Weaves together a series of narratives about environmental history in British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. This study examines how people interpret material traces to reconstruct past events, the conditions under which such interpretation takes place, and the role that this interpretation plays in historical consciousness and social memory.

"The Archive of Place" weaves together a series of narratives about environmental history in a particular location - British Columbia's Chilcotin Plateau. In the mid-1990s, the Chilcotin was at the centre of three territorial conflicts. Opposing groups, in their struggle to control the fate of the region and its resources, invoked different understandings of its past - and different types of evidence - to justify their actions. These controversies serve as case studies, as William Turkel examines how people interpret material traces to reconstruct past events, the conditions under which such interpretation takes place, and the role that this interpretation plays in historical consciousness and social memory. It is a wide-ranging and original study that extends the span of conventional historical research.

Foreword: Putting Things in Their Place / Graeme Wynn
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Deep Time in the Present
1 Fish Lake
2 Prosperity Gold
Part 2: The Horizon of Experience
3 Mackenzie
4 Grease Trails
Part 3: Shadowed Ground
5 Converging towards "Banshee"
6 Chilcotin War
Afterword
Appendices
A Glacial Time
B Geological Time
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index.