Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains (Athabasca University Press)

Brink, Jack W.

ISBN 10: 189742504X / ISBN 13: 9781897425046

Published by Athabasca University Press, Edmonton, AB, 2008

About this Item

Clean, tight, unmarked; light wear to inside corners; small 1.5cm crease to bottom back edge; otherwise spine straight and uncreased; very minimal wear; How could ancient hunters, lacking horses and firearms, persuade entire herds of bison to gallop to a particular spot on the edge of a cliff and plunge to their deaths? What place did these dramatic perilous events occupy in their economy, culture, and religious practices? These are just a few of the questions archaeologist Jack Brink explore in this book, as he brings the most spectacular and successful food-getting enterprises ever devised to rich and vivid life. Working from eyewitness accounts by early European explorers, thousands of years of archaeological evidence, and ancient stories passed down over generations, Brink puts flesh on the bones of history in this epic, real-life tale of courage, ingenuity, and the struggle to survive.

Seller Inventory # 008298

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains (Athabasca University Press)
• Publisher: Athabasca University Press, Edmonton, AB
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 189742504X
• ISBN 13: 9781897425046
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

For millennia, Aboriginal hunters on the North American Plains used their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour to drive their quarry over cliffs. Archaeologist Jack Brink has written a major study of the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported before and after European contact. By way of example, he draws on his 25 years excavating at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southwestern Alberta, Canada – a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

About the Author

Jack W. Brink is Archaeology Curator at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton, Canada. He received his B.A. from the University of Minnesota and his M.A. from the University of Alberta. His interests also include the study of rock art images of the northern Plains, and he enjoys working with Aboriginal communities on heritage issues.