Anna Prentiss

Lead Undergraduate Advisor

Office Location: Social Science 234 Office Telephone: 406-243-6152 E-mail: anna.prentiss@umontana.edu

Description

Dr. Anna Marie Prentiss is an archaeologist specializing in the prehistory of the Great Plains and Pacific Northwest regions of North America.  She has a methodological specialty in lithic technology and theoretical interests in the evolution of hunter-gatherer societies.  She also has extensive experience in cultural resource management, particularly in the northwestern Great Plains region.

Dr. Prentiss is actively engaged in a long term study of the evolution of complex hunter-gatherer societies on the interior of British Columbia.  The current focus of this research is a multi-year excavation at the Bridge River archaeological site.   Bridge River is one of several exceptionally large and well preserved ancient housepit villages, located near the town of Lillooet, British Columbia.  The site was initially occupied between 1800 and 1100 years ago and then during the past 500 years.  With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Prentiss, along with her students and colleagues will conduct major excavations during 2008 and 2009 to examine socio-economic and political changes that occurred during the occupation span of the village.

During 2006 and 2007, Dr. Prentiss directed archaeological excavations in the Bear's Paw Mountains of Montana with sponsorship from the Water Resources Department of the Chippewa-Cree tribe.  The focus of these studies was to collect data from prehistoric sites, threatened by reservoir construction.  Results of the research provide significant new insight into ancient land use practices of aboriginal groups in north-central Montana, spanning the past 6000 years.

Dr. Prentiss teaches courses on lithic technology, proposal preparation, and the archaeology of hunter-gatherers in the greater Pacific Northwest, Great Plains, and Arctic regions.  She supervises graduate students conducting research into such topics as archaeological stratigraphy and radiocarbon dating, lithic technology, zooarchaeology, and prehistoric cooking features in the Great Plains and Pacific Northwest regions.  Her former students are now employed in universities, federal and state agencies, and private consulting firms.  

Office Hours

MWF 11-12, 2-3

Field of Study

archaeology

Research Interests

archaeological method and theory, evolutionary theory, hunter-gatherers, lithic technology, prehistory of the Great Plains, northwestern North America and the North Pacific Rim

•  Report of the 2008 Investigations of the Bridge River Archaeological Site (EeRl4): [PDF]
• Bridge River Archaeological Report 2008: [ Access Database (zipped) ]
  
•  Report of the 2007 Investigations of the Bridge River Archaeological Site (EeRl4): [Word] [PDF]

Courses

ANTH 251 Foundations of Civilization

ANTH 454 Lithic Technology

ANTH 457 Archaeology of the Pacific Northwest

ANTH 458 Archaeology of Hunter-Gatherers

ANTH 459 Archaeology of the Arctic and Subarctic

ANTH 601 Proposal Preparation

Education

BA Anthropology, University of South Florida

MA Anthropology, University of South Florida

Ph.D. Archaeology, Simon Fraser University

Selected Publications

Prentiss, Anna Marie, Guy Cross, Thomas A. Foor, Dirk Markle, Mathew Hogan, and David S. Clarke

2008    Evolution of a Late Prehistoric Winter Village on the Interior Plateau of British Columbia: Geophysical Investigations, Radiocarbon Dating, and Spatial Analysis of the Bridge River Site. American Antiquity (in press). 

Goodale, Nathan B., Ian Kuijt, and Anna Marie Prentis

2008        Demography of Prehistoric Fishing-Hunting People: A Case Study of the Upper Columbia Area. In New Advances in Paleodemography: Data,    Techniques, and Patterns, edited by Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Apel. Springer-Verlag, New York (in press).

Prentiss, Anna Marie and David S. Clarke

2008        Stone Circle Sites on the “Big Flat” Area of the Western Bighorn Mountains.  In The Medicine Lodge Creek Site, Wyoming, edited by G.C. Frison. University of Wyoming Press, Laramie (in press).

Prentiss, Anna Marie and David S. Clarke

2008    Lithic Technological Organization in an Evolutionary Framework:  Examples from North America’s Pacific Northwest Region. In Lithic Technology: Measures of Production Use and Curation, edited by W. Andrefsky. Cambridge  University Press, Cambridge (in press).

Prentiss, Anna Marie, Natasha Lyons, Lucille E. Harris, Melisse R.P. Burns, and Terrence M. Godin

2007    The Emergence of Status Inequality in Intermediate Scale Societies:  A Demographic and Socio-Economic History of the Keatley Creek Site, British Columbia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26:299-327.

Specialized Skills

Archaeology; Lithic technology; Cultural resource management; Evolution in hunter-gatherer societies; Great Plains and Pacific Northwest

International Experience

Dr. Prentiss is actively involved in archaeological research in British Columbia, Canada.