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To understand the implications of archaeological site recording practices and associated inventories for studying Indigenous persistence after the arrival of Europeans, we examined the documentary record associated with nearly 900 archaeological sites in Marin County, California. Beginning with the first regional surveys conducted during the early 1900s and continuing into the present, the paper trail created by archaeologists reveals an enduring emphasis on precontact materials to the exclusion of more recent patterns of Indigenous occupation and land use. In assessing sites occupied by Indigenous people from the late sixteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, we discuss how the use of multiple lines of evidence--including temporally diagnostic artifacts, chronometric dating techniques, and historical documentation--may help illuminate subtle but widespread patterns of Native presence that have been obscured by essentialist assumptions about Indigenous culture change. Our findings further reveal the shortcomings of traditional site recording systems, in which archaeologists typically categorize sites within the prehistoric-protohistoric-historic triad on the basis of commonsense decisions that conflate chronology with identity. Instead, we argue for recording practices that focus specifically on the calendric ages of occupation for any given site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Howey and O'Shea (2006) believe they have demonstrated the prehistoric manifestation of a particular Ojibwa Midewiwin origin story in the arrangement of features at an archaeological site in Michigan, thereby negating ethnohistorical arguments that the Midewiwin was of post-European-contact origin. The authors also believe they have shown that explaining past ritual behavior "can be derived from archaeological data alone." There is ample information in their own argument to disallow such claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies in the sociopolitics of archaeology have shown patterns of inequality in publishing. Because this inequality affects the richness of perspectives on the past, the extent of unevenness requires continual documentation. This article explores gendered and institutionally based patterns of authorship in prominent archaeology journals, archaeology papers in general science journals, and Sapiens, a public-facing web magazine, from 2016 to 2021. We find that the representation of women is similar across these two types of journals, for authors both in the United States and abroad. Men still publish significantly more than women though the gap is narrowing due to the publication activity of recent PhDs. Using a large database of PhDs as a baseline for comparison, we find that women publish less in these venues than expected, resulting in an imbalance. Some archaeology programs have a larger presence in journal publishing than others, but this imbalance is not as pervasive as what has been observed in hiring practices. Archaeology journals exhibit healthier measures of diversity, compared to Science, in terms of the institutional affiliation of authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Steve L. Martin's critique of our recent paper we provide further evidence in support of our central contention: that geophytes were a nutritionally important part of the precontact diet, and that they functioned as dietary, cultural, and economic staple foods for many peoples of the Pacific Northwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The three-dimensional (3D) revolution promised to transform archaeological practice. Of the technologies that contribute to the proliferation of 3D data, photogrammetry facilitates the rapid and inexpensive digitization of complex subjects in both field and lab settings. It finds additional use as a tool for public outreach, where it engages audiences ranging from source communities to artifact collectors. But what has photogrammetry's function been in advancing archaeological analysis? Drawing on our previous work, we review recent applications to understand the role of photogrammetry for contemporary archaeologists. Although photogrammetry is widely used as a visual aid, its analytical potential remains underdeveloped. Considering various scales of inquiry--graduating from objects to landscapes--we address how the technology fits within and expands existing documentation and data visualization routines, while evaluating the opportunity it presents for addressing archaeological questions and problems in innovative ways.We advance an agenda advocating that archaeologists move from proof-of-concept papers toward greater integration of photogrammetry with research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, activist archaeologists have used quantitative studies of journal authorship to show that the demographics of archaeological knowledge production are homogeneous. This literature, however, focuses almost exclusively on the gender of archaeologists, without deeply engaging with other forms of identity or adequately addressing the methodological limitations of assigning binary gender identifications based on first names. This paper rectifies these limitations through an intersectional study of inequities in academic archaeological publications by presenting the results of a survey of authors who published in 21 archaeology journals over a 10-year period (2007-2016). This survey asked them to provide their self-identifications in terms of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. The results demonstrate that although there has been an influx of women archaeologists in recent decades, we have not yet reached gender parity. They also show that because many women archaeologists are cisgender, white, and heterosexual, the discipline's knowledge producers remain relatively homogeneous. Furthermore, although there is demographic variation between journals, there is a strong correlation between journal prestige and the percentage of authors who are straight, white, cisgender men. This intersectional study of journal authorship demographics provides a comprehensive perspective on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the discipline of archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an update on the journal as of April 2020. There has been an increase in submissions from 80 in 2018 to 93 in 2019. The primary goal of the journal is to publish high-quality papers from several geographical regions and theoretical perspectives. Several charts are also presented including one that shows the number and percentage of publications by region from April 2018 to April 2020.

Archaeologists have long recognized an important relationship between climate change and the trajectory of the Mississippian polity at Cahokia, with twelfth- and thirteenth-century droughts playing a key role in transforming social relationships and the pace of monument construction. This environmental transition may have spurred emigration from Cahokia and surrounding farming communities. This raises the questions: What was the nature of environmental change and cultural transformations on the Mississippian peripheries and where did these Mississippian emigrants go? This paper provides a case study from the Middle Ohio Valley that brings together spatiotemporal patterns in moisture availability between AD 1000 and AD 1300 and new archaeological data from Fort Ancient villages located in southeast Indiana and southwest Ohio that were occupied during this same temporal interval. We suggest that droughts in the American Bottom region pushed Mississippians to less drought-stricken areas such as the Middle Ohio Valley, which experienced concurrent periods of wetness. This pattern builds on a growing body of data suggesting that the movement of individuals and communities played a large role in the process of Mississippianization throughout the midcontinental and southeastern United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper builds upon DeBoer's (2001) assertion that models of ancient North American cultural systems can be enriched by incorporating gambling as a dynamic and productive social practice using the case study of the Ancient Puebloan center of Chaco Canyon (ca. AD 800–1180). A review of Native North American, Pueblo, and worldwide ethnography reveals gambling's multidimensionality as a social, economic, and ceremonial technology in contrast to its recreational associations in contemporary Western society. I propose that gambling was one mechanism through which leaders in precontact North America—and, specifically, at Chaco Canyon—integrated diverse communities, facilitated trade, accumulated material wealth, perpetuated religious ideology, and established social inequality. I present evidence of gambling at Chaco Canyon in the form of 471 gaming artifacts currently held in museum collections in addition to oral traditions of descendant Native cultures that describe extensive gambling in Chacoan society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The contemporary relevance of archaeology would be greatly enhanced if archaeologists could develop theory that frames human societies of all scales in the same terms. We present evidence that an approach known as settlement scaling theory can contribute to such a framework. The theory proposes that a variety of aggregate socioeconomic properties of human networks emerge from individuals arranging themselves in space so as to balance the costs of movement with the benefits of social interactions. This balancing leads to settlements that concentrate human interactions and their products in space and time in an open-ended way. The parameters and processes embedded in settlement scaling models are very basic, and this suggests that scaling phenomena should be observable in the archaeological record of middle-range societies just as readily as they have been observed in contemporary first-world nations. In this paper, we show that quantitative scaling relationships observed for modern urban systems, and more recently for early civilizations, are also apparent in settlement data from the Central Mesa Verde and northern Middle Missouri regions of North America. These findings suggest that settlement scaling theory may help increase the practical relevance of archaeology for present-day concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper employs a practice-based framework for investigating early Mississippian period culture contact and identity negotiation in the Central Illinois River Valley (CIRV) through the lens offoodways. The Evelandphase (A.D. 1100-1200) was a setting of significant cultural change as a result of the movement of Cahokian people, objects, and ideas into the region. Recent analysis of excavated materials from the Lamb site in the southern portion of the CIRV affords a closer look at this historical process. Using ceramic and pit feature data, 1 assess Cahokian influence on traditional Late Woodlandera culinary practices. I conclude that although local residents were actively adopting some aspects of Mississippian culture (including Cahokia potting traditions), they retained traditional Late Woodland organizational practices of cooking, serving, and storing food. By placing the organization offoodways at the center of this study, this paper illuminates another dimension of Cahokian contact in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Except for the addition of modern material remains, the archaeological record is a finite resource, which means that, at some point in the future, there will be nothing left to find. In this paper, we model trends in archaeological discovery based on the growth of the field and the probability of site discovery. We compare this model to seven diverse datasets of archaeological discovery trends: (1) all sites from the state of Wyoming, USA; (2) high-altitude archaeological sites from the state of Colorado, USA; (3) mostly complete Neandertal crania; (4) monumental sites of the Maya Classic period; (5) proboscidean kill/scavenge sites globally; (6) Upper Paleolithic sites from Europe; and (7) a compilation of shipwreck discoveries. We forecast discovery trends over the current century. We show that, for all datasets, rates of discovery are in decline, and some segments of the record are near depletion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ice patches and the alpine are important elements of the sociocultural landscape of the Greater Yellowstone Area, and they transcend the jurisdictional boundaries that divide the lands on which they occur. The ice patch record complements traditional sources of archaeological knowledge through the addition of well-dated organic artifacts, such as shafts from hunting tools, recovered in a readily recognizable context. This paper examines the types of wood used in the manufacture of hunting implements recovered at Greater Yellowstone Area ice patches through the analysis of nine unique wooden shafts and shaft fragments from five sites. Five shafts are birch ( Betula spp.), two are willow ( Salix spp.), one is fir ( Abies sp.), and one is pine ( Pinus sp.). The shafts included in this analysis range in age from 9230 ± 25 B.P. to 215 ± 20 B.P. Diagnostic Oxbow and Pelican Lake chipped stone projectile points recovered in association with ice patches provide additional temporal resolution regarding use of these features. One of the four sites that yielded wooden shafts contains a record of bighorn sheep ( Ovis canadensis ) hunting between 3885 ± 25 B.P. and 879 ± 23 B.P. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacheeishdíio ("Place Where Men Pack Meal"), now culled Grapevine Creek in English, is the subject of Crow oral traditions that document the cultural significance of the landscape and celebrate centuries of bison hunting in the drainage. We report an ongoing, community-based project that integrates archaeological field training and research goals into a collaborative indigenous archaeology project supporting the expressed goal of the Crow Tribal Historic Preservation Office to prepare a district-level nomination for the Grapevine Creek drainage basin. This paper describes findings from field investigations that document buffalo jump locales, a previously unreported bison bonebed, and associated archaeological features in the drainage, grounding Crow oral traditions that document buffalo jumps and large-scale bison hunts firmly into the landscape. We take a holistic approach that incorporales multiple lines of evidence to assess the archaeological record associated with bison jumps and bison hunting on the Crow Reservation in southern Montana. Results of this project include an enriched understanding of the Grapevine Creek archaeological record, greater awareness of buffalo hunting strategies on the northwest Plains, and, through field training, enhanced cultural resource management capabilities for the Crow Tribal Historic Preservation Office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists have long used the prehistoric inhabitants of the Phoenix Basin in south-central Arizona as an example of a failed or collapsed society, and most prehistorians still assert that Hohokam material culture patterns ended at the close of the Classic period (circa A.D. 1150-1450). Although researchers are increasingly recognizing connections between prehistoric and modern indigenous people, little consensus exists regarding the cause or causes of the dramatic alterations in material culture patterns that occurred in the region. Most archaeologists who have studied the changes at the end of the Classic period, however, have not fully considered the implications of previous and subsequent conditions, including similar and seemingly abrupt shifts in cultural practices that occurred both before and after this time. This paper uses Akimel O'Odham (i.e., Pima) cultural knowledge to contextualize the "Hohokam Collapse." We show that this perspective of culture history explains the relationship between prehistoric and historic populations and answers many of the long-standing questions regarding cultural variation in the Phoenix Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bone grease processing is frequently used in archaeology to investigate human diet breadth because it constitutes a costly mode of lipid procurement. However, problems of equifinality often complicate the identification of this activity. This paper develops new criteria focused on morphology, the presence of micro-inclusions, and forms of damage that were derived from a bone grease rendering experiment that involved red deer (Cervus elaphus) long bones. Because they are poorly represented in a distinct experiment focused exclusively on marrow extraction, the criteria presented here appear to provide robust signatures of bone grease processing. A survey of the actualistic literature shows that certain bone processing activities, such as stewing and soup making, mostly involve coarse spongy fragments. Because these fragments are too large to be ingested, grease can be extracted from them only through heating or boiling. In contrast, bones ingested in bone meal or as flour necessitate pulverization. A high percentage of coarse fragments may therefore provide a proxy for cooking technology or. minimally, the use of fire, if other patterns are consistent with grease extraction. Given the evolutionary significance of these innovations, the criteria presented here may help to strengthen arguments about dietary shifts during the Paleolithic and later periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical timing and movement of Navajo communities in the U.S. Southwest continué to be key, hut unresolved, issues. This paper analyzes tree-ring data to consider initial Navajo settlement patterns in the Little Colorado River watershed. Black Mesa, and nearby regions in northern Arizona. We are critical of previous studies that deem all tree-ring dates to be equally valid, so we present a new approach to systematically identify potential early Navajo sites. After analyzing hundreds of tree-ring specimens from 774 sites, we conclude that dendrochronological evidence offers moderate-to-high confidence that 18 Navajo sites in the study area were settled prior to 1882. These dendrochronological data support the hypothesis of a westward Navajo migration from the Dinétah, reaching Black Mesa in Arizona about 1840, other areas north and east of the Hopi Mesas in the 1850s, and land west of Hopi in the 1870s after the release of Navajos from Fort Sunnier in 1868. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The degree to which prehispanic societies in the northern upland Southwest were hierarchical or egalitarian is still debated and seems likely to have changed through time. This paper examines the plausibility of village-spanning polities in the northern Southwest by simulating the coevolution of hierarchy and warfare using extensions to the Village Ecodynamics Project's agent-based model. We additionally compile empirical data on the population size distribution of habitations and ritual spaces (kivas) and the social groups that used them in three large regions of the Pueblo Southwest and analyze these through lime. All lines of evidence refute an "autonomous village" model during the Pueblo II period (A.D. 890-1145); rather, they support the existence of village-spanning polities during the Pueblo II and probably into the Pueblo III period (A.D. 1145-1285) in some areas. One or more polities connecting the northern Southwest, with tribute flowing to an apex in Chaco Canyon, appears plausible during Pueblo II for the areas we examine. During Pueblo III, more local organizations likely held sway until depopulation in the late thirteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Signaling theory has much to offer anthropology and archaeology, which is in part why there is an increasing number of applications and healthy debates surrounding how best to apply it. One of those debates surrounds whether big game hunting is a costly signal or simply an aspect of efficient foraging. Grimstead (2010) contributed to this debate by showing that long-distance big-game hunting (greater than 100 km roundtrip) produces higher caloric return rates than does local small-game hunting, despite increased costs of travel and transport for the former. Whittaker and Carpenter (this issue) present a model that also suggests long-distance big-game hunting produces higher economic returns than local foraging but only up to about 50 km. This paper provides further details on the tenets of the Grimstead (2010) paper in response to criticisms by Whittaker and Carpenter (this issue), and then uses a previously published central place foraging model (Cannon 2003) to show that another model also shows long-distance big-game hunting over a distance greater than 100 kilometers roundtrip produces higher returns than local foraging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hall's (this issue) comment to my paper published in American Antiquity five years ago (Hockett 2005) makes the following statements: (1) I calculated "depositional rates" for a series of Great Basin faunal assemblages; (2) my analysis did not account for atmospheric radiocarbon fluctuations; and (3) my paper argued "against an increase in hunting artiodactyls from the Middle to Late Holocene." He further argues that recalculation of the data I presented demonstrates that both large- and small-game hunting increased from the Middle to the Late Holocene. Hall is wrong on all accounts. I agree, however, that calibrated dates should now be used instead of the raw radiocarbon dates I used in my original paper. Using calibrated dates, however, does nothing to change the initial patterns I outlined five years ago. Three more recent papers (Hockett 2007, 2009; Hockett and Murphy 2009) on large game hunting in the Great Basin also corroborate my 2005 interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a multivariate statistical and spatial analysis of rock art site content and composition for the Didima Gorge, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in presenting an experimental set of methodological approaches, the paper attempts to identify categories of rock art sites based on their image content and other archaeological characteristics, and then explores how these types might have related to various social, religious, and economic contexts in the past. The paper finds evidence far three kinds of rock art site use in the Didima Gorge: (1) large residential "home bases" that were centers of economic activity, (2) large unoccupied sites that were special locations for ritual activities, which the paper argues were sometimes the locations of puberty initiation, and (3) small isolated sites that were locations of private magical activities done by lone individuals. The central theme of this study is that there is clear evidence for diversity in terms of the contexts in which rock art sites in the Didima Gorge formed, and that no single account is adequate for their explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Thule migration from Alaska to the eastern North American Arctic is central to the understanding of Inuit history. However, despite decades of study, its timing remains controversial, with recent reappraisals suggesting that it may have occurred much later than the date of A.D. 1000 most often assumed for it. In this paper, we present newly obtained radiocarbon dates from two early Thule sites, Nelson River (OhRh-1) and Washout (NJVi-2), located on the Beaufort Sea and Amundsen Gulf coasts. This region is crucial to any understanding of the migration, because Thule Inuit would have had to pass through it in order to reach the eastern Arctic. Nelson River in particular has long been considered a good candidate for the earliest Thule site east of Alaska, based on a number of lines of evidence including the presence of both Natchuk and Sicco harpoon heads. In this paper, we present new dates for Nelson River and Washout that demonstrate that neither site was occupied before the thirteenth century A. D. The new dates have profound implications for Arctic archaeology, because they strengthen the case for a thirteenth-century migration, and by doing so demonstrate that it was more rapid and widespread than has generally been believed. The dates also suggest that the "Classic" Thule period is a relatively brief phenomenon, lasting perhaps only 200 years or less, before being rapidly reorganized into the diversity of Inuit societies encountered in later Arctic history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural resource databases represent the single largest compilations of archaeological site data, but these databases are seldom used in research because they were designed for management purposes, evolved from paper-based inventories, contain significant interobserver variation, and record information inconsistently. In this paper we present methods designed to alleviate these problems in an analysis of more than 3,000 ancestral Pueblo habitation sites from southwestern Colorado. Our methods draw heavily upon Bayesian statistical concepts and utilize the rich excavation records of our study area to quantify the relationship between surface evidence and excavation results using probabilities. This approach offers a number of advantages over ad hoc, judgmental approaches, and produces a more empirically justified history of ancestral Pueblo settlement in our study area. We believe methods like these have great potential for reconstructing settlement patterns from survey, data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reply to Read's (2006) critique of my paper (Henrich 2004) is divided into three parts. Part I clarifies misinterpretations and mischaracterizations of both Dual Inheritance Theory in general and my model specifically. Part II addresses several problems in Read's empirical analyses of forager toolkits, and presents an alternative analysis. Part III tackles some common misunderstandings about the relationship between cost-benefit models (such as Read's) and cultural evolutionary modeling approaches, as well as highlighting some concerns with Read's efforts. In writing this, I have tried to introduce the reader to the issues in debate, but to fully understand this reply, one should read both my paper and Read's critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alaska is commonly viewed as a gateway between the Old and New Worlds, and as such, figures prominently in most models of the peopling of the New World. With a growing number of archaeological sites dating to the terminal Pleistocene, Alaska might be expected to provide direct evidence bearing on the colonization of the Americas. Based on 27 site components with 114 radiocarbon dates, this paper discusses the archaeological record of late Pleistocene Alaska, organized around the characteristics and chronology of three complexes: the microblade-bearing Denali complex, the Nenana complex, and the Mesa complex. This paper shows that the archaeological record of late Pleistocene Alaska is quite diverse, and not lacking in controversy and conflicting interpretations. In addition, this period of archaeological diversity coincides with the Younger Dryas climatic event. However, none of the reliably dated sites is older than the earliest evidence of human occupation further south in the Americas. Despite this, evidence from DNA studies points strongly to a north-central Asian homeland for Native Americans, upholding Alaska as the point of entry into the New World. Suggestions are offered, then, as to why the Alaskan record remains silent about the initial peopling of the New World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the archaeological study of ritual and explores the interrelationships that exist between ideologically meaningful accounts of ritual and the material representations of ritual practice that remain for archaeological evaluation. Specifically, the paper addresses the development and antiquity of the Midewiwin ritual, a ceremonial complex that is known historically throughout the Great Lakes region. The serendipitous discovery of a linkage between the Mide origin tale of Bear's Journey and the layout of the Late Prehistoric earthwork enclosures of northern Michigan provides an opportunity to document how a ritual system is represented in the archaeological record and to evaluate how the understanding of the archaeology is altered by having access to the meaning underpinning the ritual performance. The research provides unambiguous evidence for the prehistoric antiquity of the Mide ceremony and illustrates the contribution archaeology can make to understanding the long-term processes of ritual practice and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent papers by Michelle Hegmon (2003) and Joe Watkins (2003) purport to "map the terrain" of North American archaeology. Yet these two metaphorical maps present very different views of the contours of North American archaeology. Taken together, the two papers highlight problematic divisions between (1) theory and practice in North American archaeology, and (2) academic archaeology and cultural resource management. What are the roles archaeological theory plays in the contemporary practice of archaeology? Why do discussions of archaeological theory have so little to offer stakeholders other than academic archaeologists? Although Hegmon has shown many areas of convergence in archaeological theory, her depiction of "processual-plus" archaeologies dulls the edge of postprocessual critiques of the processual status quo. I argue that feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial archaeologies cannot be subsumed by this label because some of their practitioners aspire to contribute to social change beyond the realm of archaeology itself. These practitioners realize that the practice of archaeology always has political consequences, not just for academic archaeologists, but for a diverse set of stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores material patterns of structure and village closure among several villages in the Homol'ovi Settlement Cluster on the Little Colorado River in northeastern Arizona, with special emphasis on Chevelon Pueblo. Excavations in nearly 200 structures within the cluster reveal a variety of closure practices, including burial of floors and floor features, structural burning, and object placement. It is argued that these patterns are part of a long Pueblo tradition of closure practices used, not to sever connections with a space, community, or landscape, but to continue material connections to these places. Some indications of dedication practices for plazas and features were uncovered at Homol'ovi I and will be discussed as part of broader memory-making practices within the community. Finally, a case will be made that the burning of Chevelon Pueblo may have been a purposeful act of forgetting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indigenous archaeology focuses on laudable processes of collaborative community research and decolonization. In contrast, theoretical contributions of Indigenous archaeology in terms of interpreting archaeological materials have been minimally articulated beyond praxis. Does Indigenous archaeology have an interpretative theoretical agenda? This paper addresses this question and articulates an agenda through distillation of theoretical developments and concerns from the considerable literature on Indigenous archaeology that has emerged from the Americas, Australia, and Africa over the past two decades. A shared fundamental concern is challenging ontological and epistemological divides and dualisms within mainstream Western archaeology. Two key dimensions of Indigenous archaeology are elaborated to provide broader scope to contextualize and address these theoretical challenges. First, encountering the past challenges objectivist tangibility of the archaeological record with ancestral presence and contexts where artifactual absence is the (in)tangible signature of spiritual association. Second, historicing the present challenges secularist archaeologies of a detached past with archaeologies of the more familiar ethnographically known recent past linked to identity and diachronic explorations of ontology and spiritualism. An agenda that embraces these theoretical challenges presents major opportunities for mainstream archaeology to reorient its Eurocentric focus and produce more cross-culturally relevant and culturally nuanced and sensitive understandings of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares unnotched triangular arrow point refits (conjoined fragments) with whole points from the Eaton site in New York. The differences between the two samples are significant, suggesting that point typologies based on whole points may be misleading. Refits tended to have greater length to width ratios and lower thickness to length ratios, rendering them less durable. While lack of durability is generally considered to be a negative characteristic of stone points, fragmentation of a projectile in an enemy or hunting prey creates a large internal wound cavity, which is desirable. Also desirable is a point base that makes a cut wide enough to prevent drag on the arrow shaft, but narrow enough to have a good chance of passing through the ribs of the target. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many researchers have studied prehistoric European art, there has been virtually no attention paid to the broad prehistory of art as a specialized form of material culture; virtually all studies focus narrowly on single bodies of art. This paper presents a new approach to analyzing prehistoric art: quantitative deep time study. It analyzes a database of 211 art traditions from across Europe and from 40,000 B.C. to 0 A.D. to identify changes in the amount, nature, and use of prehistoric art. The results reveal clear long-term trends. The amount of art made increased sharply with the origins of sedentary farming and continued to rise throughout prehistory. New forms of art arise in conjunction with new ways of life; "period genres" are closely tied into patterns of social change. There are also long-term shifts in aesthetics and the uses of art (such as a gradual shift from arts of ritual and concealment to arts of surface and display). These results, though preliminary, show that a deep-time approach familiar from topics such as climate change is applicable to art; the resulting social history can illuminate both art and its social context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into broad patterns of trade and exchange in precontact British Columbia, Canada, has been very limited. This paper addresses that shortcoming by presenting the results of a mineralogical study of1,374 stone celts and 131 sawn cores from which celts were manufactured from 196 archaeological sites across British Columbia. These artifacts were an integral part of the woodworking toolkits of aboriginal peoples in this region from ca. 3500 B.P. to around contact at about 180 B.P. The mineralogy of these artifacts was determined using a portable near-infrared spectrometer, and the resulting data mapped using Geographic Information Systems. The results of this study indicate that celt production and exchange largely occurred within five discrete celt stone regions. For two of these celt stone regions--the Salish Sea and the Canadian Plateau--I argue that these represent interaction spheres. Only in the Salish Sea were considerable numbers of celts imported from another region. For the remaining three regions, not enough data are available on the geological distribution of various celt stones or on the spatial patterns of celt production to differentiate regional interaction from individual procurement and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beveled retouch on stone projectile points has often been considered as a device to spin and stabilize a projectile. A recent paper showed that a beveled point will spin a small shaft under tightly controlled laboratory conditions. However, this experiment has little relevance for real projectiles such as atlatl darts, which flex dramatically and spin unevenly inflight, quite independent of point form. The spinning is related to the flexibility of the dart, which is necessary for spearthrower function. A beveled point cannot spin a dart in the air, but is likely to cause some rotation when encountering a solid target like flesh. Beveled points are probably not related to spinning either darts or arrows inflight and present a good example of why we need to have both theoretical understanding and experimental observations of details of projectile behavior before interpreting artifacts. Spinning in a carcass could make beveled points more lethal, but the suggestion that beveling mostly results from sharpening and other modification of stone points remains the best explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During an archaeological career that spanned four decades, John Beach Rinaldo (1912-1999) made substantive contributions to the delineation and definition of the Mogollon Culture, the culture history of west-central New Mexico and east-central Arizona, and the identification of material relationships between precolumbian cultures and modern-day Zuni. For a variety of reasons, Rinaldo is overshadowed by his Field Museum collaborator Paul Sidney Martin. A. a result, historians of archaeology have failed to critically evaluate Rinaldo's career and contributions. This paper offers a controlled analysis and comparison of data in unpublished archives, artifact collections at the Field Museum, and the published record to illuminate previously unrecognized but important aspects of Rinaldo 's many contributions to archaeological knowledge, method, and theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates previous models of cave and rockshelter use in the American Midsouth from the Early to the Middle Archaic periods. Four sites are compared in order to identify variability in activities, seasonality, occupation intensity, and function. Focus is placed on using the often overlooked feature assemblages to discern these activities. Data suggest that the changing use of many caves and rockshelters is not one of longer term occupation as base camps, as has been previously argued, but rather as specialized field camps dedicated to the processing of mast resources. This shift takes place as Middle Holocene warming prompted hunter-gatherers to adopt a more logistical mobility strategy in order to take advantage of the spatio-temporal variance associated with increased mast availability. It is further argued that these sites were likely locations of women's activities and that foraging in the Midsouth involved groups of women engaged in daily tasks centered around mast, tasks that over time imbued caves and rockshelters with symbolic meaning such that they came to function simultaneously as both processing camps and as persistent places of ritual significance in the hunter-gatherer taskscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is increasing recognition among archaeologists of the extent to which non-agricultural societies have managed their terrestrial ecosystems, the traditional management of marine ecosystems has largely been ignored. In this paper, we bring together Indigenous ecological knowledge, coastal geomorphological observations, and archaeological data to document how Northwest Coast First Nations cultivated clams to maintain and increase productivity. We focus on "clam gardens," walled intertidal terraces constructed to increase bivalve habitat and productivity. Our survey and excavations of clam gardens in four locations in British Columbia provide insights into the ecological and social context, morphology, construction, and first reported ages of these features. These data demonstrate the extent of traditional maricultural systems among coastal First Nations and, coupled with previously collected information on terrestrial management, challenge us to broaden our definition of "forager" as applied to Northwest Coast peoples. This study also highlights the value of combining diverse kinds of knowledge, including archaeological data, to understand the social and ecological contexts of traditional management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines choices of earth-working tools made by Neolithic Chinese populations. In the Hemudu Culture (7000-5000 B.P.), bone (scapula) digging tools were used from the earliest times, whereas peoples in surrounding areas used stone spades. A range of experiments on manufacturing costs, durability, and use efficiency under realistic conditions show that bone and stone spades are functionally equivalent when soils are soft, but that stone implements provide significant and easily perceived advantages when working harder soils. The persistence of scapular spades in the Hemudu Culture would have constrained decisions about undertaking large construction projects under normal soil conditions. Our results show that, in addition to generalized labor for construction, labor demands for producing earth-working implements for largescale prehistoric earthworks could have also been substantial. These findings not only help explain the processes of intensifying rice-agriculture and sedentary settlements in the Lower Yangzi Basin, but also create a solid foundation for further investigation of how the recruitment of both generalized and specialized laborers, the organization of craft production, and the relevant logistics for large-scale earthworks may have paralleled concentrations of political power in prehistory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appearance of iconographic-style pottery at fourteenth-century Pueblo villages in east-central Arizona marked an important shift in the decoration of pottery. These polychrome containers were painted with elaborate imagery that contrasts with earlier geometric-style traditions. Remarkably, though the type was circulated and copied throughout the region, we still know very little about how it was used. This paper addresses that issue by analyzing surface abrasions on a large corpus of White Mountain Red Ware whole vessels. Our research not only examines changes in the uses of Ancestral Pueblo ceramics during the late prehispanic period, but underscores the importance of use-alteration studies to interpreting the biographies of ancient objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between gender identity and patterns of authorship in peer-reviewed journals as a lens for examining gendered knowledge production and the current status and visibility of men and women in American archaeology. Drawing on feminist theory and the feminist critique of science, I examine how gender imbalance and a lack of diversity continue to affect the work that archaeologists produce. The evaluation of publishing trends serves as a means to investigate knowledge valuation/validation in archaeology and lends insight into the control over archaeological narratives. Analysis of publication rates from 1990-2013 in a number of prestigious archaeology research journals (including American Antiquity) as well as smaller-scale regional journals reveals that strong gender differences persist in one of the major ways that data are disseminated to the American archaeological community. I suggest that these patterns are likely a result of authorial behavior, rather than editorial or reviewer bias, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for practitioners to pursue research on gender equity in the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burlington and Jefferson City cherts often dominate Ozarks lithic assemblages, and this record contains ample evidence for the heat treatment of both. In this paper, we use a technological investment model to understand why prehistoric knappers may have invested in heat treatment at the Big Eddy Site in southwest Missouri. Tech investment models offer one way to evaluate the cost-benefit relationships of various technologies and, consequently, the conditions under which a manufacturing strategy might be adopted. We conduct a heat treatment experiment to measure the untreated utilities of the two materials, the approximate time needed to heat each, and the resultant gains in utility a knapper acquires by spending the time to do so. In the Big Eddy case, the tech investment model suggests that the two toolstones were heat-treated differentially in response to differences in utility gains and availability on the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first detailed record of Paleoeskimo occupation history of Foxe Basin, Nunavut, Arctic Canada, the traditional Paleoeskimo "core area." Rather than continuous, stable occupations from approximately 4000-1000 B.P. traditionally assumed for the core area, the region has undergone a series of demographic oscillations, including several instances of abandonment of key areas, most notably Igloolik. The Foxe Basin demographic trends are reminiscent of Paleoeskimo "boom and bust" cycles recognized elsewhere, but show no consistent chronological pattern either within Foxe Basin or inter-regionally. Equally important, our results bear on the critical question of the Pre-Dorset to Dorset transition. Rather than having been a gradual in situ process centered within the core area, the demographic patterns, including the abrupt and widespread appearance of semi-subterranean dwellings during earliest Dorset, are consistent with newly arrived populations from outside of Foxe Basin. While there is no obvious "parent" culture to Dorset within the Eastern Arctic, it is suggested that a Western Arctic origin, specifically Norton Culture, invoking to some extent Jorgen Meldgaard's "smell of the forest", may have played a significant role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical theory has been little used in archaeology, despite its exceptional ability to understand social relations and circumstances, both past and present. In this paper, I develop the concept of a localized critical theory that connects broadscale global processes, such as colonialism and capitalism, to cultural processes that occur at the local level. This expression of archaeological practice has the power to hear, cultivate, and share the voices of individuals and communities as they speak about their respective histories, while recognizing and acknowledging their broader social context. I explore how Inuvialuit Elders' memories are portrayed and interpreted within the Inuvialuit Living History project, focusing particularly on their memories of traditional beluga-whaling in the Mackenzie Delta of Canada's Western Arctic that were evoked through the identification and handling of ancestral whaling artifacts. fuse localized critical theory to explore how Elders' distinctive perspectives and experiences of beluga-whaling through the course of the mid-twentieth century articulate with and comment on wider historical processes and the agendas of the Canadian nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans first left Siberia and colonized the Americas perhaps around 16,000 years ago, and the Clovis archaeological complex in North America has traditionally been linked to this migratory pulse. Archaeologists searching for evidence of Clovis technological antecedents have focused their attention on the Beringian and Siberian archaeological records. Growing evidence for the pre-Clovis occupation of North America provides a possible alternative source for the origins of Clovis. In this paper, we present new data on the pre-Clovis lithic assemblage from the Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas, and compare Clovis and pre-Clovis lithic technological signatures. We show that while Clovis and pre-Clovis share some important technological traits, they also differ in important ways. We conclude that the pre-Clovis assemblage from Debra L. Friedkin cannot be called "Clovis," but it could represent a technological antecedent of Clovis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the possible underlying systemic context(s) for spurred flake gravers and eyed bone needles recovered from Paleoindian sites in North America. The idea that spurred flake gravers and eyed bone needles were closely associated is not new. Archaeologists in both Eurasia and North America have also proposed that eyed bone and ivory needles were used for manufacturing tailored skin clothing. It is suggested here that spurred flake gravers and eyed bone needles may, in fact, be the material correlates of critical non-subsistence related work carried out by women to meet the challenges of very severe winters and cold stress of the Younger Dryas Cold Event (YDCE) between 12,900-11,600 cal. B.P. It is argued here that such expediently produced flake implements and curated sewing technology including eyed needles ultimately reflect the significant ecological bottleneck(s) posed by the YDCE for Paleoindian populations. Metric attributes of both spurred flake gravers and eyed bone needles, their spatial co-occurrence in archaeological contexts, and their temporal co-occurrence within the YDCE lend empirical support for this causal argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An important consideration in evaluating the efficiency of subsistence resource exchange in the Santa Barbara channel region concerns the form in which acorns might have been traded from the mainland to the islands. A lack of archaeological evidence for acorn processing or consumption on the islands has led a number of researchers to suggest that acorns may have been traded to the islands as pre-pounded flour, rather than as whole acorns. Using new experimentally determined mass and weight measurements for acorns and acorn flour, this paper argues that pre-transport pounding would not have increased the efficiency of acorn exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, lithic studies have emphasized the role of technology in the overall adaptation of past societies to their environments, including the economization of lithic resources. This paper explores how particular characteristics of individual, unretouched flakes can be altered in ways that increase their economy, as reflected in the ratio of edge length to mass. Results of controlled laboratory experiments are presented that identify exterior platform angle and platform depth as being primary independent variables affecting this ratio. These relationships are then tested against a number of archaeological assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Western Apache homeland in eastern and central Arizona is filled with domestic and ritual places, as well as named and unnamed natural places. Despite Western Apache displacement to reservations over a century ago, connections to this pre-reservation homeland remain strong in descendant communities. This paper uses archaeological survey and excavation data, ecological information, historical documents, ethnographic reports, and the accounts of tribal members to study the northern portion of the Western Apache lands between approximately A.D. 1650 and 1850. Multiple sources of information are used to interpret the late-seventeenth-century occupation at Plymouth Landing, which, in turn, is critical to understanding the archaeological signature of early Western Apache sites in this region. The different sources of information about these places, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, enrich our understanding of the past, revealing a largely intact cultural landscape in central Arizona. The project also demonstrates the value of seeking tribal participation outside of the formal consultation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]