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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]

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]

This paper provides a cultural context for the cache of early domesticated seeds found in Newt Kash Shelter in eastern Kentucky. Based on the abundant fibers, bedding, nuts, cradleboard, bedrock mortar, shell spoons, abundance of potential medicinal plants, infrequent fauna, and arrangement of pits, Newt Kash may have been a women's retreat place during menstruation, birthing, and sickness, and possibly the meeting place of a medicine society. There are other possible retreat shelters in this region and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coincident with the climatic changes occurring during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, a number of regionally distinct Paleoindian projectile-point styles emerged throughout North America. This paper examines one understudied and poorly understood Late Paleoindian style, the San Patrice point. Although traditionally considered woodland-adapted hunter-gatherers, projectile-point distributions indicate that San Patrice groups, utilizing the same hafting and resharpening technologies, also made significant use of plains resources. Raw material sourcing reveals that while all San Patrice populations focused on local toolstone sources, plains bands were more mobile than those in the woodlands. These findings have implications for our greater understanding of Paleoindian adaptations. While some hunter-gatherers developed specialized, environmentally specific strategies, San Patrice groups adopted more generalized strategies enabling them to succeed in diverse settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common issue for archaeologists who study intermediate-scale societies is defining scale and complexity of occupations across entire villages or towns. This can be a major problem since an understanding of site-wide inter-household occupation patterns can be crucial for accurate reconstruction of village demographics and socio-economic organization. In this paper we present new research at the Bridge River site, a large complex hunter-gatherer village in British Columbia, designed to develop a site-wide history of household occupation patterns. We accomplish this through broad-scale geophysical investigations, test excavations and an extensive program of radiocarbon dating. Results of the study suggest that the village grew rapidly between ca. 1800 and 1250 cal. B.P. expanding from 7 to at least 29 simultaneously occupied houses. Variability in household spacing and size indicate that social organization may have grown increasingly complex parallel with rising numbers of households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several recent, and highly provocative papers, McGuire and Hildebrandt (Hildebrandt and McGuire 2002, 2003; McGuire and Hildebrandt 2005) have helped introduce costly signaling theory into American archaeology. While their efforts are commendable, we feel that their reinterpretations of western North American prehistory overstate the likely influence of costly signaling on the archaeological record. Only by overlooking a considerable body of ethnographic literature that indicates a more limited role for signaling are they, able to characterize Great Basin and California hunters as motivated more by the pursuit of prestige than provisioning. We offer three specific challenges to their models: (1) while McGuire and Hildebrandt treat the issue as decided, the relationships among foraging, provisioning, prestige, and fitness is still actively contested among researchers; (2) while ethnographic studies suggest that some types of hunting and low-return, high-risk activities may indeed represent attempts by males to signal costly behavior, these activities contribute very, little to the faunal and other residues that accumulate in the archaeological record; and (3) the theoretical underpinnings of costly signaling explicitly preclude the type of runaway positive feedback loops that Hildebrandt and McGuire implicate as the driving force behind an apparent cultural collapse in the Great Basin at the end of the Middle Archaic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the way in which patterns of human occupation and geomorphic processes interacted to produce a highly structured distribution of artifacts and hearths over a period of over 3,000 years at the Allen site (25FT50), a Paleoindian campsite in southwestern Nebraska. Despite accumulation of roughly a meter of sediment, artifact concentrations remained in almost exactly the same horizontal locations throughout the period of site occupation. Hearth locations varied considerably, but were virtually always located in areas of low artifact density. Considered in light of ethnoarchaeological studies of hunter-gatherer site structure, our data indicate that the excavated portion of the site was at the periphery of a domestic area and was used for secondary discard and other purposes. Trash appears to have been collected and discarded onto previously existing and continuously visible middens throughout the occupation, and new hearths appear to have been located to avoid these middens. We discuss the implications of these patterns for current models of Paleoindian landuse on the Plains and for studies of hunter-gatherer site structure in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of radiocarbon dates acquired during earlier and recent field seasons at the Keatley Creek site, southern British Columbia. Results indicate that early occupations predating 1900 cal. B.P. occurred, but were not likely associated with population aggregation and large housepits. The aggregated village appears to have emerged by approximately 1700 cal. B.P. and was abandoned at approximately 800 cal. B.P. A break in the occupational sequence is recognized at 1450-1350 cal. B.P. and one other short break may have occurred shortly after 1250 cal. B.P. Peak socioeconomic complexity appears to have been achieved between 1350 and 800 cal B.P. Climatic warming may have provided a selective environment favoring population aggregation and intensification during this time. The final abandonment of the Keatley Creek village appears to have been part of a regional phenomenon suggesting the possibility that climatic factors were important in this case as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]