For many years, small, serrated, obsidian artifacts characteristic of late central California cultural manifestations (Late Horizon), have been regarded as projectile points (arrow and dart points). A functional analysis of a number of these tools based on examination with a binocular microscope revealed evidence of wear patterns including striations which makes it quite clear that these artifacts were used for other purposes. This brings the projectile point interpretation up for serious questioning, at least for the area under consideration. It is suggested that further investigation of artifact assemblages, using similar methods, will in all likelihood alter many existing ideas regarding the functional significance of many artifact types. It is further pointed out that many times discrepancies exist between ethnographic accounts and other sources of data relative to the functional significance of artifacts.

Late Pleistocene large mammal extinctions in North America have been attributed to a number of factors or combination of factors, primarily climate change and human hunting, but the relative roles of these factors remain much debated. Clo-vis-period hunters exploited species such as mammoth, but many now extinct species such as camels were seemingly not hunted. Archaeological evidence from the Wally’s Beach site in southern Canada, including stone tools and butchered bone, provide the first evidence that Clovis people hunted North American camels. Archaeologists generally dismiss human hunting as a significant contributor to Pleistocene extinctions in North America, but Wally’s Beach demonstrates that human hunting was more inclusive than assumed and we must continue to consider hunting as a factor in Pleistocene extinctions.

The use of evolution as either analogy or theory in ceramic change artificially imposes a view of technology that is directed. The use of progress has led to a tendency to equate technological change with technological improvement, as if change were unidirectional. This improvement is usually measured by modern standards of industrialization, such as increasing standardization, increasing speed of production, increasing quantity of production, and the overall increasing formality of the workshop. Within models that employ an evolutionary paradigm there is the implicit notion that: a) technology change, when it occurs, only occurs towards improvement; b) improvement occurs toward the most logical, efficient solution to a technological problem; and c) such a solution is rooted in fundamental scientific "truths" or "facts," which scientists or technicians "discover." Over the past twenty years, social scientists studying the development of modern technology and society have questioned the usefulness of evolution as a model for change. A critical appraisal of technologically determinist history of scientific discovery has found that important discoveries are frequently credited with fundamentally changing the course of history. The evidence of modern history and ethnography, however, shows that cultural values and embedded beliefs may be more powerful in selecting and directing developing technologies than any external factors. European archaeologists van der Leeuw, Petréquin, and Loney, among others, are now applying the findings of the techno-sociologists to the development of ancient pottery production. Their perspective on ancient technology takes into account personal choice as well as ecological resources and economic organization. The approach of European archaeologists permits the investigation of the varied trajectories of ancient ceramic technology without resorting to self-perpetuating, internally self-generating models of biological evolution.

Petrographic analysis of potsherds from Dzibilchaltun and other Maya sites conclusively establishes the presence of volcanic ash temper in ceramics from northern Yucatan. The distribution of ash-tempered ceramics in time and space suggests import of ash in bulk from sources in highland Guatemala or El Salvador in exchange for salt. The homogeneous nature of the ash in northwestern Yucatan supports the idea that certain trading organizations enjoyed exclusive access to that region, while competing for markets in other lowland areas.

Rapid replacement of Cibola Whiteware bowls by Roosevelt Redware bowls is documented at Chodistaas, an 18-room pueblo ruin in the American Southwest occupied from A.D. 1263 until its burning in the 1290s. This example from prehistory illustrates how controlling for formation-process variability enhances estimates of the rate of ceramic change. The Chodistaas case underscores the importance of the prehistoric record for understanding the intricate relation between ceramic variability and past behavior and for contributing to the development of ceramic theory.

A site survey was conducted in the upper drainage basin of the Rio Zahuapan in north-central Tlaxcala, Mexico, during the 1964-65 season. Sixty-three ceramic collections from 59 sites were examined and eventually seriated. The resulting sequence of pottery types indicates that, in spite of its location near major pre-Hispanic centers, this area was apparently not in the mainstream of Mexican prehistory until Late Postclassic times. Moreover, the locations and sizes of the sites sampled indicate that the area never completely lost its rural character. However, Tlaxcalan influence increased significantly with the resistance to the expansion of the empire centered at Tenochititlán and the eventual alliance with Cortes.

Modifications on bone surfaces are taphonomic features that allow, among other aspects of environmental reconstruction, the assessment of human presence. The agents that cause such marks are diverse and of both biotic and abiotic origin. Among the former, marks made by human tools are of paramount importance for archaeologists and paleontologists to identify. Although it is possible to erroneously assign trampling marks to cut marks, several criteria have been recently developed so as to avoid such risks. These methods are applied here to the 30,000-year-old site of Arroyo del Vizcaíno (Uruguay), where over one thousand megafaunal remains have been collected. Some of them show marks that have been interpreted to be the result of the action of human tools. Using a database built up from previous studies of experimentally made marks as an actualistic model, it was concluded that the marks in the Arroyo del Vizcaíno site are unlikely to have been made by trampling, hence leaving human agency as the most feasible cause. This has important consequences for the debate on the human peopling of the Americas and on the process of extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna.

Radiocarbon dating is rarely used in historical or contact-era North American archaeology because of idiosyncrasies of the calibration curve that result in ambiguous calendar dates for this period. We explore the potential and requirements for radiocarbon dating and Bayesian analysis to create a time frame for early contact-era sites in northeast North America independent of the assumptions and approximations involved in temporal constructs based on trade goods and other archaeological correlates. To illustrate, we use Bayesian chronological modeling to analyze radiocarbon dates on short-lived samples and a post from four Huron-Wendat Arendarhonon sites (Benson, Sopher, Ball, and Warminster) to establish an independent chronology. We find that Warminster was likely occupied in 1615–1616, and so is the most likely candidate for the site of Cahiagué visited by Samuel de Champlain in 1615–1616, versus the other main suggested alternative, Ball, which dates earlier, as do the Sopher and Benson sites. In fact, the Benson site seems likely to date ~50 years earlier than currently thought. We present the methods employed to arrive at these new, independent age estimates and argue that absolute redating of historic-era sites is necessary to accurately assess existing interpretations based on relative dating and associated regional narratives.

Recent excavations at the Valdivia site (G-31) have led to the discovery of a pre-Valdivia pottery complex named San Pedro, and of apparently preceramic occupation layers, below deposits of the Valdivia phase. A description of the San Pedro pottery is offered and the implications of the new evidence are discussed.

Archaeology‘s relationship to anthropology in the United States has been one of a natural and beneficial alliance. Archaeologists are currently showing more of an interest in formal models drawn from outside anthropology, but the classification of American archaeology as a subdiscipline in anthropology generally remains unquestioned. We argue that at the present time archaeological research is being hindered by its institutionalized relationship to anthropology and its uncritical use of models from other disciplines. Archaeologists will make the greatest theoretical progress if they view their discipline as an autonomous technique with no a priori ties to sociocultural anthropology. Archaeology as a technique makes possible a truly interdisciplinary research base, but requires in turn a reorganization of research and training procedure as well as an academic restructuring.

Tables are presented which give the rise-set azimuths of prominent celestial bodies and the heliacal rise-set dates of bright stars for a combination of epochs, latitudes, and horizon elevations.

In spring of 1846, the George and Jacob Donner families and some 80 traveling companions began their overland trek to California. When the party ascended the Sierra Nevada in late October, a snowstorm forced the group to bivouac. At this point, the train became separated into two contingents; the larger party camped near Donner Lake and the smaller group—including the Donner families—settled at Alder Creek. Though written accounts from the Lake site imply many resorted to cannibalism, no such records exist for Alder Creek. Here we present archaeological findings that support identification of the Alder Creek camp. We triangulate between historical context, archaeological traces of the camp, and osteological remains to examine the human condition amid the backdrops of starvation and cannibalism. A stepped analytical approach was developed to examine the site’s fragmentary bone assemblage (n = 16,204). Macroscopic and histological analyses indicate that the emigrants consumed domestic cattle and horse and procured wild game, including deer, rabbit, and rodent. Bladed tools were used to extensively process animal tissue. Moreover, bone was being reduced to small fragments; pot polish indicates these fragments were boiled to extract grease. It remains inconclusive, however, whether such processing, or the assemblage, includes human tissue.

During a trip to greenland in the summer of 1948 Hans Mosegaard, a well known amateur archaeologist, visited Sarqaq in the Ritenbenk District of the northern part of Disko Bay. Directly west of the present settlement near the low cliff along the beach Mosegaard located remnants of an old midden layer, of which he excavated a surface area of 12 sq. m. with a culture stratum reaching a depth of 30 cm. The find consists of 182 artifacts; stone refuse is plentiful, but only a few bones, none worked, were preserved. No house ruins occur in connection with the culture layer, and Mosegaard was unable to establish any regular arrangement of the many stones scattered at the area.

A definition of historic sites archaeology as it applies in the New World is offered, and a five-fold classification of historic sites is proposed (protohistoric, contact, postcontact, frontier, and nonaboriginal). The usefulness of the concept of historic sites archaeology is discussed.

Located on the West Tennessee Coastal Plain, Pinson Mounds is one of the largest Middle Woodland ceremonial centers in eastern North America. The site includes at least 12 mounds, a geometric embankment, and associated temporary habitation areas within an area of approximately 160 ha. Of particular significance is the presence of five large platform mounds ranging in height from 3 to 22 m. A series of two dozen radiocarbon determinations indicate that the Pinson Mounds site was constructed and used between approximately A.D. 1-500.

Fishing is a form of predator-prey interaction. As such, the behaviors of fishes can be used to define a restricted range of human behaviors that resulted in their capture. In this report, ecological evidence, fishbone analysis, ethnohistoric reports for the prehistoric Caribbean, experimental fishtrap samples, and ethnographic reports of fishing in other coral waters are brought together in the analysis of prehistoric fishing in the Bahama Archipelago. The analysis is conducted at two levels. First, general fishing strategies are distinguished on the basis of behavioral evidence; and second, specific capture techniques are identified through comparisons with experimental fishtrap samples.

Since its discovery and exploitation by commercial diggers in 1933, the unusually rich ceremonial complex of the Spiro Mounds, Leflore County, Oklahoma, has engaged the interest of archaeologists. The importance of the Spiro site to Southeastern archaeology has been recognized, and the science has awaited report of the scientific excavation undertaken by the Work Projects Administration and the University of Oklahoma for a number of years. No comprehensive report on this important area has been published to date.

Although many researchers have studied prehistoric European artthere has been virtually no attention paid to the broad prehistory of art as a specialized form of material culture: virtually all studies focus narrowly on single bodies of art. This paper presents a new approach to analyzing prehistoric art: quantitative deep time study. It analyzes a database of 211 art traditions from across Europe and from 40,000 B.C. to 0 AD.to identify changes in the amountnatureand use of prehistoric art. The results reveal clear long-term trends. The amount of art made increased sharply with the origins of sedentary farming and continued to rise throughout prehistory. New forms of art arise in conjunction with new ways of life: “period genres “ are closely tied into patterns of social change. There are also long-term shifts in aesthetics and the uses of art (such as a gradual shift from arts of ritual and concealment to arts of surface and display). These resultsthough preliminaryshow that a deep-time approach familiar from topics such as climate change is applicable to art; the resulting social history can illuminate both art and its social context.

Eyed bone needles have been recovered from Paleoindian sites over the last 70 years. Specimens 13,100–10,000 calendar years old average 1.81 ± .58 mm in diameter, similar to 2500–1000 year-old specimens in the Aleutians which average 1.67 mm in diameter. Use of industrial steel needles and experiments with replicated bone needles indicate the broken eyes and mid-length fractures of Paleoindian bone needles are the result of use. Some specimens said to be Paleoindian eyed bone needles are ≤ 3 mm in diameter and likely represent behaviors distinct from those with diameters ≤ 2.9 mm. Many smalldiameter needles have been recovered from sites that also produced ornaments. Small-diameter Paleoindian needles may have been used to attach decorative items to clothing; decorative items could have served as identity icons as human groups became sedentary and established home ranges a few centuries after colonization. Paleoindian residential sites that have produced multiple specimens of small-diameter needles reveal clustering of needle specimens in limited areas, and Varying degrees of association with hide-preparation and needle manufacture and maintenance tools such as gravers, scrapers, and awls. Paleoindians, like some ethnographically documented people and some industrial-age people, had sewing specific activity loci.

Parry and Kelly (1987) argued for a causal link between expedient technologies and sedentism, and their explanation has widely influenced lithic analysts. There are some problems with their explanation, however, including disconnects in the reported timing of the shifts to expedient technologies, agricultural intensification, and sedentism. On the other hand, across much of North America the transition to an expedient technology appears to correlate more closely to the arrival of the bow and arrow. This is supported by data from a large excavation project in southern New Mexico, which shows that indicators of the shift to an expedient technology cannot be attributed to reduced mobility or any observable changes in subsistence practices, but do appear to correlate temporally with the appearance of arrow points.