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Fluting is a technological and morphological hallmark of some of the most iconic North American Paleoindian stone points. Through decades of detailed artifact analyses and replication experiments, archaeologists have spent considerable effort reconstructing how flute removals were achieved, and they have explored possible explanations of why fluting was such an important aspect of early point technologies. However, the end of fluting has been less thoroughly researched. In southern North America, fluting is recognized as a diagnostic characteristic of Clovis points dating to approximately 13,000 cal yr BP, the earliest widespread use of fluting. One thousand years later, fluting occurs more variably in Dalton and is no longer useful as a diagnostic indicator. How did fluting change, and why did point makers eventually abandon fluting? In this article, we use traditional 2D measurements, geometric morphometric (GM) analysis of 3D models, and 2D GM of flute cross sections to compare Clovis and Dalton point flute and basal morphologies. The significant differences observed show that fluting in Clovis was highly standardized, suggesting that fluting may have functioned to improve projectile durability. Because Dalton points were used increasingly as knives and other types of tools, maximizing projectile functionality became less important.We propose that fluting in Dalton is a vestigial technological trait retained beyond its original functional usefulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource depression and garden hunting are major topics of archaeological interest, with important implications for understanding cultural and environmental change. Garden hunting is difficult to study using traditional zooarchaeological approaches, but isotopic analyses of animals may provide a marker for where and when people exploited nondomesticated animals that fed on agricultural resources. To realize the full potential of isotopic approaches for reconstructing garden hunting practices—and the impacts of agriculture on past nondomesticated animal populations more broadly—a wider range of species, encompassing many “ecological perspectives,” is needed. We use bone-collagen isotopic compositions of animals (n = 643, 23 taxa, 39 sites) associated with the Late Woodland (~AD 900−1650) in what is now southern Ontario to test hypotheses about the extent to which animals used maize, an isotopically distinctive plant central to subsistence practices of Iroquoian-speaking peoples across the region. Results show that although some taxa—particularly those that may have been hard to control—had substantial access to maize, most did not, regardless of the animal resource requirements of local populations. Our findings suggest that this isotopic approach to detecting garden hunting will be more successful when applied to smaller-scale societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bone grease rendering is a low-return activity well described in the ethnohistorical and ethnographic literature. However, identifying this activity in archaeological contexts is complex because diagnostic criteria are few. The goals of this article are twofold: (1) to provide new experimental data on bone grease manufacture for assemblages associated with severe fragmentation, and (2) to assess how these data can be used to make stronger inferences about skeletal fat processing in the archaeological record. The results presented here show that, despite some variation, several forms of damage appear to be diagnostic of bone grease manufacture, regardless of the degree of fragmentation. The results indicate that extensive pounding produces many fragments that can be identified as deriving from articular ends, which conflicts with the oft-cited notion that articular ends are destroyed "beyond recognition" during this activity. Consequently, assemblages with few epiphyseal remains are not consistent with bone grease rendering, assuming that the comminuted fragments were not burned or discarded off-site after boiling. Because bone grease manufacture produces many small fragments, a close analysis of the indeterminate remains is strongly recommended, as is the use of fine mesh screens (2 mm or smaller) in excavations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent geophysical remote sensing, including ground-penetrating radar and magnetometry, has been used to investigate three areas within Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, predicted to contain prehispanic agricultural fields. These localities include a wellknown but enigmatic area of large grid patterns near the Chetro Ketl great house, which are visible from the air but not at ground level. The gridded area has been interpreted by many researchers as an agricultural field system, and this perspective has in turn been utilized to model agricultural land use throughout the canyon, particularly intensification associated with emergent social complexity. The geophysical surveys revealed evidence of buried features at all three study areas, but the patterns expressed by these features do not clearly conform to the pattern predicted in the gridded agricultural field model. We argue that the surficial grid pattern seen at the Chetro Ketl field is an unusual example of land modification in the canyon and thus unlikely to represent typical Chacoan agricultural field systems. Instead, canyon residents employed a diverse range of agricultural techniques suited to the variable and patchy nature of canyon hydrology and soils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the recent results of a magnetometry survey of the Spring Lake Tract conducted during the summer of 2015 at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site located along the Mississippi River Floodplain in southern Illinois. This tract, located southeast of Woodhenge and west of the Grand Plaza, is situated north of two known borrow pits and includes an additional, previously unidentified borrow pit. Through comparing our gradiometer results with our subsequent test excavations, we argue that this area of Cahokia potentially demonstrates an increase in building density at the Spring Lake Tract during the transition between the Terminal Late Woodland and Lohmann phases. In addition, our survey and exaction results demonstrate that this area was densely occupied between the Lohmann and Stirling phases. During the Moorehead phase, we identify a possible increase in habitation based on hypothesized structure density using statistical analyses of length and width ratios (m) and structure area (m2). Our preliminary results suggest that the Spring Lake Tract saw an increase in habitation during the Moorehead phase, a new perspective on the density and use of domestic space during Cahokia's late occupational history. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As federally and non-federally recognized tribal communities assert control over the management of tribal heritage, there is a significant opportunity to work with these nations to further refine and develop approaches to archaeological practice that work for the long-term care and protection of tribal heritage. This article evaluates the methodological implications of integrating indigenous values and cultural protocols into archaeological practice and tribal historic preservation. Drawing upon the example of the Kashaya Pomo Interpretive Trail Project at Fort Ross State Historic Park, I examine how respectful, engaged, community-based dialogue with the Kashia Band of Porno Indians led to the development of a low-impact archaeological methodology that contributes to the capacity of the Kashia Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) to employ archaeology as a tool of historic preservation. Although this methodology was developed with specific reference to the needs and cultural protocols of the Kashaya Porno, it provides a salient model of a sovereignty-based approach to tribal historic preservation that may be relevant to other tribal heritage managers. The application of a suite of low-impact survey methods, including the catch-and-release surface collection strategy, also provides tribal and nontribal heritage professionals with additional tools for recovering data from cultural resources with minimal impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, advocates of an "older -than- Clovis" occupation of eastern North America have suggested that bi-pointed leafshaped lanceolate stone bifaces provide definitive evidence of human culture on the eastern seaboard prior to the Late Glacial Maximum. This argument hinges on two suppositions: first, that points of this form are exceedingly rare in the East and second, that all known occurrences of these point forms are from landforms or depositional environments dating to some time before the late Pleistocene. Neither of these suppositions is supported by the archaeological record. Bi-pointed leaf shaped blades have been recovered from throughout the Middle Atlantic and Northeast, where they have been repeatedly dated, either radiometrically or by association with diagnostic artifacts, to between the Late Archaic and the Early Woodland. Statistical analysis of supposed "older-than-Clovis " leaf-shaped blades demonstrates that there are no significant differences in morphology between them and unequivocally Middle Holocene leaf-shaped blades. Until such time as evidence demonstrates otherwise, there is no reason to accept that these leaf-shaped bifaces are diagnostic of a Pleistocene, much less pre- Late Glacial Maximum, occupation in eastern North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engraved and carved bone and stone artifacts capture our imaginations and are known worldwide from archaeological contexts, but they are seemingly rare and of ten times difficult to recognize. While preservation issues play a role in the limited recovery of early art objects, research on incised stones and bone from the Gault site in Texas demonstrates that an expectation to find such artifacts plays a key role in their identification and recovery. The presence of incised stones found by collectors at Gault alerted archaeologists to the potential for finding early art in systematic excavations. To date, 11 incised stones and one engraved bone of Paleoindian age (13,000-9,000 calibrated years before present) have been recovered and of these, the Clovis artifacts are among the earliest portable art objects from secure context in North America. The presence of incised stone and bone at Gault led to the development of an examination protocol for identifying and analyzing engraved and incised artifacts that can be applied to a wide variety of archaeological contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote sensing has revolutionized procedures for locating buried features at archaeological sites in eastern North America. However, the potential of instruments such as gradiometers to shape innovative research in ways that move beyond survey and testing is not always realized in practice. At the Mississippian site of Moundville, Alabama, we conducted a landscapescale geophysical survey to serve as the guiding method of community settlement analysis. First, we mapped the distribution of magnetic anomalies across the site .Next, we defined the variability of anomalies and selected a sample for test excavations to correlate specific anomaly shapes and amplitudes with specific cultural features. Once confirmed as cultural features, we extrapolated sample results to identify unexcavated anomalies as specific building forms and other features with a higher degree of probability than would have been possible without confirmation by test excavation. Results include the identification and mapping of over 450 unexcavated probable buildings, nearly five times the number previously discovered in decades of traditional excavation. Because the buried probable buildings have different forms, sizes, distributions, and chronological spans, the interpreted gradiometer map is transformed through interpretation from a static palimpsest of anomalies to a picture of changing community settlement organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hildebrandt and King (2012) propose a new method for distinguishing between archaeologically obtained atlatl darts and arrow points, suggesting their dart-arrow index identifies specimens more accurately than previously developed multivariate approaches. They assert that use of their index supports conclusions that the bow was a superior technology and replaced the atlatl quickly. I use their index, as well as Shott's (1997) equations, to analyze southern Saskatchewan archaeological point specimens. My results suggest that the proposed dart-arrow index performs poorly for Canadian Plains specimens and that atlatl and bow technology coexisted for an extended period of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copying errors that occur during the manufacture of artifactual traditions are potentially a major source of variation. It has been proposed that material items produced via "additive " processes (e.g., pottery) will possess less variation than traditions produced via "reductive" processes (e.g., stone knapping). The logic of this premise is that "additive" production methods more readily allow for the reversal of copying errors compared to strictly "reductive-only" processes. Here, we tested this hypothesis in shape data using an experimental framework in which we generated and statistically analyzed morphometric (size-adjusted) shape data under controlled and replicable conditions. Participants engaged in one of two alternative conditions: an irreversible ("reductive-only ") manufacturing process or a reversible ("additive-reductive ") process. With a number of factors held constant, participants were required to copy the shape of a "target form" as accurately as possible using a standardized block of plasticine and a steel table knife. Results demonstrated statistically greater levels of shape-copying errors in the replicas produced in the reductive-only condition. This indicates that "mutation rates" in the shape attributes of artifactual traditions produced via reductive processes are inherently greater than those produced via alternative means. Several implications for the study of variation in artifactual traditions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article represents a systematic effort to answer the question, What are archaeology's most important scientific challenges? Starting with a crowd-sourced query directed broadly to the professional community of archaeologists, the authors augmented, prioritized, and refined the responses during a two-day workshop focused specifically on this question. The resulting 25 "grand challenges "focus on dynamic cultural processes and the operation of coupled human and natural systems. We organize these challenges into five topics: (I) emergence, communities, and complexity; (2) resilience, persistence, transformation, and collapse; (3) movement, mobility, and migration; (4) cognition, behavior, and identity; and (5) human-environment interactions. A discussion and a brief list of references accompany each question. An important goal in identifying these challenges is to inform decisions on infrastructure investments for archaeology. Our premise is that the highest priority investments should enable us to address the most important questions. Addressing many of these challenges will require both sophisticated modeling and large-scale synthetic research that are only now becoming possible. Although new archaeological fieldwork will be essential, the greatest payoff will derive from investments that provide sophisticated research access to the explosion in systematically collected archaeological data that has occurred over the last several decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ceramics typologies have long been used to build artifact, site, and regional chronologies. Direct accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating of shell-tempered ceramics offers a promising tool for updating and improving these chronologies . Few studies have 14C dated shell fragments from shell-tempered pottery, however, and questions remain about potential biases from "old shell," the reservoir effect, and other variables. Forty-five direct AMS ,4C assays on shell-tempered pottery and associated shell, charcoal, and bone from nine archaeological sites in Virginia and Maryland provide a framework to test this method. AMS ,4C assays from one site may have problems with old shell, but most of the calibrated direct and associated age estimates overlap. One of our samples is the oldest securely dated shell-tempered pottery in North America at ~1000 cal B.C. Our study demonstrates the promise of AMS, 4C dating shell-tempered pottery for refining ceramic and regional chronologies in coastal and other areas around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnoarchaeology has, from its inception, suffered from the lack of a clear theoretical framework to productively link its two constituent parts: ethnography and archaeology. In this paper, I propose a framework that allows the integration of ethnographic and archaeological datasets at various levels of abstraction. I argue that it is only through innovative combinations of ethnography and archaeology, applied with proper caution and disclosure and at explicit levels of abstraction, that ethnoarchaeologists can hope to construct an ethnoarchaeology that is greater than the sum of its parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reiterate the basis for our interpretation of the Namu site as a winter-village settlement from at least 7000 B.P., and note that Monks and Orchard do not provide an alternative interpretation of the available data. They also mistakenly suggest an assertion on our part that alt Northwest Coast villages were dependent on a salmon-based storage economy by 1000 B.P. We never argued for this point. Finally, Monks and Orchard offer a lengthy defense of methods for seasonality estimation, which we support. We used those same methods, and continue to support their refinement and application toward understanding the nature of seasonal activity at Namu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Assemblage" is a fundamental archaeological construct. By their composition, we interpret assemblages as expressions of activity or cultural identity. Yet they are not simple products of these factors alone but also of formation processes. Assemblages accumulated over varying spans, with varying combinations of tool types and discard rates. They are contexts for the playing out of complex relationships, not static types. This is a materialist view, against the essentialist view that assemblages are exemplars of ideal types (e.g.. "base camps," "Quina Mousterian"). Materialism implies that their size and composition, fundamental assemblage characteristics, are correlated variables, not fixed properties, and that composition varies as size increases. I document size dependence consistent with materialism in Paleoindian and Paleolithic assemblages. Among ways to analyze size-dependent assemblage data. I apply "SHE analysis"—the joint study of assemblage richness, heterogeneity, and evenness—to gouge data's fit to theoretical models. Archaeologists acknowledge size dependence, but we misapprehend it as a methodological bias of assemblage measures that must be suppressed when, in materialist perspective, it reveals meaningful relationships that an essentialist view cannot. [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 site of Casas Grandes (or Paquimé) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, originally was estimated to contain some 2,300 rooms, placing it at the top of known prehispanic pueblo sizes. Its rooms were seen as arranged in blocks of as many as five stories, forming a vast, U-shaped pueblo. This room count and configuration are cited often in the past and present literature. We contend that Casas Grondes originally was interpreted in the most liberal terms. We reexamine it with a more conservative approach, and a different characterization emerges. The U-shaped configuration cannot be supported. Instead, we see a central, linear room block, a small part of which contained three stories. It was flanked on the west by well-known ritual architecture and surrounded on all sides by small, scattered contemporary, one-story room units. The original room count estimation is reduced by about 50 percent, as is the concomitant estimate of nearly 5,000 residents. This has implications for extant models of the internal and regional organization of Casas Grandes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists in the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest have long sought the catalysts of the complete depopulation of the region by Pueblo farmers in the late thirteenth century. Ten years of excavations by the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center at Sand Canyon Pueblo, a large village that was occupied from approximately A.D. 1250 to 1280, yielded abundant data regarding the depopulation of the village and shed new light on causes of this intriguing regional emigration. Comparative analyses of faunal and archaeobotanical remains from middens vs. abandonment assemblages reveal a shift from farming to hunting and gathering that coincided with the onset of the Great Drought about A.D. 1276. Osteological and taphonomic analyses of human remains found in abandonment contexts reveal details of an attack during which many residents were killed and that ended the occupation of the village. These findings from Sand Canyon Pueblo suggest that climate-induced food stress and consequent violent conflict contributed to the depopulation of the Mesa Verde region in the late A.D. 1200s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his recent article "Aboriginalism and the Problems of Indigenous Archaeology," Robert McGhee questions the intellectual viability of Indigenous Archaeology as well as the contributions of Indigenous Peoples within the field of archaeology. Further, the author challenges the very notion of Indigeneity and characterizes Indigenous and scientific perspectives as mutually incompatible. I argue that the author's solution of "separate but equal" domains for scientific vs. Indigenous archaeologies misrepresents both science and Indigeneity as homogenous entities, affirms these positions as inherently dichotomized and invites comparison to some of the troubling philosophical legacies of racial segregation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert McGhee's recent lead-in American Antiquity article entitled Aboriginalism and Problems of Indigenous archaeology seems to emphasize the pitfalls that con occur in "indigenous archaeology." Though the effort is never easy, I would emphasize an approach based on a 50/50 partnership between the archaeological scientist and the native people whose past we are attempting to study through our field and research techniques. In northwestern North America, we have found this approach important in sharing ownership of the scientist/tribal effort, and, equally important, in adding highly significant (scientifically) cultural knowledge of Tribal members through their ongoing cultural transmission—a concept basic to our explanation in the field of archaeology and anthropology. Our work with ancient basketry and other wood and fiber artifacts from waterlogged Northwest Coast sites demonstrates millennia of cultural continuity often including regionally distinctive, highly guarded cultural styles or techniques that tribal members continue to use. A 50/50 partnership means, and allows, joint ownership that can only expand the scientific description and the cultural explanation through an Indigenous archaeology approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert McGhee (2008) recently argued against the validity and viability of Indigenous archaeology based on claims that untenable "Aboriginalism" supports the entire enterprise. However, he mischaracterizes and simplifies Indigenous archaeology, despite the wealth of literature suggesting that such community approaches have had and will continue to have great value for method, theory, rigorous interpretation, and political value in archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author argues that these critiques are based primarily on mistaken readings of his original article. He contends that Indigenous archaeology is a social project without a demonstrated intellectual foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have increasingly promoted an emerging paradigm of Indigenous archaeology, which includes an array of practices conducted by, for, and with Indigenous communities to challenge the discipline's intellectual breadth and political economy. McGhee (2008) argues that Indigenous archaeology is not viable because it depends upon the essentialist concept of "Aboriginalism." In this reply, we correct McGhee's description of Indigenous Archaeology and demonstrate why Indigenous rights are not founded on essentialist imaginings. Rather, the legacies of colonialism, sociopolitical context of scientific inquiry, and insights of traditional knowledge provide a strong foundation for collaborative and community-based archaeology projects that include Indigenous peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing concern with the effects of archaeological data recovery methods on the types and quantity of objects extracted from the material record, archaeologists rarely discuss recovery biases attributable to the most basic excavation procedures. In this study I examine how several factors, including variable artifact identification skills, can affect artifact recovery rates in the field. Data from household-level investigations at the Stó;lō (Coast Salish) village of Welqámex (DiRi 15) are presented to show how interobserver variation can compromise interpretations of past behavior when opportunities for artifact recovery are limited to observations at the excavation unit and single-episode (field-only) sieving. Laboratory sorting of screen residue retained in 3.2-mm (one-eighth-inch) mesh sieves is shown to account for the recovery of as much as 87.5 percent of lithic artifacts and nearly 90 percent of archaeofaunal remains. Rates of artifact recovery in the field are highly variable among excavation crews working at Welqámex, and 1 argue that the application of correction factors is inappropriate unless the magnitude of recovery bias can be measured for specific excavation teams and particular depositional contexts. The results of this study further highlight the importance of documenting and mitigating the unintended effects of methodological decisions on archaeological assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct dating of artifacts is preferable to dating via association in most archaeological situations. In this article we describe and discuss the first application of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to directly date temper particles in shell-tempered pottery. This method can be applied to ceramics from around the world that are tempered with freshwater or marine shell. To assess the method, we examine 34 new or previously reported dates (AMS dates on shell temper, paired luminescence dates from the same ceramics, and associated radiocarbon dates on other biotic materials) from seven sites in a variety of geological settings in the state of Mississippi. The results show that a freshwater reservoir effect is present in most cases. Other potential complicating factors include variable carbon input and metabolic uptake rates over space and time and the effects of burning during temper preparation or pottery firing. Despite these problems, the method holds promise for dating surface materials, museum specimens, and burial accompaniments; for investigating settlement patterns; and for other areas of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mason contends that we (Howey and O'Shea 2006) created a "chimera" of the Missaukee Earthworks site as a regional ceremonial center in Late Prehistoric Michigan (A.D. 1200-1600) by misinterpreting archaeological and ethnohistoric data. In considering Mason's critique, we re-emphasize the value, and methods, of studying ritual via material remains and show that Mason's arguments simply serve to exemplify why the culture-historic approach has failed in its effort to understand the pre-contact Native cultures of the Great Lakes. Whitley contends we are misguided about the aims of archaeological studies of ritual and the place of "meaning" in these studies, In considering the "meaning" archaeologists seek in our studies of past ritual, we emphasize the problems we see in quests for what is ultimately immaterial and unrecoverable, the internal or emotive "meaning" of past ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lichenometry—a method developed by geologists for dating Holocene moraines and other landforms—has many potential applications in archaeology. Maximum-diameter lichenometry can suggest ages for features that were initially lichen-free, such as the moai of Easter island, and rock surfaces exposed by toolstone quarrying. Size-frequency analysis can provide dates for structures built of lichen-covered rocks, such as game-drive walls and blinds, meat caches, and tent rings. Both methods require local calibration curves, best constructed by measuring lichens on substrata of known exposure age. Most lichenometric studies have involved yellow members of the crustose genus Rhizocarpon, which grow slowly and can live for as long as 10,000 years. Lichenometry has been particularly successful on siliceous rock types in arctic, subarctic, and alpine-tundra environments. The effects of wildfire and of competition from foliose lichens make the technique less well suited for forested terrain. Few data are available for tropical or desert environments or for calcareous substrata. The reliability of a lichenometric date will depend on the quality of the calibration curve, the size of the sample, the nature and postoccupational history of the substratum, and the ability of the archaeologist to recognize potential disturbance factors. An ecological perspective is essential. Known archaeological applications and problems are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that proponents of various forms of Indigenous Archaeology base their argument on a paradigm of Aboriginal essentialism ("Aboriginalism") that is derived from the long-discarded concept of Primitive Man. The development of Aboriginalism is explored as a mutually reinforcing process between Indigenous and Western scholars, based on evidence that is at best anecdotal. The adoption of this flawed concept by archaeologists, Western publics, and Indigenous people themselves has led to problematic assumptions that have negative consequences for both the practice of archaeology and for the lives of those who identify themselves as Indigenous. Archaeologists can usefully challenge the historical assumptions on which the paradigm of Aboriginalism is based: the belief that local societies have endured as stable entities over great periods of time, and the consequent projection of contemporary ethnic identities into the deep past. Such a challenge confronts a significant element of the intellectual climate that allows marginalized groups to exist as permanent aliens in the societies of settler nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zooarchaeologists have long realized the analytical potential of ungulate mortality data in studies of temporally shifting foraging efficiency. An additional but seldom examined form of evidence from ungulate remains is the morphometry of age-independent body size. Together simple bivariate morphometric and mortality data from ungulate remains reveal shifts through time in harvest pressure and/or environmental carrying capacity. A proposed model of these effects is validated using wildlife biology data from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), an ungulate taxon that is very common in North American archaeological faunas. Several archaeological implications that bear on studies of foraging efficiency in subsistence hunting economies arise from this ordinal-scale model, such as the conditions under which harvest pressure increases or decreases or when carrying capacity rises or declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Darwinian evolutionary approach to archaeology naturally leads to a focus on cultural transmission. Theoretical models of cultural evolution indicate that individual-level details of cultural transmission can have specific and significant population-level effects, implying that differences in transmission may be detectable in the archaeological record. Here we present an experimental simulation of the cultural transmission of prehistoric projectile-point technology, simulating the two transmission modes—indirect bias and guided variation—that Bettinger and Eerkens (1999) suggested were responsible for differences in Nevada and California point-attribute correlations. Groups of participants designed "virtual projectile points" and tested them in "virtual hunting environments," with different phases of learning simulating, alternately, indirectly biased cultural transmission and independent individual learning. As predicted, periods of cultural transmission were associated with significantly stronger attribute correlations than were periods of individual learning. We also found that participants who could engage in indirectly biased horizontal cultural transmission outperformed individual-learning controls, especially when individual learning was costly and the selective environment was multimodal. The study demonstrates that experimental simulations of cultural transmission, used alongside archaeological data, mathematical models and computer simulations, constitute a useful tool for studying cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiments were undertaken to evaluate a natural versus cultural origin for a set of modified pebbles and cobbles found in pre-Clovis-age contexts at the Big Eddy site (23CE426) in southwest Missouri, U.S.A. Two experiments involving Asian elephants and American bison provided evidence that pre-Clovis-age modified cobbles, pebbles, and flakes probably were produced by the trampling of large mammals traversing alluvial gravel bars in search of food and water in a riparian environment. The production of "zoofacts" and behavioral aspects of elephants are described with respect to research on the earliest Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Mitchell's analysis of the legacy of the Missouri Basin Project (MBP) identified the direct historical approach as one discourse that shaped the MBP legacy. While that identification is certainly correct, the discussion is too limited in two ways. First, the use of the direct historical approach for tracing ethnicity was more limited than is generally recognized. Second, and more seriously, the rich documentary and ethnographic record of the Plains Village lifeway became a too readily used source of specific analogies for reading the archaeological record. Theory became irrelevant. Some of the numerous inaccuracies this produced are only recently being corrected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their comments, Bleed and Roper acknowledge the profound effects routine research practices have had on the conceptual development of Plains archaeology, though both disagree with aspects of my analysis. Bleed disputes lily characterization of current theory in Plains archaeology but fails to appreciate the extent to which Plains archaeology continues to emphasize culture historical research. Bleed further argues that there are few connections between the research practices established by the Missouri Basin Project (MBP) and those of more recent Plains archaeologists. However, such a stance discounts the powerful influence of construct paradigms or exemplars on the development of method and theory. Roper provides valuable insights into the role played by direct historic analogy in the development of theory in Plains archaeology. However, her analysis glosses over the fact that all aspects of archaeological research are informed by theoretical propositions, whether explicitly stated or merely assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processual and postprocessual archaeologists implicitly employ the same epistemological system to evaluate the worth of different explanations: inference to the best explanation. This is good since inference to the best explanation is the most effective epistemological approach to archaeological reasoning available. Underlying the logic of inference to the best explanation is the assumption that the explanation that accounts for the most evidence is also most likely to be true. This view of explanation often reflects the practice of archaeological reasoning better than either the hypothetico-deductive method or hermeneutics. This article explores the logic of inference to the best explanation and provides clear criteria to determine what makes one explanation better than another. Explanations that are empirically broad, general, modest, conservative, simple, testable, and address many perspectives are better than explanations that are not. This article also introduces a system of understanding explanation that emphasizes the role of contrastive pairings in the construction of specific explanations. This view of explanation allows for a better understanding of when, and when not, to engage in the testing of specific explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A magnetic field gradient survey was conducted at Poverty Point to determine if that technique could detect discrete subsurface features and differentiate the ridges and swales in an area that today exhibits very little topographic relief. The survey area (280 m long by 20 to 60 m wide) crossed Ridges I through 5 in the southwest portion of the site. The ridges were revealed as variegated bands of positive and negative magnetic anomalies whereas the swales appeared to be relatively homogeneous. Ridge I, nearest the plaza, is wider and higher but has less of a flank midden than the other ridges. Two roughly circular arrangements of anomalies on Ridge I are potentially important but cannot be reliably interpreted without ground truthing excavations. Future large-area, high-resolution magnetic gradient surveys could dramatically enhance our understanding of this enigmatic site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report here on the results of AMS dating and isotopic analysis of the frozen human remains named Kwaday Dän Ts'inchí and associated materials recovered from a glacier located in Northwest British Columbia, Canada in 1999. The isotopic analysis of bone collagen (bulk and single amino acids) from the individual indicates a strongly marine diet, which was unexpected given the location of this find, more than 100 km inland eroding out of a high elevation glacier; however bulk hair and bone cholesterol isotopic values indicate a shift in diet to include more terrestrial foods in the year before death. The radiocarbon dating is not straightforward, as there are difficulties in determining the appropriate marine correction for the human remains, and the spread of dates on the associated artifacts clearly indicates that this was not a single use site. By combining the most recent date on a robe worn by Kwaday Dän Ts'inchi with direct bone collagen dates we conclude that the individual likely dates to between cal A.D. 1670 to 1850, which is in the pre-(or early) European contact period for this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A four-year program of remote sensing at the Double Ditch State Historic Site (32BL8) demonstrates the utility of combined prospecting methods for understanding complex settlements when combined with traditional excavation methods. Magnetic gradiometry revealed countless subterranean storage pits, hearths, and two previously unknown fortification systems that vastly increase the settlement's area and projected population to perhaps 2,000 individuals. Electrical resistance surveys helped define middens, other depositional areas, houses, and earth-borrowing pits. Ground-penetrating radar yielded details about ditch, house, and mounded midden interior forms. Aerial survey from a powered parachute acquired high-resolution digital color and thermal infrared imagery. The former distinguished houses, borrow pits, and ditches from middens and fill areas by changes in vegetation; the latter did the same through temperature variations that also highlighted historic excavations. High-resolution topographic survey allowed documentation of topographic expressions caused by ditches, houses, borrow pits, and mounds. The remote sensing program reduced excavation costs by targeting features. Excavations confirmed anomaly identifications and established a chronology that documents late-fifteenth-century origins to an ultimate contraction in the eighteenth century, with abandonment after a smallpox outbreak about A. D. 1785. Evidence suggests that large mounds formed integral components of the village's defenses. Excavations also reveal extensive earth moving for mound building, earthlodge coverings, and other reasons still unclear. This practice caused the truncation or obliteration of many earlier archaeological features and forces realization that long-occupied settlements were fluid through time with continual reworking of deposits, and complex depositional, use, and formation histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a simple model of lithic procurement, reduction, and use, we generate predictions for patterns in source diversity and average distance-to-source measurements for flaked stone assemblages left behind by small-scale and residentially mobile populations. We apply this model to geochemical data from obsidian artifacts from three regions in western North America. As predicted, results show markedly different patterns in the geochemical composition of small flakes, large flakes, and formal tools. While small flakes and tools tend to have greater source diversity and are on average farther from their original source, the large flake assemblage is composed of fewer and closer sources. These results suggest that a failure to include very late stage reduction (e.g., pressure flakes) and microdebitage in characterization studies may bias interpretations about the extent of residential mobility and/or trade patterns because more distant sources will be underrepresented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing of the adoptions of maize and squash across eastern North America has been a topic of long-standing interest among archaeologists and paleoethnobotanists. The use of flotation for macrobotanical remains beginning in the 1960s and 1970s coupled with the application of accelerator mass spectrometry dating beginning in the 1980s has led to substantial revisions of knowledge about the history of these crops in the region. A complementary source of evidence for the crops' histories in the eastern North America comes from opal phytoliths. Analysis of phytolith assemblages recovered from charred food residues has shown that maize and squash were being used in central New York well before the macrobotanical record indicates. In combination with previously analyzed samples, 16 additional residue assemblages help to clarify the history of maize and squash in central New York. The results indicate that maize and squash were being used in New York by 2270 B. P. and 2945 B. P., respectively. [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]

While providing a review of some of the ethnographic literature surrounding hunting and Costly Signaling Theory. Codding and Jones offer no alternative framework for how this emerging theoretical approach might be applied to the archaeological record. In their view, Costly Signaling Theory lies beyond the pale of current archaeological inquiry, or at least our conception of it. We respond to this characterization by providing a specific methodological approach, combined with several additional applications, that answer Codding and Jones's call for greater linkage between the theory, and the archaeological record. Ultimately we believe that the archaeological record, with its temporal dimension, may illuminate some of the underlying aspects of Costly Signaling Theory that are otherwise obscured by more synchronic ethnographic studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological studies of temporal changes in human predation strategy using foraging theory tend to focus on the role of overexploitation of important prey resources and resulting resource depression. An alternative use of the prey- choice model framed under foraging theory is to investigate the influence of environmental changes, such as increases in climate stress, on prey availability. Environmental change can be expected to produce many of the same effects on human predation strategy as resource depression. Here analytical techniques typically used to study the effects of over-predation and resource depression caused by humans are used to monitor their response to fluctuations in prey availability related to climate change during the Holocene in Missouri. Data and interpretations presented here add to the growing body of zooarchaeological foraging theory literature implicating environmental change as a critical factor in human diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zooarchaeologists regularly assume a positive relationship between body size and energetic return rates among animal taxa. Some researchers question the validity of this assumption, suggesting that small animals collected in mass can provide high returns and pose interpretive problems for methods relying on a clear correlation. A review of empirical data shows that while large fish and invertebrates can provide high returns, those for most small animals remain very low. Differences appear to result from disparities in the relative energetic value of various taxa, costs associated with mass collection, and the efficiency with which resources are handled once acquired. Mass collection is unlikely to pose an interpretive problem under most circumstances, and the low returns for mass collecting many small animals have interesting implications for interpreting changes in their relative frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional approaches to the analysis of skeletal representation in faunal assemblages that employ correlation analyses work well when there is a linear or curvilinear relationship or no relationship at all between the variables under investigation. However, in taphonomic applications in zooarchaeology, these approaches can mask meaningful variation in certain cases where the relationship between the causal variable and skeletal-part representation is one of limitation rather than absolute determination. Such relationships are typified by triangular distributions of points in scatter plots. Using fuzzy-set theory, these relationships can be interpreted more comprehensively by distinguishing necessity and sufficiency relationships between the causal variable and skeletal part representation. Graphs in which data points are distributed in a triangle in the lower-right part of the scatterplot are consistent with an interpretation of necessity, while graphs where data points are distributed in an upper-left triangle are consistent with an interpretation of sufficiency. Such interpretations parallel transport strategies inferred from graphs of utility and representation, and can be applied profitably to graphs of density and representation. In some cases, this leads not only to refinement of the interpretation of density effects, but also to retrieval of economic evidence that might otherwise be overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing zooarchaeological data for Native American, Spanish, and British occupations with modern fisheries data from St. Johns County, Florida (USA) shows differences in the use of marine resources from 1450 B. C. through A.D. 2000. Changes in biomass contribution, diversity, types of fishes used, and trophic levels of sharks, rays, and bony fishes suggest that the pattern described as "fishing down marine food webs" (Pauly et al. 1998) may have been present in the St. Johns County area as early as the eighteenth century. A change in the size and growth habits of Atlantic croaker (Sciaenidae: Micropogonias undulatus) occurred early in this sequence, indicating an impact on this specific fish. However, overharvesting of fishes is not the only explanation for these observations. Climate and cultural changes are additional explanations for the patterns observed that should receive closer attention. Exploring these alternative explanations is made possible by a zooarchaeological record that permits us to study fishing habits and fish behavior before large-scale industrial fishing began. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which described methods for estimating the minimum number of skeletal elements in zooarchaeology. Background to estimating skeletal element abundance; Discussion and conclusions.