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The origin of art has been an enduring issue in archaeology since the nineteenth century with many contending theories. While we are not concerned here with the origins of simple image-making (images consisting of patterned scratches or minimal representations), we would like to propose that one important reason for the elaboration and widespread use of more labor intensive and complex images--especially those requiring considerable time, effort, and training--may be the need for impressive images by traditional secret societies. We document such elaborations ethnographically and point out the inherent reasons for investing in them by secret societies. Beginning with complex hunter/gatherers, secret societies had the motivations, the resources, and the psychological insights to develop sophisticated art and architecture, resulting in some of the most impressive displays in prehistory. We use the remarkable petroglyph site of Thorsen Creek in British Columbia as a prime case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most common tendencies of human settlements is for larger settlements to display higher population densities. Work in urban science and archaeology suggests that this densification pattern reflects an emergent spatial equilibrium where individuals balance movement costs with social interaction benefits, leading to increases in aggregate productivity and social interdependence. The temporary camps created by hunters and gatherers exhibit a tendency to become less dense with their population size. The different manner in which hunter-gatherer groups express their sociality in residential space suggests that they typically lack the social structures and material technologies necessary for humans to live at greater spatial densities in permanent settlements. Here we examine why this difference occurs and consider conditions under which hunter-gatherer groups may transition to sedentism and densification. We investigate the relationship between population and area in hunter-gatherer camps using a data set representing a large cross-cultural sample derived from the ethnographic literature. We present a model based on the interplay between social interactions and scalar stress that describes the observed patterns among mobile hunter-gatherers. We find that the transition to a densification scheme does not necessary involve domestic food production, only surpluses and storable resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Megan Kassabaum has developed a useful approach for interpreting feasting remains, but its application to the Feltus site demonstrates that modifications need to be made. In particular, the characterization of competitive feasting is too simplistic, and her model does not include work types of feasts, which may be responsible for the remains at the Feltus site. The interpretation of feasting at the Feltus site as resulting from social solidarity needs of a dispersed egalitarian society appear questionable on the basis of a high incidence of special meat, the occurrence of smoking pipes, monumental architecture, and indications of possible human sacrifices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the recovery of remains of traditional corporate group residences by archaeologists in Southeast Asia. The article discusses the use of long houses as shared domestic spaces, the practice of communal feasting and communities in which this living style is common including the Ta Oi, Monong Gar and Rhadé. The article goes on to discuss the effect of industrialism on these communities and the way in which some policies could be considered "cultural genocide."

Prentiss et al. (2003) have argued for a relatively recent, short (1600-1100 B.P.), and noncontinuous occupation of large villages and large housepits on the British Columbian Plateau. They argue that these developments resulted from climatically induced resource impoverishment in the region. I maintain that their database is inadequate for such conclusions and that their interpretations are in conflict with dates that 1 obtained from large housepits as well as with the distribution of early point styles (dating from 1200-4800 B.P.) that concentrate in the rim middens of large and medium-sized housepits. These data indicate that large villages and housepits that emerged by 2600 B.P., or earlier, were continuously occupied and corresponded more to the development of collector-based technologies rather than any climatic deteriorations or the introduction of the bow and arrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several unusual wood and plant artifactual remains were recovered from the Keatley Creek site in the Interior of British Columbia. The most important of these is a charred fragment of a coiled basket recovered from a Protohistoric Period ritual structure dated to 250 BP. This is the only archaeological example of coiled basketry from the Interior, and such examples are extremely rare on the Coast also. While it may have served as a cooking or water container, we also suggest that it may have been a prestige item, possibly used in ritual contexts. The other artifacts described include a section of a wooden shaft implement like a bow or hoop frame dated to 1410 BP, and a bifacial stone knife from a storage pit that still retained a bark wrapping probably dating to ca. 1000 BP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research at the Keatley Creek site near the Fraser River has provided critical new insights into prehistoric social and economic organization on the Canadian Northwest Plateau. Using a wide range of lithic, faunal, botanical, and chemical analyses, it has been possible to demonstrate that large residential corporate groups exercised privileged access to the best fishing locations and apparently had rights to different mountain regions. These corporate groups maintained these rights as well as their ownership over house locations and specific identities for over a millennium. Large corporate groups were also divided internally into privileged domestic groups and non-privileged domestic groups, probably reflecting hereditary title-holding families and commoners or even slaves. I argue that in order to derive useful information about past social and economic organization, appropriate concepts and questions must be developed from an explicitly archaeological viewpoint rather than a cultural anthropological or sociological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]