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Laura L. Scheiber

Associate Professor in Anthropology
Director, William R. Adams Zooarchaeology Laboratory
Affiliate,Center for Archaeology in the Public Interest

(812) 855-6755 | Email | Office Hours
  • Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of California-Berkeley (2001)
  • M.A. in Anthropology, University of Wyoming (1993)
  • B.A. in Anthropology, University of Wyoming (1990)

Geographical Areas of Specialization: North America, Plains

Topical Interests: Zooarchaeology, Faunal Analysis, North American Archaeology, Native American Ethnohistory, Culture Contact, Archaeological Theory and Practice, Historical Anthropology, Landscapes, Identity, Archaeological Fiction

As part of this research, I teach a summer archaeological fieldschool http://www.indiana.edu/~anthro/about/news/archfieldschool.html. Come see us sometime!

Profile:

In my research, I address long-term social dynamics on the North American Plains by considering culture contact and colonialism, household production, and micro-scale daily activities. My specialty is the identification and analysis of large mammal bones, particularly bison. I emphasize processes of production, transportation, processing, cooking, and discard.

Since 1990 I have been studying the intersection between food processing and cultural identity during the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods, trying to unravel relationships between High Plains hunter-gatherers and Central Plains villagers. With the help of countless students, I am analyzing faunal material from several sites, including the Donovan site, a hunting camp in northeastern Colorado , A.D. 1000-1300, the Albert Bell site, a farmstead in western Kansas , A.D. 1300, and the Little River Site 14RC410, a Protohistoric Wichita farmstead in south-central Kansas , A.D. 1450.

I am also the co-director of an archaeological research project Exploring Social and Historical Landscapes of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. It consists of two spatially separate locations around the Bighorn Basin of northern Wyoming and southern Montana , one adjacent to the Crow Indian Reservation on the western slope of the Bighorn Mountains and the other in the Shoshone homeland of the Absaroka Mountains . This is collaborative research with Northwest College (Powell, Wyoming), Little Big Horn College (Crow Agency, Montana), St. Cloud State University (Minnesota), the National Park Service, and the U.S. Forest Service. I address historical and cultural topics by examining the ways that Native American inhabitants of the Rocky Mountains crafted social identities, manipulated material culture, and situated themselves within the broader landscape.

The first of these locations is at the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. My focus is on the domestic architecture of stone circles, the former locations of tipis. Many of these sites are located along the Bad Pass Trail, a National Register site in Bighorn Canyon constructed during prehistoric times and used by numerous Native American tribes, early 19th century trapping expeditions, and U.S. army patrols during the Plains Indian campaigns. By combining traditional mapping techniques with digital technology (integrating GIS, GPS, geophysical survey, and artifact and feature attribute data), our collective data provide a comprehensive package for understanding domestic space and everyday lives.

This project has expanded to the wilderness mountain areas of northwestern Wyoming, where I am investigating Shoshone campsites and bighorn sheep traps of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Because the residents of these sites were pushed into this remote mountainous location by expanding American Indian and Euroamerican populations, virtually nothing is known about them.

The material inventory includes a wide range of both aboriginal and introduced materials, many of which date to the fur trade era. The materials are clustered into distinct activity areas, such as tool manufacture, animal butchery and bone processing, cooking facilities, and craft production. This reveals information about the relationships among the artifacts and the spatiality of everyday practice. The exceptional range of aboriginal and introduced materials at these sites is the only example of its kind in the west.

 


Selected Publications


2011

Scheiber, Laura L. and Judson Byrd Finley  (2011)  Situating (Proto)History on the Northwestern Plains and Rocky Mountains. The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology, edited by Timothy R. Pauketat, pp. 347-358. Oxford University press, New York.
2011

Scheiber, Laura L. and Judson Byrd Finley (2011)  Obsidian Source Use in the Greater Yellowstone Area, Wyoming Basin, and Central Rocky Mountains.  American Antiquity 75(2):372-394.

2011

Scheiber, Laura L. and Judson Byrd Finley  (2011)  Mobility as Resistance: Colonialism among Nomadic Hunter-Gatherers in the American West.  In Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology as Historical Process, edited by Kenneth E. Sassaman and Donald H. Holly. Jr., pp. 167-183. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
2011

Scheiber, Laura L., Kelly M. Branam, Judson Byrd Finley, Rebecca A. Nathan, Katherine L. Burnett, Maureen P. Boyle, Dawn M. Rutecki, Aaron E. Erickson, Chris Finley, Alda Good Luck (2011).  "Crow Rediscover a Piece of Their Homeland":America's Best Idea at Bighorn Canyon. SAA's Archaeological Practice January 2011 prototype, pp. 29-34.
2010

Scheiber, Laura L. and Mark D. Mitchell (editors)  (2010)  Across a Great Divide: Continuity and Change in Native North American Societies, 1400-1900.  Amerind Studies in Archaeology, edited by John Ware.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

2010

Scheiber, Laura L. and Judson B. Finley (2010)  Mountain Shoshone Technological Transitions across the Great Divide.  In Across a Great Divide: Continuity and Change in Native North American Societies, edited by Laura L. Scheiber and Mark D. Mitchell, pp. 128-148.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson.

2010

Mitchell, Mark D. and Laura L. Scheiber (2010) Crossing Divides: Archaeology as History .In Across a Great Divide: Continuity and Change in Native North American Societies, 1400-1900, edited by Laura L. Scheiber and Mark D. Mitchell, pp. 1-22.  University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
2010

Scheiber, Laura L. and Judson Byrd Finley (2010) Domestic Campsites and Cyber Landscapes in the Rocky Mountains. Antiquity 84(323):114-130.  

2009

Scheiber, Laura, Maureen Boyle, and Judson Finley (2009)  Archaeology: Combining Mapping Techniques with Digital Technology  PositionIT (Nov/Dec 2009):25-29.

2008

Scheiber, Laura L. and Bonnie J. Clark (editors). Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains . University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

2008 Scheiber, Laura L. Intersecting Landscapes in Northeastern Colorado: A Case Study from the Donovan Site In Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains, edited by Laura L. Scheiber and Bonnie J. Clark, pp. 17-40. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.
2008 Clark, Bonnie J. and Laura L. Scheiber. A Sloping Land: An Introduction to Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains In Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains, edited by Laura L. Scheiber and Bonnie J. Clark, pp. 1-16. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.
2008 Scheiber, Laura L. Life and Death on the Northwestern Plains optimized Life and Death on the Northwestern Plains: Mortuary Practices and Cultural Transformations. In Skeletal Biology and Bioarchaeology of the Northwestern Plains, edited by George W. Gill and Rick L. Weathermon, pp. 22-41. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
2008 Scheiber, Laura L., Judson Byrd Finley, and Maureen P. Boyle. Bad Pass Archaeology. American Surveyor 5(4):12-23.
2007 Scheiber, Laura L.  The Economy of Bison Exploitation on the Late Prehistoric North American High Plains.  Journal of Field Archaeology. 32(3):297–313
2007 Scheiber, Laura L. and Charles A. Reher.  The Donovan Site (5LO204: An Upper Republican Animal Processing Camp on the High Plains  Plains Anthropologist 52(203):337-364.
2006 Scheiber, Laura L., Skeletal Biology: Plains. In Handbook of North American Indians: Environment, Population, and Origins, Volume 3, edited by Douglas Ubelaker, pp. 595-609. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.
2006 Scheiber, Laura L., The Late Prehistoric on the High Plains of Western Kansas  In Kansas Archaeology, edited by Robert J. Hoard and William E. Banks, pp. 133-150. University of Kansas, Lawrence.
2005 Scheiber, Laura L. Late Prehistoric Bison Hide Production and Hunter Gatherer Identities on the North American Plains. In Gender and Hide Production, edited by Lisa Frink and Kathryn Weedman, pp. 57-75.  AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek, California.  In Gender and Archaeology Series, edited by Sarah M. Nelson.
2001 Scheiber, Laura L.  Late Prehistoric Daily Practice and Culture Contact on the North American High Plains: A Zooarchaeological Perspective.  Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley. ANYONE WHO WOULD LIKE A COPY OF THIS DOCUMENT, PLEASE CONTACT DR. SCHEIBER DIRECTLY.
1997 Scheiber, Laura L. and George W. Gill, Bioarcheology of the Northwestern Plains. In Bioarcheology of the North Central United States, edited by D. W. Owsley and J. C. Rose, pp. 88-114. Arkansas Archeological Survey Research Series, No. 49.
1995 Wyatt, Deborah J. and Laura L. Scheiber, Squatting Facets on the Northwestern Plains Collection: Postural Habits and Ethnic Diversity. Wyoming Contributions to Anthropology 4:39-49.
1995 Reher, Charles A. and Laura L. Scheiber, Tree Growth on the Snake River Floodplain, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.. US Army Corps of Engineers, Wetlands Program Technical Report WRP-RE-9. US Army Engineer Watersways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MS. NTIS No. AD A302 - 962.
1994 Scheiber, Laura L., A Probable Early Ninteenth Century Crow Burial: The Pitchfork Rockshelter Reexamined Plains Anthropologist 39(147):37-51.
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