In spring 2013, the Society for American Archaeology created the Task Force on Gender Disparities in Archaeological Grant Submissions because of an apparent disparity in the rates of senior (post-PhD) proposal submissions by men and women to archaeology programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Although NSF success rates for men and women between 2009 and 2013 were roughly equal, the number of senior women archaeology submissions was half that of men. Given the documented increase in the proportion of women in academic archaeology, this representation of women seemed low. Moreover, submissions for NSF doctoral dissertation improvement grants were evenly divided between men and women. Statistics for Wenner-Gren noted the same general disparity in archaeology. This study examines and integrates a variety of data sources, including interviews with post-PhD women, to determine whether or not there is a problem in research grant submissions. Although the results indicate that there is a problem, it is multifaceted. Women are not well represented at research-intensive universities, and some women instead practice what we term “scaffolding” to integrate smaller pots of money to accomplish their research. Recommendations are provided for female applicants, academic departments, the Society for American Archaeology, and granting agencies.

Drinking vessels provide information on changes in drinking practices, crafting, exchange patterns, rituals, and the creation of status differences in Chacoan society. They reveal a gradual sequence of change in vessel forms, followed by dramatic intensification of drinking activity in the AD 1000s that provided opportunities for differentiation among Chaco residents, particularly at Pueblo Bonito. Termination of the most iconic drinking vessel form, the cylinder vessel, and the rituals surrounding it around AD 1100 was followed by the introduction of a northern drinking vessel form. Careful reconstruction of the production, consumption, and discard practices associated with drinking vessels provides the means for understanding broader processes in the Chaco world.

The archaeology of the nineteenth-century Chinese diaspora is a well-developed archaeological subfield, but research on Chinese migrants’ homelands is lacking. Survey of a qiaoxiang (home village) in China's Pearl River Delta provides the first archaeological evidence from a home village of Chinese migrants. Transnational comparative analysis with collections recovered from Chinese diaspora settlements reveals stark differences in the use of China-produced goods between qiaoxiang and Chinese settlements abroad. Qiaoxiang residents primarily used locally produced ceramics, while residents of Chinese diaspora settlements consumed ceramics produced in Gaobei and Jingdezhen, major pottery centers located in northeast Guangdong Province and Jiangxi Province, hundreds of kilometers to the north. Additionally, qiaoxiang residents were engaged in global networks of consumption, using British refined earthenwares and other products produced in Europe and the United States. These findings challenge the common assumption made in diaspora research that artifacts produced in migrants’ homelands are evidence of tradition, while those produced in migrants’ adopted countries are evidence of culture change. Instead, the results of qiaoxiang archaeology indicate the significance of nonstate actors, especially import-export companies, in shaping the material worlds of both homeland and diaspora communities. (Spanish abstract available as Supplemental Text 1.)

This article advocates for archaeological investigation of sustained colonialism that examines the implications of Native American negotiations with multiple waves of foreigners over the course of many decades, if not centuries. The study of native confrontations with successive groups of intruders, who often represented a diverse range of colonial programs and interests, involves analyses of not only indigenous encounters with first-wave colonists but also their entanglements with later colonists, particularly settler colonists. This will provide the necessary diachronic approach to consider the cumulative effects and implications of multiple colonial intrusions on specific tribes and how tribal negotiations with earlier colonial enterprises may have influenced and shaped their responses to later settler colonists. This article presents a case study of one such approach for the study of sustained colonialism that examines native entanglements with mercantile and settler colonists in northern California.

Evidence for changes in human mobility is fundamental to interpretations of transitions in human socioeconomic organization. Showing changes in mobility requires both archaeological proxies that are sensitive to movement and a clear understanding of how different mobility configurations influence their patterning. This study uses computer simulation to explore how different combinations of reduction, selection, transport, and discard of stone artifacts generate patterning in the “cortex ratio,” a geometric proxy used to demonstrate movement at the assemblage level. A case study from western New South Wales, Australia, shows how cortex ratios are used to make inferences about movement. Results of the exploratory simulation show that redundancy in movement between discards reduces variability in cortex ratios, while mean assemblage values can be attributed to the relative proportions of artifacts carried into and out of the assemblages. These results suggest that raw material availability is a potentially crucial factor in determining what kinds of mobility are visible in assemblages, whereby different access to raw material can shift the balance of import and export of stone in an otherwise undirected movement configuration. These findings are used to contextualize distributions of cortex ratios from the raw material–rich study area, prompting suggestions for further fieldwork.

Projections of Paleoindian range mobility in the late Pleistocene are typically inferred from straight-line distances between toolstone sources and sites where artifacts of these raw materials have been found. Often, however, these sourcing assessments are not based on geologic analysis, raising the issue of correct source ascription. If sites of similar age can be linked to a toolstone source through geologic study, and direct procurement of toolstone can be inferred, geographic information systems (GIS) modeling of travel routes between the source and those sites can reveal route segments of annual rounds and aspects of landscape use. In the Hudson Valley of eastern New York, Paleoindian peoples exploited Normanskill chert outcrops for toolstone during the late Pleistocene. Here, we combine X-ray fluorescence sourcing results that link Normanskill chert artifacts at Paleoindian sites to the West Athens Hill source outcrop in the Hudson Valley with GIS least cost path analysis to model seasonal pathways of late Pleistocene peoples in northeastern North America.

We report major new insights from recent research at the Powars II Paleoindian red ocher quarry (48PL330). We salvaged more than 7,000 artifacts from Powars II between 2014 and 2016 by screening redeposited sediment from the talus slope below the intact portion of the site. Clovis artifacts dominate the diagnostic artifact assemblage, including 53 Clovis points, 33 preforms, and artifacts associated with a previously unrecognized blade core industry. We report the first radiocarbon dates from the site, determined from dating bone tools, which indicate Cody-aged use (ca. >10,000 cal BP). Further, salvage efforts discovered a previously unknown toolstone source from which many of the Clovis artifacts were produced. The Powars II Clovis points most resemble early Paleoindian points from the far Northern Plains and were likely both produced and discarded in the red ocher quarry after hunting, as evidenced by preform production and the presence of impact fractures on many used points. Given these production and discard patterns, Powars II holds some of the best evidence archaeologists currently have for Paleoindian ritualism related to hunting.

This article presents the results of a program of radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modeling from the precontact Yup'ik site of Nunalleq (GDN-248) in subarctic southwestern Alaska. Nunalleq is deeply stratified, presenting a robust relative chronological framework of well-defined individual house floors abundant in ecofacts suitable for radiocarbon dating. Capitalizing on this potential, we present the results of one of the first applications of Bayesian statistical modeling of radiocarbon data from an archaeological site in the North American Arctic. Using these methods, we demonstrate that it is possible to generate robust, high-resolution chronological models from Arctic archaeology. Radiocarbon dates, procured prior to the program of dating and modeling presented here, suggested an approximately three-century duration of occupation at the site. The results of Bayesian modeling nuance this interpretation. While it is possible that there may have been activity for almost three centuries (beginning in the late fourteenth century), occupation of the dwelling complex, which dominates the site, was more likely to have endured for no more than a century. The results presented here suggest that the occupation of Nunalleq likely encompassed three generations beginning cal AD 1570–1630 before being curtailed by conflict around cal AD 1645–1675.

Midpassages are the most recognizable architectural feature associated with the entire Paleoeskimo period (2800 BC–AD 1300) in the Canadian and Greenlandic Arctic. Usually built of stone, midpassages are rectangular-shaped axial structures that run through the center of tent rings and semisubterranean house depressions. However, a unique triangular form of midpassage developed in association with the Late Dorset complex in the Boothia Peninsula area of the Canadian Arctic around AD 400. Unlike the rectangular-shaped varieties that were built contemporaneously across the Arctic, distribution of the triangular form is limited, and occurrences are rare. Initially, construction appears restricted to the Boothia Peninsula region, where the form persisted for the subsequent 400 years. After AD 900, they are found in Inglefield Land, Greenland, and a few other locations in the Canadian Arctic where they continued to be built until around AD 1200, representing an over 800-year period in a remarkably unvarying configuration. Further, these triangular midpassage structures very likely represent a regional architectural variant that moved northward with the Late Dorset diaspora after AD 800.

Recent examinations of more than 13,000 disk beads from mortuary contexts determined that macroscopic examination was not always enough to distinguish shell, stone, and fired-clay beads. Using replication experiments and scanning electron microscopy energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS), we update the 80-year-old conclusions of Emil Haury, who defined features distinctive to bead manufacture. With this renewed confidence in materials identification, we analyzed the distributions of disk beads made from shell, stone, and fired clay among Hohokam inhumations and cremations at the Yuma Wash, Honey Bee Village, and Wetlands sites in the Tucson Basin. Not everyone was buried with disk beads, but all age groups were represented among those who were buried with beads. Some people were buried with only stone, or only shell, or only fired-clay beads, although more were buried with beads of some combination of these three materials. In this article, we consider why fired-clay beads were added to the mix and conclude that they were made as acceptable substitutes for stone beads, not for deceptive reasons concerning wealth or status, but rather in imitation of stone to honor a tradition that could not otherwise be efficiently met.

Examining the formation histories of single-component prehistoric villages is difficult using only radiocarbon dating. This study investigates such a case with the added considerations of two relative dating techniques, artifact accumulation and fluoride dating, at the Guard site (12D29), an early (ca. AD 1000–1300) Fort Ancient/Mississippian village located in southeast Indiana. The goal was to assess the depositional history of the individual house basins and, if possible, to determine a relative sequence of construction within the village. The observed relationship between relative artifact frequencies and fluoride levels was statistically examined with the expected result being that fluoride concentrations and artifact frequencies are significantly correlated. Houses built initially contained lower relative artifact frequencies, whereas houses built more recently contained higher relative artifact frequencies. This pattern is further explored with artifact and fluoride distinctions in vertical stratigraphy, which show that some structures were slowly filled with midden trash, whereas others were more likely rapidly filled during the latter part of the village occupation, perhaps at the time of site abandonment. Overall, the results are very promising and consistent with the SunWatch site, the only other Fort Ancient culture site with a defined construction sequence, establishing a general pattern of village development in the study region.

The following changes have been made to the originally published version of this article (Sinensky and Farahani, 2018): Supplemental Table 2 has been updated to include an attribution column, and Supplemental Text 1 and Supplemental Text 2 have been updated to reflect the change in Supplemental Table 2.