Diving into Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump with Dr. Shawn Bubel and Dr. Kevin McGeough Part 2 - Plains 53

Carlton and Chris reunite with Drs. Shawn Bubel and Kevin McGeough of the University of Lethbridge to continue their discussion of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump UNESCO World Heritage Site. If you missed Part 1, listen to it before turning to Part 2, in which Shawn and Kevin discuss their recent Plains Anthropologist article, “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump: The Durative Power of Keystone Institutions and Embedded Knowledge.” In both the article and this episode, they move beyond archaeological and behavioral-ecological models that view buffalo jumps primarily as meat factories to explore the sites’ broader social and cultural significance. What are “keystone institutions” in hunter-gatherer archaeology, and how can archaeologists identify them? What is embedded knowledge, and how is it expressed at Head-Smashed-In? What happens to a cultural system when the institutions that sustain it are suddenly taken away? And how have the Blackfoot reclaimed some of this embedded knowledge in the recent past?

Article Citation:

Shawn Bubel and Kevin McGeough (04 Jun 2026) Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump: The Durative Power of Keystone Institutions and Embedded Knowledge. Plains Anthropologist, in press.

Transcript

• For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/great-plains-archaeology/53
• Transcript

Links

• Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains by Jack Brink (2008)
• Plains Anthropological Society Website
• Plains Anthropologist Online Journal Access
• The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains by Douglas B. Bamforth (2021)
• Archaeology on the Great Plains Edited by W. Raymond Wood (1998)
• Carlton's KU Anthropology Faculty Bio
• Chris’s PCRG Bio

Contact

• Instagram: @‌pawnee_archaeologist
• Email: [email protected]

APN

• APN Website: