An Interview with Montana Archaeologist Larry Lahren
10-03-07 - North America — , Montana
Larry Lahren is a Livingston, Montana-based archaeologist who founded Anthro Research, Inc., which his website describes as a “cultural resource consulting firm.” Recently Lahren compiled essays based on research that he has completed over his almost four decades as an archaeologist into the book Homeland: An Archaeologist’s view of Yellowstone Country’s Past.
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Dr. Lahren briefly answered my questions about the book via email, discussing Montana’s earliest people and his favorite discoveries.
NewWest: What prompted you to collect the articles you have written over the course of your archaeology career into this book?
Larry Lahren: The articles reflect the sites and materials that I have worked on and I connect them through time with each example essay. Each essay can stand alone as a teaching, information or source reference.
NW: Why did you decide to include a personal family history at the beginning of Homeland?
LL: To develop a context about what “Home” is from my socialization, the cultural ethic of the time, and how it affected my perspective and career in archaeology and now as a county commissioner.
NW: You write about how the Rocky Mountains have traditionally been seen as a barrier between cultures rather than a homeland. How did people make their home in the mountains?
LL: The way is indicated in the Good Camp on the Big Bend of the Yellowstone and Dozer Rock and the Mummy Cave site in Wyoming.
NW: Is less material likely to be preserved or discovered in mountainous areas than in flatter places?
LL: No
NW: What is known about Montana’s earliest people from the Clovis burial site you mention and from other evidence?
LL: That since this time (11,000 years ago) people were living in Montana and considered it a Homeland, as demonstrated by tools left and as a burial.
NW: What have you and researchers such as Ray Alt (who studies bow hunting) learned about past societies from employing their hunting techniques?
LL: How efficient these people were with a very basic technology.
NW: Are hunting techniques a special focus of your research?
LL: Yes.
NW: Do all archaeologists study tools and weapons extensively because they are made of material that has a better chance of surviving?
LL: Part of this is true and many archaeologists “worship” stone artifacts such as projectile points - we try to get into the mind and technology of the past peoples.
NW: You note that a psychic visited the Anzick site and offered his reading of the people whose remains were found there. Did you invite him?
LL: No I did not invite him, it was a suggestion of some New Age, crystal-alignment-for-harmonious-convergence people that thought it would be of value.
NW: You write that the deer antlers you found in the Dozer Rock site seemed to have been placed in their respective positions. What do you speculate about this - was it part of a ceremony?
LL: Actually these mule deer skull caps and antlers were found at the Dead Indian site in Wyoming and suggest a mule deer hunting cult/ritual situation. ... "
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