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A common issue for archaeologists who study intermediate-scale societies is defining scale and complexity of occupations across entire villages or towns. This can be a major problem since an understanding of site-wide inter-household occupation patterns can be crucial for accurate reconstruction of village demographics and socio-economic organization. In this paper we present new research at the Bridge River site, a large complex hunter-gatherer village in British Columbia, designed to develop a site-wide history of household occupation patterns. We accomplish this through broad-scale geophysical investigations, test excavations and an extensive program of radiocarbon dating. Results of the study suggest that the village grew rapidly between ca. 1800 and 1250 cal. B.P. expanding from 7 to at least 29 simultaneously occupied houses. Variability in household spacing and size indicate that social organization may have grown increasingly complex parallel with rising numbers of households.

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S ocial inequality evolved in the Middle Fraser (Mid-Fraser) Canyon of British Columbia prior to European contact (Teit 1906). Long before the coming of Europeans, the ancient people of the Mid-Fraser Canyon constructed large villages (or towns) and their chiefs presided over massive households of sometimes 50 or more per-sons. Archaeological research in the Mid-Fraser villages offers the opportunity to develop and test theoretical models of emergent inequality (Prentiss and Kuijt 2012; Prentiss et al. 2007).Our research is concerned with the emergence of material wealth-based inequality. By emergence we mean development of a new or previ-A fundamental problem for anthropological archaeology lies in defining and explaining the evolutionary origins of social inequality. Researchers have offered a range of models emphasizing variability in the roles of managers, aggrandizers, ecological variability, and historical contexts. Recent studies suggest that the form of emergent inequality may have varied significantly between groups, implying that pathways to inequality may have varied as well. Unfortunately it has been difficult to test many of these models using archaeological data given their requirements for fine-grained assessments of spatiotemporal variability in many data classes. Recent research at the Bridge River site in British Columbia provides the opportunity to explore the utility of a range of explanatory models associated with early social inequality. Results of the study suggest that inequality, measured as significant variability in accumulation of a range of material wealth items, came late to the Bridge River site (ca. 1200-1300 cal. B.P.) and was associated with a period of demographic packing and apparent declining access to some critical subsistence resources. Assessment of interhousehold variability in demography, wealth accumulation, and occupational longevity suggests that markers of significant affluence manifested only in newly established houses. An important implication is that material wealth-based inequality may not have been hereditary in nature at Bridge River during the period prior to 1100 cal. B.P.La definición y explicación de los orígenes evolutivos de la desigualdad social son problemas fundamentales para la arqueología antropológica. Diferentes investigadores han proporcionado una gama de modelos que enfatizan la variabilidad en los roles de administradores y aggrandizers, versatilidad ecológica, y de los contextos históricos. Estudios recientes sugieren que la forma de desigualdad emergente pudo haber variado notablemente entre los grupos, lo cual implica que los caminos hacia la desigualdad pudieron haber variado también. Desafortunadamente ha sido difícil probar estos modelos usando datos arqueológicos, debido a que estos requieren detalladas evaluaciones sobre variabilidad espacio-temporal en diferentes clases de datos. Investigaciones recientes en el sitio Bridge River (Columbia Británica) ofrecen la oportunidad de explorar la utilidad de un rango de modelos explicativos aso...

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