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Climatic change appears to influence major patterns in human history. However, confirming the association between climatic events and adaptive human responses is not straightforward given the potential for spurious correlations and uncertainty in the timing of events. Here we leverage theory from behavioral and population ecology to generate predictions about causal relationships between climate and settlement decisions. We then test those predictions using statistical methods designed to evaluate associations under uncertainty. This allows us to evaluate a comprehensive record of radiocarbon dated archaeological sites in the Basin-Plateau region of North America relative to a record of effective precipitation reconstructed using Macrophysical Climate Models. Consistent with theory, the results show that regional populations declined in the mid-Holocene during a prolonged period of reduced precipitation, leading to the abandonment of many major rockshelter sites. Remaining populations concentrated at open-air sites around well-watered sand dune localities where they constructed pithouses and adopted more intensive subsistence practices. These findings illustrate an adaptive response of hunter-gatherer populations to past climate change that supports theoretical predictions and is unlikely to result from spurious correlations or uncertainties in the timing of events. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America" edited by Christina Perry Sampson explores the concept of complexity among hunter-gatherer societies in North America. The book challenges the traditional binary categorization of simple vs. complex hunter-gatherers and argues for a more nuanced understanding of variability within these societies. The authors emphasize that complexity should not be limited to socioeconomic aspects but should also include other domains such as worldviews, ritual, knowledge, and historical trajectories. However, the reviewer disagrees with the book's premise and argues that complexity should primarily be understood in terms of socioeconomic inequalities. The reviewer also critiques the book for oversimplifying the ethnographic record and creating strawman arguments. Overall, the book does not offer new perspectives but instead attacks traditional concepts of complexity. [Extracted from the article]

"Earth Ovens and Desert Lifeways: 10,000 Years of Indigenous Cooking in the Arid Landscapes of North America" is a book that explores the history and diversity of in-ground earth ovens and hot-rock cooking in the arid regions of southwestern United States and northeastern Mexico. The editors and authors examine the cultural practices and demographic changes associated with these cooking methods, highlighting the incredible diversity of past societies. The book also discusses the concept of food intensification and the complex decisions people made to secure reliable sources of food. While the book provides valuable insights, it is noted that there is a lack of Indigenous authors and limited mention of collaborative research partnerships with descendant communities. The inclusion of Indigenous perspectives and traditional knowledge is seen as crucial for future research in this field. [Extracted from the article]

The copper-using cultures of North America's Archaic Period (10,000–3000 BP) have long been an archaeological enigma. For millennia, Middle and Late Archaic hunter-gatherers (8000–3000 BP) around the Upper Great Lakes region made utilitarian implements out of copper, only for these items to decline in prominence and frequency as populations grew and social complexity increased during the Archaic to Woodland Transition. From a cultural evolutionary perspective, the trajectory of North America's copper usage presents a conundrum, as it is generally assumed that "superior" tools, i.e., metals, will replace inferior ones, i.e., stone. For well over a century, scholars have pondered the reason for the demise of copper technology that was once a wide-spread phenomenon. To address this question, an extensive archaeological experimental program was conducted which compared replica copper tools (spear points, knife blades, and awls) to analogous ones made of stone or bone to assess whether relative functional efficiency contributed to the decline of utilitarian copper implements. Here, the results of this three-part research program are presented in concert with population dynamics and ecological change to paint a broader picture of the complex interrelationships between the social, ecological, and technological spheres of past human behaviors. The synthesis of these approaches reveals that functional explanations—derived from experimental archaeology placed in an evolutionary framework—can shed much light on the trajectory of metal use in the North American Great Lakes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research examining institutionalized hierarchy tends to focus on chiefdoms and states, while its emergence among small-scale societies remains poorly understood. Here, we test multiple hypotheses for institutionalized hierarchy, using environmental and social data on 89 hunter-gatherer societies along the Pacific coast of North America. We utilize statistical models capable of identifying the main correlates of sustained political and economic inequality, while controlling for historical and spatial dependence. Our results indicate that the most important predictors relate to spatiotemporal distribution of resources. Specifically, higher reliance on and ownership of clumped aquatic (primarily salmon) versus wild plant resources is associated with greater political-economic inequality, measuring the latter as a composite of internal social ranking, unequal access to food resources, and presence of slavery. Variables indexing population pressure, scalar stress, and intergroup conflict exhibit little or no correlation with variation in inequality. These results are consistent with models positing that hierarchy will emerge when individuals or coalitions (e.g., kin groups) control access to economically defensible, highly clumped resource patches, and use this control to extract benefits from subordinates, such as productive labor and political allegiance in a patron-client system. This evolutionary ecological explanation might illuminate how and why institutionalized hierarchy emerges among many small-scale societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The archaeology of hunters and gatherers has long focused on the economic and technological dimensions of food use and procurement. In marginal environments especially, hunter-gatherer food use has often been situated within an adaptationist calculus of survival and environmental accommodation. The ethnographic record of hunter-gatherers that inhabited such environments, however, indicate that social and cultural considerations also critically informed indigenous peoples' procurement, consumption, and discard practices. Drawing on the later prehistoric and early historic archaeological record of the island of Newfoundland, in northeastern Canada, this paper explores how the procurement, consumption, and handling of subarctic foods conveyed identity, reflected historical conditions and social relations, factored into ritual and ceremonial practice, and embodied worldviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews previous work conducted on Laser Ablation – Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) sourcing 33 Clovis period projectile points from the Gault Site (41BL323) in Central Texas. This paper includes new geochemical data from four new primary geologic sources to increase an Edwards Plateau region chert database to 302 primary geologic samples from 204 samples with which to test against the geochemistry of the 33 Clovis artifacts. These artifacts are then assessed with regards to their form, breakage patterns, and distance to source to suggest a blended model of mobility for Clovis period hunter-gatherers in Central Texas. This data suggests that the pattern of movement across the landscape of the Edwards Plateau for these hunter-gatherers may have been a blended pattern alternating between collector and forager based on changing distribution of resources seasonally. This patterning may have been influenced for the Gault Clovis hunter-gatherers reliant on availability of chert resources as well as ecotonal density and diversity of plants and animals; especially, as gauged by Clovis site types and distribution spread throughout much of the Southern Great Plains. • Clovis hunter-gatherers at the Gault Site used chert from over 300 km away. • Breakage and discard patterns of non-local and local chert suggests long distance mobility. • Gault Clovis hunter-gatherer likely alternated their mobility strategies throughout the year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In eastern North America, there are few stratified sites dating to the Late Pleistocene epoch (> 11,700 cal B.P.). Instead, researchers have relied on the distribution of surface sites and isolated finds to make inferences about how the early inhabitants of the region used the landscape. While proxies for modern recovery bias have been found to affect artifact recovery at a national scale, in the southeastern United States, I argue, they are poor predictors for the frequency of Clovis type bifaces (ca. 13,250-12,850 cal B.P.) from counties in the southeastern United States as reported in the Paleoindian Database of the Americas (P1DBA). Instead, counties with the highest density of Clovis bifaces are near sources of lithic raw material, and in particular the intersection of major rivers, physiographic boundaries, and lithic raw material sources. I contend that these locations could represent seasonal aggregation loci. Alternatively, they could reflect areas where lithic raw material is more readily available, which may have resulted in higher rates of artifact discard. Determining which of these hypotheses is a more accurate reflection of past human behavior requires that we untangle the degree to which the amount of time people spent at these locations was successive versus coeval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North America was colonized by hunter–gatherer populations during the late Pleistocene, and the Clovis culture is the earliest well-documented evidence of this event. Long-standing questions about the colonization process persist, including the extent to which low-density populations maintained contact across the continent and if foraging territories overlapped or were spatially-discrete. Here, we use a network approach to examine the spatial structure of land use associated with the earliest hunter–gatherer populations in North America. In particular, we examine the co-occurrence of raw materials used for stone tool manufacture at archaeological sites across the continent. Using a database of 84 Clovis assemblages we show that there are three large isolated, mostly spatially-discrete, lithic exploitation networks across the continent. These regions closely correspond to previously identified differences in Clovis point form, suggesting that Clovis populations were becoming regionally distinct. This process of cultural diversification that begins in the late Pleistocene, continues to develop into the Holocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been little movement to systematically incorporate the study of indigenous landscape management practices into the method and theory of hunter-gatherer research in North American archaeology, despite a growing interest in this topic. The purposes of this article are twofold. One is to address why, until quite recently, archaeologists have been reluctant to engage in the current debate about the scale and ecological impact of these practices, particularly anthropogenic burning. We argue that this stems from a long tradition of viewing hunter-gatherers as passive, immediate-return foragers, as well as from the daunting methodological challenges of identifying landscape management activities using archaeological data. Our second purpose is to explore how archaeologists can make significant contributions to our understanding of past resource management practices through the creation of new kinds of collaborative, interdisciplinary eco-archaeological programs. Based on the current work of scholars in archaeological and environmental disciplines, as veil as on our own implementation of such an approach in central California, we discuss the importance of maintaining mutual relationships with local tribes, the challenges of coordinating multiple data sets, and the process of rethinking our analytical methods and temporal scales for undertaking hunter-gatherer studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A consideration of ethnographic data, computational model results, and archaeological data suggest that changes in family-level economics coincident with subsistence intensification contributed to the emergence of social complexity among prehistoric hunter–gatherers in eastern North America by creating the conditions for a “rich get richer” scenario. Ethnographic data are used to construct a general computational model representing key person- and family-level behaviors, constraints, and decisions affecting the size and composition of hunter–gatherer families. Results from model experiments suggest that lowering the age at which children make a significant contribution to subsistence (e.g., through the broadening of the diet to include the kinds of mass-harvested, “low quality” foods that were increasingly exploited during the Archaic and Woodland periods) relaxes constraints on family size and makes large, polygynous families economically viable. Positive feedbacks between the productive and reproductive potentials of larger families produce right-tailed distributions of family size and “wealth” when the productive age of children is low and polygyny is incentivized. Size data from over 800 prehistoric residential structures suggest right-tailed distributions of family size were present during the Late Archaic through Middle Woodland periods. These distributions would have provided variability in family-based status that permitted the emergence of hereditary social distinctions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Chemical analysis of residue extracted from stone pipes and pipe fragments excavated at sites in the southern Pacific Northwest Coast of North America demonstrate that hunter-gatherers smoked the psychostimulant tobacco (Nicotiana sp.) by at least AD 860. Non-farming ethno-historic Native Americans throughout the west gathered and sometimes cultivated tobacco for ritual and religious purposes, but until now the antiquity of the practice on this part of the continent was unknown. Method validation includes chemical characterization of a suite of smoke plants and experimental reproduction of “smoked” pipe chemistry; results indicate biomarkers are traceable for several species commonly smoked by ethnographic native peoples, including tobacco (nicotine, cotinine), tree tobacco (anabasine), and kinnikinnick (arbutin). Developed methods—where residue is extracted directly from the stone or clay matrix of whole and fragmentary archaeological pipes—may be applied in similar studies investigating the spread and use of ritual smoke plants in the ancient Americas and elsewhere. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Uto-Aztecan premolar is a discrete dental trait found in low frequency (<2%) among world populations. The highest frequencies of the trait have been found among the indigenous populations of North America and, to a lesser extent, South America. Because of the trait's relatively higher frequency in the Western Hemisphere, the antiquity and distribution of the feather is important for reconstructing the biocultural interactions of prehistoric populations. While early research concluded that the Uto-Aztecan premolar originated in the American Southwest around 4,000 years Before Present (BP), more recent studies have discovered the trait across the Americas and in parts of Europe and Asia. For this study, over 300 dentitions representing foragers and farmers in south-central North America were examined. The trait was found in relatively high frequency (over 11%) in Archaic hunter-gatherer populations from Central Texas, with high frequencies also found in the adjacent western Gulf Coastal Plain. The presence of this trait in Early Archaic populations suggests that the trait was present by 8,000 BP and persisted at a high frequency into the Late Archaic period. Am J Phys Anthropol 149:318-322, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nuanced understanding of the western Kentucky Green River Archaic requires reconciling the region’s rich archaeological record with the growing literature pertaining to how hunter-gatherers perceive their worlds. A dwelling perspective of the Green River Archaic involves interpreting the region’s large middens as components of animated lifeworlds saturated with meaning and composed of numerous constantly maintained relationships among people and between people and various other beings. This article explores how Green River Archaic hunter-gatherers constructed the middens through daily practices and periodic emotionally charged mortuary rites, thereby giving them meaning as persistent places and contributing to an ever-evolving, historically constituted landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing a dwelling perspective, this paper reinterprets the adoption of horticulture during the terminal Late Archaic in eastern North America as an unintended consequence of changing human-animal-plant relations and the invention of bulk processing techniques during the Middle and Late Archaic. The incorporation of immobile plant and animal species into the lifeworlds of Archaic individuals by 7000 bp was part of a dynamic series of changes that greatly altered the taskscapes of these hunter-gatherers. The activities characteristic of these new taskscapes were group oriented and included the bulk processing of nuts and mussels to buffer against risk of winter food shortages. Changing social relations during the terminal Late Archaic dissociated certain groups from important riverine resources; however, the adoption of bulk wild-food-processing techniques provided a technological foundation for the replacement of aquatic immobile resources with upland garden crops, leading to the advent of a stable upland horticultural complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hildebrandt et al. offer this rather vitriolic challenge to our conclusions on the Diablo Canyon fauna in order to recast the data in favor of their view that major diachronic trends in western North American prehistory are the product of an increase in men's prestige hunting over time. Here we respond, first by discussing our view of the relationship between historical contingencies and behavioral ecological models, second by showing that the patterns they find in a regional faunal dataset result only from inappropriate aggregation of bone counts, third by questioning the potential prestige value of highly vulnerable species, and finally by making the case that standard behavioral ecological models, punctuated by historical contingencies, provide more parsimonious, albeit less fanciful, explanations for patterning in the western North American faunal record. We conclude by suggesting that when practitioners attempt to explain away empirical variability in order to support a favored hypothesis, it might be time to acknowledge that the hypothesis has failed to take flight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a single site along the central California coast (CA-SLO-2), Jones et al. (2008) critique our use of human behavioral ecology to explain changing hunting and fishing adaptations in prehistoric California and the Great Basin. Instead, they argue that human adaptations tend to stay relatively stable over time until they are influenced by historical contingencies. We question the utility of using data from a single site, and expand the sample with information from several deposits along the south-central coast. This expanded sample documents a dynamic evolutionary sequence characterized by increasing residential stability accompanied by hunting and fishing in more distant resource patches. Access to these patches, both terrestrial and marine, was made possible by changes in social organization and technology. Many of these behaviors appear to have incurred high costs, and are potentially explained with reference to costly signaling theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative analysis of housepit structures at the Keatley Creek site on the Canadian Plateau indicates that the ones on the periphery of the site cluster as a group, distinct from the domestic housepits in the core of the site. Comparison of the material attributes from a sample of peripheral structures with expectations of various nondomestic structures for the study region suggests that these structures were used as feasting or meeting-houses and not domestic residences. These peripheral structures originate during the Plateau horizon (2400-1200 B.P.) occupation of the site and were also used during the late Kamloops horizon (400-200 B. P.). It is argued here that understanding the history of these structures as loci of restricted ritual knowledge and training can contribute much to our interpretations of the bases and origins of social inequality in Keatley Creek, and other transegalitarian communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female and male skeletal remains from early cemetery sites on the Western Gulf Coastal Plain of North America were analyzed to assess secular changes in stature across time. Sample populations consisted of hunter-gatherers and date from the Middle Archaic (3000-1500 B.C.), the Late Archaic (1500 B.C.-A.D. 600), and the Late Prehistoric (A.D. 600-1500) time periods. Results display a slight decline in average statures between the Middle and Late Archaic, but a more than 2.5 cm increase in stature from the Late Archaic to the Late Prehistoric. All populations achieved at least 94.9 percent of modern adult statures. Compared with historically documented nineteenth- and twentieth-century populations, prehistoric Texas foragers enjoyed a level of nutrition greater than that of nineteenth-century working class Europeans, Caribbean slaves, and twentieth-century hunter-gatherers. Average estimated statures were comparable with upper class nineteenth-century Europeans. Results of the study are consistent with the archeological consensus that the pre-historic hunter-gatherers of the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain practiced a conservative but highly successful hunting and gathering subsistence strategy. [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]

Several studies on the North American Pacific Coast have demonstrated the importance of household and community archaeology for documenting hunter-gatherer sociocultural dynamics. Household archaeology in coastal southern California is limited, leaving a significant gap in our understanding of a fundamental aspect of ancient human social life on the Pacific Coast. The Chumash village of Niaqla (CA-SRI-2), located on Santa Rosa Island, California, is one of the few island sites where several houses have been excavated. Cemeteries and parts of at least 10 houses were excavated in the 1940s-1960s, but only limited details have been published. Analysis of field notes, artifacts, photographs, and maps from these excavations, supplemented by additional testing, mapping, and radiocarbon dating at the site, demonstrate that Niaqla was a vibrant community, with over 20 houses, occupied for more than 2000 years. Unlike houses along the northwest coast of North America, Island Chumash houses required substantially less labor and planning, but were important locations of craft production, subsistence practices, and other activities, illustrating variability in the structure and function of houses and communities among complex hunter-gatherers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a critique of a 2003 article published in the journal "Plains Anthropologist" by Suzann L. Hendrikson on the use by hunter-gatherer cultures of ice caves on the eastern Snake River Plain in southern Idaho for long-term storage of bison remains. Flaws are found in her conclusions about the place of bison in the local diet and about the seasonal context of cave usage. Her analysis of artifacts and bone fragments is also discussed, and other studies are mentioned for comparison.

The archaeological record of western North American hunter-gatherers is characterized by long periods of socio-economic homogeneity interrupted by short bursts of variation. This pattern of punctuated equilibrium is best understood using a macro-evolutionary model like that employed in paleontology. We offer such a Darwinian framework, focusing on methods for recognizing distinct socioeconomic systems archaeologically and addressing processes that maintain systemic stasis and enable change. We apply this model to the prehistory of Northwestern North America, explaining a region-wide transition from highly residentially mobile foragers to semi-sedentary, logistically mobile, storage-dependent collectors between 3750 and 3000 cal. bp. Archaeological and paleoecological evidence shows that the collector Bauplan arose first along the northern Northwest Coast under conditions of relaxed competition that permitted multiple distinct Baupläne to develop. These systems coexisted from 5000 to 4200 cal. bp, when a marked temperature decline and a growing population altered the selective equation and heightened competition. Offering selective advantage under cooler conditions, the collector model spread by a combination of ethnic expansion and inter-ethnic transmission to become the sole Bauplan in the region by 3000 cal. bp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A review of recent research on complex hunter–gatherers in North America suggests that age-old tensions between evolutionary and historical epistemologies continue to cultivate progress in anthropological understanding of sociocultural variation. Coupled with criticism of the evolutionary status of ethnographic foragers, archaeological documentation of variation among hunter–gatherer societies of the ancient past makes it difficult to generalize about causal relationships among environment, subsistence economy, and sociopolitical organization. Explanations for emergent complexity on the Pacific Coast that privilege environmental triggers for economic change have been challenged by new paleoenvironmental findings, while hypotheses suggesting that economic changes were preceded by, indeed caused by, transformations of existing structures of social inequality have gained empirical support. In its emergent data on mound construction apart from significant subsistence change, the southeastern United States gives pause to materialist explanations for complexity, turning the focus on symbolic and structural dimensions of practice that cannot be understood apart from particular histories of group interaction and tradition. Taken together, recent research on complex hunter–gatherers in North America has not only expanded the empirical record of sociocultural formations once deemed anomalous and/or derivative of European contact but also has contributed to the ongoing process of clarifying concepts of cultural complexity and how this process ultimately restructures anthropological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding patterns of mobility among ancient populations is inextricably linked to an understanding of fundamental aspects of social and economic systems. On the Northwest Coast of North America, archeologists use attributes of the lithic assemblage, site size and location, and to a lesser extent analyses of features and faunal remains to investigate patterns of mobility. Archeobotanical data are not used in these assessments, despite the fact that explicit expectations about plant remains at different kinds of sites can be derived from the region's rich ethnographic record of plant use. In this paper, we present a model of ancient plant use in the Coast Salish region of the Northwest Coast that can be used to distinguish sites which represent varying degrees of sedentism. Based on the ethnographic and ethnobotanical literature, we characterize the expected patterning of archeobotanical remains in short-term camps, base camps, and summer, winter, and year-round villages, according to richness, degree of specialization, density, accessibility, and seasonality. We then apply the model to help interpret two archeological deposits from the Scowlitz site, a multi-component site inhabited over a 3000-year span by Coast Salish peoples, and to refine the model further. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

South America appears as a paradox for building the images of the New World''s human colonization. It is a paradox, because according to the models of the Peopling of America, it was the last part of the continent to be occupied by humans, but in spite of that sites as old as or older than the “Clovis” sites from North America, started to be discovered since the last century. It is a laboratory, because the amount of the Pleistocene archaeological sites is as great as their variability. In this way, since the last two decades, the hemi-continent is placed in a privileged situation for questioning and reconstructing theories concerning the first Americans, and also for answering questions as when did they arrive, how did they arrive, what strategies (social, ecological and economic) did they develop for the colonization of such different environments, which were their ideas for achieving this colonization, and how does their use of space and resources reflect in the archaeological record. The model “Clovis the first”, brings an image of unidirectional migration of the first people, from the great North American plains to southern Patagonia. For a decade, this model showed itself insufficient for explaining the great archaeological variability of America and especially for referring those South American contexts directly to a Clovis migration. The new findings in South America are creating more anomalies for this model, which predicts that the arrival of Pleistocene hunter–gatherers should be around 10,000 years in Patagonia. The object of this paper is to discuss these models in view of South American archaeological evidence, and thus propose answers for removing the paradox. The axes which are considered are: the geographical and chronological distribution of the main localities of Patagonia and South America; the function of the sites within regional mobility systems; the use of subsistence resources; the differences in the circulation of lithic raw materials; and the different taphonomical histories. These characteristics will be compared with models of social network among mobile peoples and American paleolandscapes at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition and a new alternative route of peopling in South America will be presented. In this sense, the data of Patagonia are highly relevant. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An interdisciplinary literature review indicates that there have been several episodes of climate change during the late Holocene. Proxies from the geological and archaeological records bolster the supposition that these periods of global change coincided closely with times of fluctuating meteorological conditions in southeastern North America. This is particularly true in the Tennessee Valley, where shifts in the intensity of mollusk-shell deposition at certain prehistoric archaeological sites coincided with sea-level oscillations in a manner indicative of a relationship to global climate change. Moreover, the sequence of the proposed climate shifts corresponds with marked changes in the material culture of Woodland sites in the Tennessee Valley of North Alabama and East Tennessee; possible shifts in hunter-gatherer organizational strategies in the Coosa Valley of northeastern Alabama and northwestern Georgia; and general periods of remarkable earthwork constructions and extensive interregional exchange networks associated with the Poverty Point, Hopewellian, and Mississippian manifestations of eastern North America. This study provides a basis from which to develop hypotheses concerning climate fluctuations and the possible cultural consequences of those changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland have long been perceived as a cultural anachronism in the native history of northeastern North America. They appeared to represent cultural holdovers from some earlier age that had been preserved in a primitive state due to isolation on a cold North Atlantic isle. To many, their history seemed shallow, timeless even. Those that supported this position did so by drawing on four lines of evidence. They interpreted Beothuk material culture and other cultural "traits" as indicative of an archaic state; they cited the Beothuk's place of residence—a northern island—as evidence of isolation from other peoples and the march of time; they cited linguistic differences as further evidence of isolation; and finally, the fact that the Beothuk became extinct seemed to offer proof that these people had indeed belonged to another age, incapable of making the leap from prehistory to the modern era. This article explores this evidence and attempts to understand the "logic" or rationale by which scholars come to view the Beothuk and their history as timeless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through time primeval Europe was transformed into a landscape where managed woodlands (forestis) became repositories for resources and wild woods (silva) were seen as being occupied by wild men, the savages. The importation into the New World of these attitudes resulted in verdant North America being classified as 'wilderness'. It was generally assumed that the worlds of the past were essentially unaltered by hunter-gatherer activities. By the twentieth century, forest management practices in North America, supported by the myth of the primeval past, encouraged old growth forests through fire suppression. The fallacy of the unmanaged forest of prehistory is now being challenged. In its place are put forward models of forests as managed sustainers of a wide range of resources. In such models, fire is an essential management tool, not an ecodisaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the subsistence behavior of the specialized big game hunters who occupied the Northern Plains of North America in the 2000-year period immediately before European contact. Settlement and subsistence on the Northern Plains of Western Canada; Subsistence and settlement strategies that can be identified for each of the grassland and wooded regions.

• A geophyte field processing model is presented, which has global applications. • Travel-time switching point predicts where geophytes were processed on the Plateau. • Bulk processing significantly influences field processing dynamics. • Geophyte processing and storage linked to women's decision-making, power, autonomy. • Family cooperation offset opportunity costs of geophyte handling to childcare. Geophytes are a critical food staple for many hunter-gatherer societies across the world. Despite recognition of their importance in the archaeological record, geophyte handling has often been portrayed in simplistic terms and the important processing, storage, and social components of their handling have not been fully realized. We present a case study from the Southern Plateau of western North America that addresses these issues. We begin by offering a framework for processing and storage that highlights storage diversity and the front-back loaded nature and flexibility of geophytes. Next, we present a geophyte field processing model to predict when field versus central place processing would occur, which provides important insights into archaeological site and artifact distributions. We then turn to the social dynamics of geophyte handling, suggesting that women were major producers and drivers of geophyte-related economies who could buffer the costs of intensive field processing strategies through bulk processing and by engaging family groups in geophyte-related activities. These logistical strategies helped to increase geophyte utility and offset transport costs and the opportunity cost that geophyte handling presented to childcare. We conclude with archaeological predictions for geophyte processing and storage signatures among societies using pedestrian, equestrian, and canoe modes of transportation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses his original argument in his findings of the article "The Caribou/Wild Reindeer as a Human Resource" in light of more up-to-date data on the trends of caribou/wild reindeer herd following by humans. The author argued that the people in northern Eurasia and northern North America could not follow caribou/wild reindeer herds because they could not keep up with them. After observing a Chipewyan group hunt the animals, the author changed his original views. However, his colleagues defended his 1972 article. The author concluded the paper by accepting the evidence of other researchers which showed his initial conclusions in 1972 to be wrong.

Analysis of settlement patterns provides valuable insights into hunter-gatherer activities. Two decades of intensive research in the Gulf of Maine, northeastern North America, has resulted in a number of observations not possible except in a multi-site, regional approach to archaeology. Efforts concentrated on the littoral of the Gulf of Maine, a highly productive marine environment that supported both hunter-gatherer-fishers and horticulturalists in the centuries preceding the arrival of Europeans around AD 1600. Because of sea-level rise and a subsiding coastline, details on regional exploitation are scant prior to 3000 BP, after which the qua, lily and quantity of data improve significantly. The transgressive nature of the shoreline means that reconstruction of the aboriginal approach to space is an artifact of both human choice and erosion. Attempts to factor in the latter in order to derive the former have combined cultured ecology with marine geology. A general absence of specialized activity sites and the lack of storage features suggests that the late pre-European populations of the area can be characterized as 'cold weather foragers' in Binford's (1980) terminology. Discussion of settlement ranges from individual dwellings to functionally specific areas of sites to overall use of the landscape, including seasonality. In an area where traditional knowledge based on early historical accounts posited transhumance from coast to interior, much effort has been directed towards unequivocal seasonality indicators. Rather than a seasonal migration from coast (summer) to interior (winter), analysis of growth rings in soft-shell clams and other indicators point to a year-round occupation in the littoral zone. The presence of distinct interior and coastal populations was possible because of the year-round availability of resources on the coast. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study of archeology in North America, with emphasis on rock shelters and the Dalton hunter-gatherers. In depth look at the excavation of rock shelters; Inhabitation of rock shelters by the Dalton people; Findings of the study.

Examines the relation between raw-material procurement and subsistence behavior among foraging societies. Embedded procurement of raw materials in modern foraging societies; Economic configuration in the Early Paleoindian societies of North America; Lithic-debitage analysis of a portion of the Nobles Pond site in Stark County, Ohio; Acquisition of lithic raw materials.

The article focuses on the culture history and evolution of social complexity among the hunter gatherers in Northwest Coast of North America. The Northwest Coast, which extends some 2000 linear kilometer from Icy Bay, Alaska to Cape Mendocino in California, have long had a central place in anthropology. It has become more important in two major topics of theoretical interest which includes the existence and socioeconomic evolution of complex hunter gatherers as well as the origins and evolution of permanent forms of social inequality.

Discusses the social, symbolic and practical implications of major innovations in transportation used at historic contact by hunting-gathering marine societies of western North America. Anthropological implications; Archaeological analyses of long-term cultural change; Linkage between watercraft and political, ideological and economic systems.

Models of hunter-gatherer occupation in mountainous areas are evaluated in light of current data bases and field research strategies. Utilizing evidence from the mountain fringes of the North American High Plains, both climatic and task-specific models are rejected in favor of a broad spectrum model. It is argued that the broad spectrum model better explains the extant data base for the Central Rocky Mountains and that it provides a point of departure for research strategies in other high-country regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses new evidence for a pre-Clovis culture in the New World, products of a migration up to 40,000 years ago, with a simple hunter-gatherer society. The Greenberg hypothesis, postulating three waves of migration, is also discussed. Problems with Greenberg hypothesis; Development of hypothesis; Linguistic refutation; Deeper archeological findings. INSET: The big picture, by V.M..