpretation of the archaeological record and provide exciting new avenues for exploring social roles and relations among individuals within households.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 18 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.