In Ecology and Ethnogenesis Adam R. Hodge argues that the Eastern
Shoshone tribe, now located on the Wind River Reservation in
Wyoming, underwent a process of ethnogenesis through cultural
attachment to its physical environment that proved integral to its
survival and existence. He explores the intersection of
environmental, indigenous, and gender history to illuminate the
historic roots of the Eastern Shoshone bands that
inhabited the intermountain West during the nineteenth
century. Hodge presents an impressive longue durée narrative of
Eastern Shoshone history from roughly 1000 CE to 1868, analyzing
the major developments that influenced Shoshone culture and
identity. Geographically spanning the Great Basin, Rocky Mountain,
Columbia Plateau, and Great Plains regions, Ecology and
Ethnogenesis engages environmental history to explore the
synergistic relationship between the subsistence methods of
indigenous people and the lands that they inhabited prior to the
reservation era. In examining that history, Hodge treats Shoshones,
other Native peoples, and Euroamericans as agents who, through
their use of the environment, were major components of much broader
ecosystems. The story of the Eastern Shoshones over eight hundred
years is an epic story of ecological transformation, human agency,
and cultural adaptation.Ecology and Ethnogenesis is a major
contribution to environmental history, ethnohistory, and Native
American history. It explores Eastern Shoshone ethnogenesis based
on interdisciplinary research in history, archaeology,
anthropology, and the natural sciences in devoting more
attention to the dynamic and often traumatic history of
"precontact" Native America and to how the deeper past profoundly
influenced the "postcontact" era.