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History Historical Geography

The Archive of Place

Unearthing the Pasts of the Chilcotin Plateau

by (author) William Turkel

Publisher
UBC Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2008
Category
Historical Geography, Human Geography, British Columbia (BC), Post-Confederation (1867-), General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780774813778
    Publish Date
    Jan 2008
    List Price
    $34.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780774813761
    Publish Date
    May 2007
    List Price
    $95.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780774855969
    Publish Date
    Jan 2008
    List Price
    $125.00

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Description

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.

About the author

Awards

  • Winner, Clio Award (British Columbia), Canadian Historical Assocation

Contributor Notes

William J. Turkel teaches history at the University of Western Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

In this unorthodox and intriguing book, William Turkel uses the Chilcotin Plateau, an arid and sparsely settled region of west-central British Columbia, to ask a series of questions about how we acquire and use knowledge of the past.

 

... This is an engaging and rewarding book. Like much recent work in British Columbia history, it writes First Nations people into the general history of the province, a hugely important project for North American histroy more generally.

 

An amalgam of the material and the representational, the natural and the human, place allows Turkel to move some way toward transcending the old human-environment dichotomy that bedevils the writing of environmental history.

Environmental History Journal, Volume 12, Number 4