I am an Associate Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria and my current research engages in the fields of Northwest Coast Archaeology, Ethnoecology, Mortuary Archaeology, and Historical Ecology.
My principal research program is a long-term collaboration with the Songhees Nation, doing community-based archaeological and ethnoecological research at Tl'ches, an archipelago of islands with a rich and deep history of indigenous landscape use and ecological stewardship. This includes village excavations, and the ecological legacies of stewardship such as eatable blue camas and other root gardens, clam gardens, and culturally stewarded trees. Contact: dmathews@uvic.ca
Archaeologists and others have long overlooked ecosystems stewarded by Indigenous Peoples on the ... more Archaeologists and others have long overlooked ecosystems stewarded by Indigenous Peoples on the Northwest Coast of North America due to colonial perspectives on food-procurement strategies. As a result, these places remain largely overlooked and unprotected in present-day conservation and cultural resource management. Further, identifying, understanding, and revitalizing these systems are key to supporting the food security, cultural identity, and inter-generational knowledge transfer of Indigenous Peoples. This is the case with the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking Songhees First Nation (Coast Salish/southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia), where colonialism has severely impacted traditional knowledge about estuarine root gardens. To address this issue, and the desire of the lək̓ʷəŋən to revitalize these sites, this study employs a novel interdisciplinary methodology to evaluate a potential garden on the archipelago of Tl’chés. By combining archaeology, ecology, and pedology, and conducting ecological surveys, soil analysis, and archaeological excavations, we found that past cultivation practices have left measurable impacts at the site more than 100 years after management ceased. We conclude that evidence of estuarine root garden management is present in the Coast Salish, and that it is possible to identify sites in areas where they are no longer known by the community, re-integrating them within traditional food systems and re-defining archaeological approaches to their study.
Revitalizing Indigenous land-based practices are acts of resurgence and resistance. The presence ... more Revitalizing Indigenous land-based practices are acts of resurgence and resistance. The presence of Indigenous bodies occupying land to nourish and strengthen themselves through ancestral practices is a political act. These cultural systems of knowledge and practice are in opposition to historical and ongoing colonial attempts to dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their connections to land. Indigenous People have undergone changes in diet and land access, including cultivating and harvesting plants for health and wellbeing. Recognizing and understanding the impacts and implications of colonization on land-based knowledge is fundamental in carrying out meaningful work within Indigenous communities in the field of ethnobotany. Much of the literature and media on Indigenous issues continue to uphold trauma narratives. When working with Indigenous communities on projects, it is essential to understand the history, impacts and ongoing struggles related to colonization and genocide in Ameri...
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people, an ethnolinguistic group centred on present... more Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people, an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound was at one time an ubiquitous feature of the landscape around Victoria. These precontact burials, essentially consisting of rock and soil structures built on the ground surface over a single body, were often prominently placed along the coastline of southwestern Vancouver Island. As they were situated on ridges overlooking Cadboro Bay and crowning the top and sides of Beacon Hill and other local landmarks (Figure 2), these burials were well-known to the early residents of Fort Victoria and the subsequent arrivals from abroad. Although recent field research has been conducted on burial cairns and mounds in the Fraser Valley on the mainland of British Columbia (for example Lepofsky et a!. 2000), and in a general theoretical sense in the larger Strait of Georgia region (Thqm 1995), ...
Twenty-four new radiocarbon dates from isolation basin cores, excavations and natural exposures, ... more Twenty-four new radiocarbon dates from isolation basin cores, excavations and natural exposures, and an archeological site, constrain relative sea-level change since the last glaciation in the northern Strait of Georgia, British Columbia. Relative sea level fell rapidly from about 150 m elevation to 45 m elevation from 11 750 to 11 000 BP (13 750 to 13 000 cal BP), then its rate of fall slowed. The initial rapid emergence began soon after the transition from proximal to distal glaciomarine sedimentation, when the glacial front retreated from the Strait of Georgia and the Earth’s surface was unloaded. A sea-level lowstand a few metres below present-day sea level may have occurred in the early Holocene, but sea level was near its present level by 2000 BP. Sea-level change in the northern Strait of Georgia lagged the mid Strait of Georgia, 80 km to the south, by a few hundred years during initial emergence. The lowstand in the northern strait was later and probably shallower than in th...
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people. an ethnolinguistic group centred on present... more Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people. an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound. a phenomenon occurring 1500-1000 years before present, consist of an ...
Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter t... more Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter their dead within funerary petroforms. These burials, consisting of patterned arrangements of stone and soil built over the dead, marked a dramatic transition from below ground burials within the village, to above ground cemeteries located around village peripheries. This upward and outward movement of the dead is exemplified at the Rocky Point Peninsula on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island. It is one of the largest mortuary landscapes on the Northwest Coast of North America, with 515 visible funerary petroforms distributed within and between two large neighbouring cemeteries. Catherine Bell’s (1992) notion of ritualization challenges us to consider what the building of funerary petroforms accomplished that previous funerary practices did not. While funerals are times of grieving, they may also be ritual actions in which the dead are transformed from corpse to ancestor and the fami...
Archaeologists and others have long overlooked ecosystems stewarded by Indigenous Peoples on the ... more Archaeologists and others have long overlooked ecosystems stewarded by Indigenous Peoples on the Northwest Coast of North America due to colonial perspectives on food-procurement strategies. As a result, these places remain largely overlooked and unprotected in present-day conservation and cultural resource management. Further, identifying, understanding, and revitalizing these systems are key to supporting the food security, cultural identity, and inter-generational knowledge transfer of Indigenous Peoples. This is the case with the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking Songhees First Nation (Coast Salish/southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia), where colonialism has severely impacted traditional knowledge about estuarine root gardens. To address this issue, and the desire of the lək̓ʷəŋən to revitalize these sites, this study employs a novel interdisciplinary methodology to evaluate a potential garden on the archipelago of Tl’chés. By combining archaeology, ecology, and pedology, and conducting ecological surveys, soil analysis, and archaeological excavations, we found that past cultivation practices have left measurable impacts at the site more than 100 years after management ceased. We conclude that evidence of estuarine root garden management is present in the Coast Salish, and that it is possible to identify sites in areas where they are no longer known by the community, re-integrating them within traditional food systems and re-defining archaeological approaches to their study.
Revitalizing Indigenous land-based practices are acts of resurgence and resistance. The presence ... more Revitalizing Indigenous land-based practices are acts of resurgence and resistance. The presence of Indigenous bodies occupying land to nourish and strengthen themselves through ancestral practices is a political act. These cultural systems of knowledge and practice are in opposition to historical and ongoing colonial attempts to dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their connections to land. Indigenous People have undergone changes in diet and land access, including cultivating and harvesting plants for health and wellbeing. Recognizing and understanding the impacts and implications of colonization on land-based knowledge is fundamental in carrying out meaningful work within Indigenous communities in the field of ethnobotany. Much of the literature and media on Indigenous issues continue to uphold trauma narratives. When working with Indigenous communities on projects, it is essential to understand the history, impacts and ongoing struggles related to colonization and genocide in Ameri...
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people, an ethnolinguistic group centred on present... more Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people, an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound was at one time an ubiquitous feature of the landscape around Victoria. These precontact burials, essentially consisting of rock and soil structures built on the ground surface over a single body, were often prominently placed along the coastline of southwestern Vancouver Island. As they were situated on ridges overlooking Cadboro Bay and crowning the top and sides of Beacon Hill and other local landmarks (Figure 2), these burials were well-known to the early residents of Fort Victoria and the subsequent arrivals from abroad. Although recent field research has been conducted on burial cairns and mounds in the Fraser Valley on the mainland of British Columbia (for example Lepofsky et a!. 2000), and in a general theoretical sense in the larger Strait of Georgia region (Thqm 1995), ...
Twenty-four new radiocarbon dates from isolation basin cores, excavations and natural exposures, ... more Twenty-four new radiocarbon dates from isolation basin cores, excavations and natural exposures, and an archeological site, constrain relative sea-level change since the last glaciation in the northern Strait of Georgia, British Columbia. Relative sea level fell rapidly from about 150 m elevation to 45 m elevation from 11 750 to 11 000 BP (13 750 to 13 000 cal BP), then its rate of fall slowed. The initial rapid emergence began soon after the transition from proximal to distal glaciomarine sedimentation, when the glacial front retreated from the Strait of Georgia and the Earth’s surface was unloaded. A sea-level lowstand a few metres below present-day sea level may have occurred in the early Holocene, but sea level was near its present level by 2000 BP. Sea-level change in the northern Strait of Georgia lagged the mid Strait of Georgia, 80 km to the south, by a few hundred years during initial emergence. The lowstand in the northern strait was later and probably shallower than in th...
Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people. an ethnolinguistic group centred on present... more Prior to European contact, the Straits Salish people. an ethnolinguistic group centred on present day Victoria in southwestern British Columbia, built a distinctive form of grave. The burial cairn and mound. a phenomenon occurring 1500-1000 years before present, consist of an ...
Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter t... more Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter their dead within funerary petroforms. These burials, consisting of patterned arrangements of stone and soil built over the dead, marked a dramatic transition from below ground burials within the village, to above ground cemeteries located around village peripheries. This upward and outward movement of the dead is exemplified at the Rocky Point Peninsula on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island. It is one of the largest mortuary landscapes on the Northwest Coast of North America, with 515 visible funerary petroforms distributed within and between two large neighbouring cemeteries. Catherine Bell’s (1992) notion of ritualization challenges us to consider what the building of funerary petroforms accomplished that previous funerary practices did not. While funerals are times of grieving, they may also be ritual actions in which the dead are transformed from corpse to ancestor and the fami...
Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį: Teachings from Long Ago Person Found. Edited by Richard J. Hebda, Sheila Greer, Alexander P. Mackie. Royal British Columbia Museum. ISBN 9780772666994, 2017
The remains of the Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį man were found on a glaciated and windswept pass between t... more The remains of the Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį man were found on a glaciated and windswept pass between the Samuel Glacier and the headwaters of Fault Creek, a tributary of the O’Connor River. While seemingly remote, hostile and inaccessible in today’s terms, the mountainous homelands of the Dän (Tutchone), Tagish and Tlingit are full of glaciated landscapes, and the oral history of these peoples recount the use of glaciers as travel routes. One hypothesis is that the Long Ago Person Found was walking a travel route between the lower Chilkat River and an inland destination when he died, with his body then becoming incorporated into perennial snow and glacial ice. To better understand the Kwädąy Dän Ts’ìnchį man’s travel route, the alpine portion of his last day was retraced on foot. Photographs from that effort illustrate the route he would have seen. As the discovery site and surrounding area is officially closed to visitors, our reconnaissance effort ended one kilometre before the actual site where the body was found, but we nonetheless traversed a major lobe of the Samuel Glacier, the more difficult section of his journey.
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