Perishable artifacts provide an alternative to projectile points for examining spatial patterns in Archaic material culture between northern and southern portions of the Colorado Plateau of the North American Southwest. This is so because they possess a potential great variety of specific construction and design attributes and can be directly dated to establish independent chronologies of development. The analysis and dating of a collection of warp-faced plain weave sandals from Chevelon Canyon, Arizona demonstrates the potential utility of perishable artifacts to our understanding of prehistory. The collection provides an important first sample of early Archaic footwear for the southern Colorado Plateau. AMS dating reveals that the oldest Chevelon Canyon sandal (8300 ± 60 B.P.) is 1,500 years earlier than the oldest directly dated sandal of this style on the northern Colorado Plateau. Most of the Chevelon Canyon sandals date from 7500 to 6000 cal. B.C., contemporaneous with open-twined sandals on the northern Colorado Plateau. This study provides another contrast in forager material culture between southern and northern portions of the plateau during the early Archaic, prior to ca. 5700 cal. B.C. After this time, the plain weave sandal style was adopted on the northern Colorado Plateau but not because of population replacement.

At the pinnacle of Eastern Woodlands’ prehistoric cultural development, Cahokia has been interpreted as a political and economic power participating in prestige-goods exchanges and trade networks stretching from the Great Plains to the South Atlantic. Among the more spectacular of the Cahokian elite artifacts were stone pipes and figurines made from a distinctive red stone previously identified as Arkansas bauxite. In this research, we used a combination of X-ray diffraction, sequential acid dissolution, and inductively coupled plasma analyses to establish the source of the raw material used in the manufacture of the red figurines and pipes that epitomize the Cahokian-style. Our research demonstrates that these objects were made of locally available flint clays. This finding, in conjunction with other evidence, indicate Cahokian exploitation of many mineral and stone resources focuses on the northern Ozark Highlands to the exclusion of other areas. These findings indicate that we must reassess the direction, extent, and role of Cahokian external contacts and trade in elite goods.

Early in the nineteenth century, geologist Charles Lyell reasoned that successively older faunas would contain progressively more extinct species and younger faunas relatively more extant species. The present, with one-hundred percent extant species, was the chronological anchor. In archaeology a similar notion underpins the direct historical approach: Successively older cultures will contain progressively fewer of the cultural traits found in extant cultures and relatively more prehistoric traits. As in Lyell’s scheme, the chronological anchor is the present. When A. L. Kroeber invented frequency seriation in the second decade of the twentieth century, he retained the present as a chronological anchor but reasoned that the oldest cultural manifestation would contain the highest percentage of a variant, or what came to be known as a "style," of an ancient trait, and successively younger cultural manifestations would have progressively lower percentages of that variant. The principle of overlapping permitted building sequences of fossils and artifacts, but differences in the units that allowed the chronometers to be operationalized reveal significant epistemological variation in how historical research is undertaken. This variation should be of considerable interest to paleobiologists and archaeologists alike, especially given recent archaeological interest in creating and explaining historical lineages of artifacts.

The nearly-complete, well-preserved skeleton of a Paleoamerican male was found by chance near Kennewick, Washington, in 1996. Although analysis was quickly suspended by the U.S. government, initial osteological, archaeological, and geological studies provide a glimpse into the age and life of this individual. A radiocarbon age of 8410 ± 60 B.P., stratigraphic position in a widely-dated alluvial terrace, and an early-Cascade style projectile point healed into the pelvis date the find to the late Early Holocene. Initial osteological analysis describes the man as middle-aged, standing 173.1 ± 3.6 cm tall and weighing approximately 70-75 kg. Healthy as a child, he later suffered repeatedly from injuries to his skull, left arm, chest, and hip, in addition to minor osteoarthritis and periodontal disease. His physical features, teeth, and skeletal measurements show him to be an outlier relative to modern human populations, but place him closer to Pacific Islanders and Ainu than to Late Prehistoric Amerinds or any other modern group. Despite his uniqueness relative to modern peoples, he is not significantly different from other Paleoamerican males in most characteristics.

A shift in Archaic foraging to a largely logistic collector strategy by the middle Holocene is indicated by the presence of rock-filled middens in the U.S. southern Midwest. This change has usually been attributed to the development of super-rich wetland habitats in large river valleys. Analysis of a well-preserved faunal assemblage from the Bluegrass site, a late Middle Archaic base camp/mortuary occupation, located in an interior upland drainage basin of southwestern Indiana, suggests that small-bodied terrestrial mammals and reptiles were substituted for aquatic animal foods. Comparisons with faunal assemblages from other base camps in a diverse set of habitats in the southern Midwest indicates that white-tailed deer and hickory nuts were the basis for the logistical foraging strategy rather than aquatic resources. It is proposed that a change in forest composition from a mesic closed canopy to an open oak-hickory association by the middle Holocene increased the abundance of deer and nut mast leading to a coarse-grain use of the landscape.

Ceramic compositional studies using Instrument Neutron Activation Analysis indicates that it is possible to distinguish between ceramics manufactured from clays originating in the Central Mississippi River valley and clays originating in the Eastern Ozarks. The study also documents that shell-tempered ceramics were being made from Eastern Ozark clays during the period A.D. 700 to A.D. 1000. Shell-tempered ceramics made from clays originating in the Western Lowlands also are found at sites in the Eastern Ozarks during this time period, providing evidence for interaction between the Eastern Ozarks and Central Mississippi River valley.

This article examines the archaeological effects of two major geologic factors, eustatic sea-level rise and land subsidence, on the archaeological site distributions of low-energy coastlines. It describes an inexpensive, quick approach to identify these effects, which exploits the interpretive value of state-maintained archaeological site location files. The application of this approach to the Mississippi Gulf Coast suggests that coastal sites older than roughly 3500 B.P. were submerged or destroyed by eustatic sea-level rise; more recent sites were affected little by this process. Among subsidence factors, endogenic or deep-earth subsidence has had little impact on local site distributions. Exogenic or surficial subsidence processes, however, are sufficient to explain the temporal gradient of tidally inundated marsh sites.

A faunal assemblage may be dominated by dense bones either because the soft ones have been transported away or because they have been gnawed beyond recognition. Archaeologists have often despaired of distinguishing between these hypotheses and have attributed the problem to equifinality-to the fact that different causes can produce identical outcomes. Yet under the models of transport and attrition studied here, these causes do not produce identical outcomes. It has been difficult to distinguish between them only because conventional statistical methods lack power. Using the new method of abcml (Analysis of Bone Counts by Maximum Likelihood), it is easy to distinguish assemblages that were deposited by different agents. It is also possible to distinguish between assemblages that have suffered differing degrees of attritional damage, but this distinction is more difficult to make. It is also shown that the conventional method for recognizing attritional damage in faunal assemblages is remarkably low in power. The paper closes with a discussion of the word "equifinality" itself.

Prehistoric imagery is a valuable source of information on relations between people of different social identities. Analysis of a large sample of human figures depicted on Classic period Mimbres ceramics illustrates facets of that society's gender system, including the traits individuals used to indicate their gender and the possible presence of third or fourth genders. The imagery indicates that hunting large game and participating in ceremonies were considered men's activities. Men also are portrayed in a wide range of activities and in active postures. This suggests that men had the potential for achieving high status through their activities. Images of women are more static and show fewer activities than men. Women are associated with activities that are low in prestige cross-culturally: child care and carrying burdens. At the same time, women are depicted more often with valuables, such as jewelry, and constitute the majority of people handling parrots, which were used in ritual. This, combined with other evidence, suggests that some women may have achieved relatively high status through their membership in certain families, their association with ritually important parrots, and their possession of esoteric knowledge.

How many tools does a lithic assemblage contain? The question is not as banal as it may seem, because tools were used as wholes but many are found broken. Pottery and faunal analysts have grappled with the problems of counting original wholes from mixed sets of whole and broken objects; lithic analysts lag behind. Assemblage size can change greatly depending on whether we count or ignore tool fragments. To systematize treatment of broken tools, I apply Orton’s pottery quantification method to several lithic assemblages and compare it to Portnoy’s MNT and raw counts. Methods do not agree in all cases, demonstrating that how we count affects our results. Until we know more, both methods should be used to quantify lithic assemblages.

Mississippian sites are generally believed to fall into one of three categories: paramount political center, local political center, and farmstead. Elites lived at paramount and local centers while the rest of a polity’s population lived in scattered farmsteads. Archaeologists identify paramount and local centers by the presence of earthen mounds and usually classify all small sites without mounds as farmsteads. In this examination of rural settlement in the Moundville chiefdom, I argue that there was more variation in Mississippian landscapes than the traditional tripartite site classification scheme allows. The vessel assemblage from 1TU66, a small site in the Black Warrior Valley, does not reflect domestic activities, but rather suggests that this site was a place where neighbors gathered to share food as a community.

Synthesis of faunal collections from several archaeological sites on the three southernmost California Channel Islands and one in the Cape Region of Baja California reveals a distinctive maritime adaptation more heavily reliant on the capture of pelagic dolphins than on near-shore pinnipeds. Previous reports from other Southern California coastal sites suggest that dolphin hunting may have occurred there but to a lesser extent. While these findings may represent localized adaptations to special conditions on these islands and the Cape Region, they call for reassessment of the conventionally held concept that pinnipeds were invariably the primary mammalian food resource for coastal peoples. Evidence of the intensive use of small cetaceans is antithetical to the accepted models of maritime optimal foraging which assume that shore-based or near-shore marine mammals (i.e., pinnipeds) would be the highest-ranked prey because they were readily encountered and captured. While methods of dolphin hunting remain archaeologically invisible, several island cultures in which dolphin were intensively exploited by people using primitive watercraft and little or no weaponry are presented as possible analogs to a prehistoric Southern California dolphin-hunting technique. These findings also indicate that dolphin hunting was probably a cooperative endeavor among various members of the prehistoric community.

Variation in artifact recording introduced through the use of multiple observers is common in many archaeological projects. We report a study designed to assess random and systematic errors in nominal and ratio data recorded by observers on stone artifacts as part of a distributional study. A random sample of artifacts was selected and double analyzed, once by the regular observers and once by the project director. Random and systematic differences between the two sets of observations are assessed statistically. Analysis of these errors either permits corrections to be applied or indicates where care must be taken in analyzing artifact variation as a reflection of past human behavior.

It has been claimed that many Native American skeletons from the King site in Georgia show evidence of wounds from sharp-edged metal weapons that were wielded by members of the sixteenth-century de Soto expedition (Blakely and Mathews 1990). The supposed massacre of these villagers has caught the attention of the public and scholars alike. But we failed to find any evidence of damage caused by sixteenth-century Spanish weapons in our examination of the King site skeletons. Our finding-there is no evidence for a massacre-eliminates a major discrepancy between historical and archaeological information used in reconstructions of the de Soto route.

The existence of cannibalism has emerged as one of the most controversial issues in the archaeology of the American Southwest. In this paper, we examine this issue by presenting the results of our investigation at 5MT10010, a small early Pueblo III habitation site in southwestern Colorado. Battered, broken bones from seven individuals were discovered in two adjacent pithouses at 5MT10010. Mixed and incomplete remains of four adults and an adolescent were recovered from the floor and ventilator shaft of one pithouse; the remains of two subadults were found on the floor and in various subfeatures of the second. Cut marks and percussion scars implicate humans in the disarticulation and reduction of these bodies. Evidence of heat exposure on some bone fragments and laboratory analyses of a human coprolite recovered from one of the pithouses support the interpretation that people prepared and consumed human body parts. The discovery of disarticulated human remains at 5MT10010 is one of a number of similar finds in the northern Southwest. Analysis of cases from the Mesa Verde region indicates a sharp increase in cannibalism around A.D. 1150, a time of drought and the collapse of the Chaco system. The causes, consequences, and nature of this apparent outbreak of cannibalism are examined in light of 5MT10010 and other recent finds.

Recently, Andeanist zooarchaeologists have introduced the so-called "ch'arki effect": a taphonomic factor to explain the disproportional occurrence of some camelid skeletal parts at archaeological sites. Briefly, it has been argued that the lower frequency of head and foot bones is the by-product of ch'arki (dried meat) exchange and therefore indicative of ch'arki consumption. This generalization, however, is problematic. When fresh meat is distributed (by trade) and consumed, exactly the same pattern as with ch'arki distribution is produced. To infer ch'arki consumption on the basis of the absence of head and lower limb bones is therefore misleading.

We welcome Valdez"s recent contributions to the developing corpus of ethnographic observations concerning the production and use of Ch’arki in the Andes and to our understanding of the interpretative value of differential camelid bone concentrations in Andean archaeological sites. The numerous issues raised by Valdez would require more space than is available in this forum to adequately address them. What we will present here can only hope to outline the most salient points of contention and encourage further investigations into these problems.

Previous reports using archaeological, ethnohistoric, and historic data have proposed that petroleum was extracted by pre-contact aboriginal populations in western Pennsylvania employing wood-lined pits. A suite of AMS-based 14C analyses on total amino acid extracts on nine duplicate samples from a homogenized decadal (10-year) sample of wood taken from a single stake removed from a pit feature at Drake Well Park, Titusville, Pennsylvania, has permitted the calibration of a mean 14C age of 480 ± 15 B.P. to a 2 sigma (95.4%) confidence interval of A.D. 1415-1440. An early fifteenth-century age for this feature supports the view that petroleum exploitation in this region occurred during Late Woodland times.

The article by Billman et al. contributes to a growing body of data that demonstrates the complex variability of the Pueblo world during the twelfth century. Although the article's title promises a comprehensive review of major cultural and environmental processes (drought, warfare, cannibalism, regional interactions), relatively little theory regarding these processes informs their research design, and much of their interpretation is based on weak inferences. Their empirical data are not used to test alternative hypotheses or rigorously examine expectations derived from modeling. Dynamic aspects of cultural patterns relating to migration, settlement, environment, abandonment, mortuary behaviors, conflict, and group identity are implicated in their research but are not adequately contextualized. Our response to the study by Billman et al. is intended to provide a critical yet constructive commentary, propose fresh ways of thinking about what assemblages of disarticulated and broken bones might mean, and reformulate how research questions are being asked.

Recent research on trench kilns from the Mesa Verde region of the northern American Southwest (Blinman and Swink 1997) suggests that trench kilns represent collaborative firings by groups of potters. This study presents a method for estimating the sizes of these proposed kiln firing groups. A comparative analysis between firing group sizes and the size of other contemporaneous social units provides insights into socioeconomic relationships between Mesa Verde households in both dispersed and aggregated settlement contexts. This study demonstrates that different stages of a production process may involve different production groups and highlights the utility of examining each production stage individually. It further suggests the importance of searching for archaeological evidence of production beyond residential areas to other production contexts, such as firing features, if the organization of all stages of production is to be understood.