For the last century there has been very little modification to the geographic boundaries for the
Northwest coast culture area, as defined by anthropologists. Moreover, complex hunter-gatherer
models, which identify the hallmarks for social complexity of coastal First Nations, tend to
exclude inland and up-river societies. Although academics recognize a post-contact complexity
at Babine Lake, they have relied primarily on ethnographic sources which implied that ranked
and socially stratified societies emerged only in response to the social and economic influences
of the fur trade. However, recent research indicates that Babine society possessed complex trade
networks, ranked houses, inherited lineages, individual wealth, and status inequality long before
the fur trade era. Excavations at the salmon fishing village GiSq-4, on the Babine River, indicate
that these social attributes have a much greater antiquity than the proto-historic era. ...
