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The balance of autonomy and alliance in anarchic societies: the organization of defences in the Coast Salish past

Abstract Coast Salish peoples of the Northwest Coast of North America were traditionally complex hunter-gatherer-fishers, organized primarily as independent households for most subsistence endeavours. In so doing, they exhibited a strong degree of local and individual autonomy. Sociopolitically, they were anarchic, without formal institutions of government, and their villages were decentralized in structure. Yet they coordinated their defences on scales of organization beyond the local household, requiring the negotiation of consensus among those independent households. In this article, I apply an anarchist analysis to evaluate Coast Salish defensive strategies reflected in fortifications and refuges for the period from 1600 bp through the early post-contact period. Using ethnographic studies, I consider how Coast Salish peoples were able to balance local autonomy against the shared societal needs of coordinated defensive action and examine how these dynamics were materialized in defensive features in the landscape.