ABSTRACT
The development of the Northwest Coast ethnographic pattern—those uniquely complex ethnographic hunting-and-gathering societies—has been the focus of many archaeological investigations on the Northwest Coast of North America. We believe that the evolution of complex societies based on hunting and gathering and the concomitant origin of human inequity are the outstanding issues that unite Northwest Coast archaeology and transcend the boundaries of the Northwest Coast culture area. What we mean by these terms, and how the ethnographic Northwest Coast cultures contrast with most other nonagricultural people are delineated below.
