Potlach was never a weekly ceremony. A display of obscene wealth done by the obscenely wealthy.
People who live in an extraordinarily wealthy environment on the Pacific coast. Bison were never a part of their world.
True, and remember that those tribes had a wide range of food sources - catching fish, gathering, etc. They lived in longhouses, and had the chance to build up reserves that could be used in such ceremonies. Its interesting to look also at sites like Ozette, which again use fur seals as a primary source of meat, plus berrys from the forest. You could see Potlach in much the same way as any other aristocrat showing off their wealth, or perhaps in terms of Veblen's conspicous consumption.
The tribes of the plains, where the bison was a central part of the diet, and of their lives, were more likely to be nomadic hunter gatherers, and as such, could not afford to be wasteful. Kill sites were carefully planned, bison were gradually herded into compounds (often called Buffalo pounds), and then funnelled to the kill site. At the foot of the cliff, the whole tribe processed the kills. The animal would be butchered, meat extracted and dried or smoked, pemmican made, etc. The hide would be used, as would the bones, sinews, etc. Even the hooves were used. And of course any surplus could be used for trade.
The idea that they would casually 'waste' animals is illogical, after so much effort. In fact native peoples set fires to increase the amount of grazing available, and would possibly control the number of bison. Stampeding is an inexact science, but it was never done casually.
There is some evidence for animals left unbutchered, or at least only semi butchered, such as at Olsen-Chubbuck, but these are the very bottom of the pile - the rest of the animals were very efficently processed.
Archaeologists, anthropologists and ethnographers despair of the idea of the 'beautiful savage', and the idea of a natural native paradise. Its not reflected in the evidence. However, even more annoying is the backlash, of the 'they were wasteful and stupid' type. Thats certainly not shown by the evidence.
In reality, prehistoric societies which relied on hunter gathering (and of course even agricultural societies still undertook these activities) lived within their particular environmental niche. Exploit it too much, and you die. The bison you uselessly kill one month cannot be eaten the next. Likewise, you must use all the resources you reasonably can, for if you fail to, then you might not survive the fallow months. And if you can improve your chances of catching game by burning off forest to create more grassland, or damming a stream to create a weir for fishing, then you will do it. Its a pragmatic stratergy for survival, and an extremely intelligent one.
As for the programme - its on Channel 5.
Its on Channel 5. So the chances are that its rubbish. By the looks of the trailer, its basically Big Brother in the wild. So we have stupid people trying to survive, and failing. Of course they could have actual experts (which of course the Mesolithic peoples would have been - hence their survival), but that wouldn't be fun. And this is Channel 5, where watching stupid people generally ranks above an interesting and informative programme. Although I must admit I do like CSI.
where I can have heat and light at the flick of a switch, and we have every expectation that our babies will live, that we won't die of a hundred different diseases that are now routinely dealt with as minor inconveniences…and the list goes on.
