Dr. Colin Grier
Ph.D., Arizona State University
Assistant Professor
Archaeology
Research Interests - Current Research - Courses - Graduate Students - Publications
Research Interests
Northwest Coast of North America; Korean Peninsula and Pacific Rim; complex hunter-gatherers; social inequality; agency theory and political economy; quantitative and spatial analysis; zooarchaeology; aDNA and stable isotopes
Current Research
Research on Complex Hunter Gatherers
My core research interest concerns the organization of complex hunter-gatherers. For this, I take a comparative perspective (see information on my Korean research below). Theoretically, my focus is on the emergence of supra-household institutions in small scale societies. I have a strong interest in household change, and how resources become increasingly controlled within the context of households. I adopt a theoretical perspective that situates human agency in the context of the constraining and enabling structures in which humans exist, including social networks, political institutions and ecological and socially-constructed landscapes.
Areas of the world and peoples on which I have carried out research, and which inform my perspective, include the Northwest Coast of North America, the Korean peninsula and Pacific Rim, Arctic whaling societies, the German Upper Paleolithic, and prehistoric Ireland. I am constantly looking to expand the archaeological contexts in which questions concerning complex hunter-gatherer organization can be addressed.
My field research projects continue to fuel opportunities for field-based graduate student research, archaeological field schools, and collaborative research with local aboriginal groups.
Northwest Coast Complexity
My archaeological research on the Northwest Coast of North America centers on investigating the economic organization, social institutions and political economy of precontact complex hunter-gatherers, particularly in the Gulf of Georgia region of southwestern British Columbia. I am looking into the relationship between the development of large households, village formation, social inequality, and intensive storage economies specifically during the Marpole period (2500 to 1000 BP). My research in the Gulf Islands has been driven by on-going fieldwork involving excavations at early village sites and settlement pattern research. For these projects, I work collaboratively with the Penelakut and Lyackson First Nations, and other Nations of the Hul’qumi’num peoples.
A Comparative Perspective: Archaeology on the Korean Peninsula
In addition to my appointment at WSU, I have an “International Scholar” position at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, Korea. There, I engage in field research and analysis in partnership with Dr. Jangsuk Kim (see Grier et al. 2006) with the ultimate purpose of assessing the processes that fueled the emergence of social complexity in small-scale, coastal societies around the world.
This comparative research focuses specifically on households, analyzing changes in household size and resource storage capacity over time. On the Northwest Coast, households start off residing in small longhouses that become larger over time. This suggest two things. First, an increasingly large labor pool was aggregated into longhouses. Second, storage capacity also increased. Longhouses acted essentially as storage boxes, and their size therefore provides a relative measure of household storage capacity.
In Korea, longhouse-based households increase in size from the late complex hunter-gatherer period (prior to 3300 BP, known as Chulmun) through the early agricultural period (3300 to 2700 BP, or Early Mumun). With the onset of intensive agriculture (Songgukri Culture), households fragment into very small entities with external storage features in increasingly segregated locations. Since household organization is a barometer of broader changes in society, these disparate cases suggest important differences in the way resources were controlled, a pattern that we are hoping to better document and explain.
Courses
Undergraduate
- ANTH 101 - General Anthropology
- ANTH 230 - Introduction to Archaeology
- ANTH 430 - Introduction to Archaeological Method and Theory
- ANTH 490 - Integrative Themes in Anthropology
Graduate
- ANTH 537 - Quantitative Methods in Anthropology
- ANTH 540 - Prehistory of the Northwest Coast
- ANTH 546 - Complexity in Small Scale Societies
Graduate Students
I currently supervise seven graduate students:
Patrick Dolan, PhD
Justin Hopt, MA
Susan Lukowski, MA
Matthew Marino, MA
Adam Rorabaugh, PhD
Annette Ruzicka, MA
Erin Smith, PhD
Representative Publications
2012 Grier, Colin; Kelli Flanigan, Misa Winters, Leah G. Jordan, Susan Lukowski and Brian M. Kemp
Using Ancient DNA Identification and Osteometric Measures of Archaeological Pacific Salmon Vertebrae for Reconstructing Salmon Fisheries and Site Seasonality at Dionisio Point, British Columbia. Journal of Archaeological Science (in press, pre-publication version available).
2012 Angelbeck, Bill and Colin Grier
Anarchism and the Archaeology of Anarchic Societies: Resistance to Centralization in the Coast Salish Region of the Pacific Northwest Coast (with CA Comments and Reply). Current Anthropology (in press; forthcoming in 2012).
2012 Grier, Colin and Susan Lukowski
On Villages, Quantification and Appropriate Context: A Comment on “Social Archaeology of a Northwest Coast House” by Paul A. Ewonus. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology (in press).
2012 Grier, Colin
Thinking through Local and Regional Histories: Recent Research at Dionisio Point and in the Outer Gulf Islands. The Midden 44(1):6-9.
2012 Grier, Colin and Jangsuk Kim
Resource Control and the Development of Political Economies in Small-Scale Societies: Contrasting Prehistoric Southwestern Korea and the Coast Salish Region of Northwestern North America. Journal of Anthropological Research 68(1):1-34.
2010 Grier, Colin
Probable Pasts and Possible Futures: Issues in the Reconstruction of Complex Hunter- Gatherers of the Northwest Coast. In La Excepción y la Norma: Las Sociedades Indígenas de la Costa Noroeste de Norteamérica desde la Archaeología, edited by A. Vila and J. Estévez, pp. 116-134. Treballs D’Ethnoarqueologia, 8, Madrid [Spanish version with extended English abstract] [English version].
2010 Grier, Colin
Review of Projectile Point Sequences in Northwestern North America. In Canadian Journal of Archaeology 34:115-118
Assessing Sea Level Changes in the Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia Using Archaeological Data from Coastal Spit Locations. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 33:254-280.
2009 Corr, Linda T., Michael P Richards, Colin Grier, Alexander Mackie and Richard P. EvershedProbing Dietary Change of Kwaday Dan Ts¹inchi, An Ancient Glacier Body from British Columbia II: Deconvoluting Whole Skin and Bone Collagen Delta 13C Values via Carbon Isotope Analysis of Individual Amino Acids. Journal of Archaeological Science 36:12-18.
2008 Grier, Colin and Chief Lisa ShaverWorking Together: The Role of Archaeologists and First Nations in Sorting Out Some Very Old Problems in British Columbia. The SAA Record 8(1):33-35.
2007 Grier, ColinConsuming the Recent for Constructing the Ancient: The Role of Ethnography in Coast Salish Archaeological Interpretation. In Be Of Good Mind: Essays on the Coast Salish, edited by B.G. Miller. UBC Press, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
2006 Colin Grier, Jangsuk Kim, and Junzo Uchiyama (editors)Beyond Affluent Foragers: Rethinking Hunter-Gatherer Complexity, Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK.
2006 Grier, ColinAffluence on the Prehistoric Northwest Coast of North America. In
Beyond Affluent Foragers: Rethinking Hunter-Gatherer Complexity, edited by
C. Grier, J. Kim and J. Uchiyama, pp. 126-135. Oxbow Books, Oxford, UK.
2006 Kim, Jangsuk and Colin Grier
Beyond Affluent Foragers. In Beyond Affluent Foragers: Rethinking Hunter-Gatherer Complexity, edited by C. Grier, J. Kim and J. Uchiyama, pp. 192-200. Oxbow Books, Oxford.
Temporality in Northwest Coast Households. In Household Archaeology on the Northwest Coast, edited by E.A. Sobel, D.A. Trieu Gahr, and K.M. Ames, pp. 97-119. International Monographs in Prehistory, Ann Arbor.
2006 Grier, ColinThe Political Context of Prehistoric Coast Salish Residences on the Northwest Coast. In Palaces and Power in the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest Coast, edited by J.J. Christie and P.J. Sarro, pp. 141-165. University of Texas Press, Austin.
2003 Grier, ColinDimensions of Regional Interaction in the Prehistoric Gulf of Georgia. In Emerging from the Mist: Studies in Northwest Coast Culture History, edited by R.G. Matson, Quentin Mackie, and Gary Coupland, pp. 170-187. UBC Press, Vancouver, BC.
2000 Grier, ColinLabor Organization and Social Hierarchies in North American Arctic Whaling Societies. In Hierarchies in Action, Cui Bono?, edited by Michael W. Diehl, pp. 264-283. Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper No. 27, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois.
1999 Grier, ColinThe Organization of Production in Prehistoric Thule Whaling Societies. Canadian Journal of Archaeology 23:11-28.
1994 Grier, Colin and James M. SavelleIntrasite Spatial Patterning and Thule Eskimo Social Organization. Arctic Anthropology 31(2):95-107.
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