Fifty-five pieces of lava with impressions of prehistoric corn have recently been recovered from NA 860, a small habitation site near Sunset Crater Volcano in northern Arizona. Archaeological, geological, and botanical information suggest that husked ears of corn were deliberately placed in the lava's path when the volcano erupted in the mid-to-late eleventh century A.D. Over 40 kg of basalt lava containing the hardened corn casts were then taken to NA 860 located 4 km away from the lava flow. At the site, the rocks underwent lithic reduction to expose the casts. We suggest that these "corn rocks" are indicative of ritual practices, perhaps serving as an offering made to appease the forces responsible for the eruption. Although both prehistoric and modern offerings are commonly associated with volcanoes in other parts of the world, this is the first evidence from the Southwest United States of possible ritual behavior related to volcanism.

The analysis of age-at-death data, derived from epiphyseal fusion and dental eruption/wear patterns, is one of the most powerful tools at the disposal of zooarchaeologists studying past hunting and herd management practices. Zooarchaeologists typically analyze age-at-death data by constructing survivorship and mortality curves in order to allow insight into a variety of ecological and economic relationships between humans and animals. Since adopting such practices in the middle of the twentieth century, zooarchaeologists have proposed several methods for analyzing these curves, including visual examination and hypothesis testing. Creating confidence intervals is complementary to these two methods, allowing practitioners to graphically represent survivorship and mortality while testing hypotheses and accounting for sample sizes, which are often small in zooarchaeological assemblages. We discuss the basic concepts behind the nature of age-at-death data and the analysis of mortality and survivorship curves. We then describe how to calculate confidence intervals using bootstrapping techniques for both dental eruption/wear data and epiphyseal fusion data. To enable future users to replicate our methods, we introduce the freely available online R package “zooaRch” (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/zooaRch/ ), which includes a vignette to guide first-time users.

This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease, archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, and effects of disease in both the Americas and Afro-Eurasian contexts. Recognizing that human populations most severely impacted by COVID-19 are typically descendants of marginalized groups, we investigate pre- and postcontact disease vectors among Indigenous and Black communities in North America, outlining the systemic impacts of diseases and the conditions that exacerbate their spread. We look at how material culture both reflects and changes as a result of social transformations brought about by disease, the insights that paleopathology provides about the ancient human condition, and the impacts of ancient globalization on the spread of disease worldwide. By understanding the differential effects of past epidemics on diverse communities and contributing to more equitable sociopolitical agendas, archaeology can play a key role in helping to pursue a more just future.

Portions of two recently observed prehistoric wells at the Blackwater No. 1 locality in Roosevelt County, New Mexico, furnish additional data on features first described by Evans (1951). These wells were exposed by gravel-quarrying operations which have removed the last major remnant of ancient pond deposits containing artifacts of the Llano and Folsom cultures and the Portales complex. The time of well-digging occurred during an erosional interval between Beds 3a and 4; and on the basis of comparisons with the Lubbock Reservoir site, this interval is equated with the Altithermal stage of Antevs, and it is suggested that the wells were dug sometime between 4000 and 5000 years ago.

The prehistoric Hohokam conducted a great variety of activities in the spaces between their villages, including social gatherings and ceremonial observances as well as economic and subsistence practices. Recent full-coverage pedestrian survey along the middle Gila River in central Arizona indicates that nonresidential sites are more numerous and cover considerably greater area than residential settlements. Unfortunately, in the Hohokam region researchers are not always able to distinguish residential sites from activity areas based on features observable on the surface. In this study, quantitative measures of artifact density and diversity of surface collections from artifact scatters are used to distinguish residential sites from nonresidential sites. This is accomplished by assessing the extent to which their assemblages resemble artifact collections from known habitations, campsites, or specialized or diverse activity loci. Differences in artifact density and diversity enable many ambiguous artifact scatters to be classified into these general functional site types. Knowing the distribution of site types relative to elements of the natural and cultural landscapes can provide insight into past social and ecological or economic behaviors not offered by site-specific approaches. The study concludes that considering both the physical and cultural dimensions of landscapes significantly increases the research value of nonresidential sites for understanding the use and meaning of spaces between villages.

Additional excavation in 1955 confirmed the previously reported stratigraphic sequence at Midland, Texas. Within the gray sand, which had yielded a fragmentary human calvarium, there were found additional flint flakes, burned rocks, and animal bones. Besides several small mammals, a four-horned antelope (probably Capromeryx) was present in the gray sand; horse bones occurred in the gray sand and overlying red sand. These finds make the two radiocarbon dates published in the 1955 Midland report, giving an age of about 7000 years to the gray sand, even less acceptable than previously thought. Experimental dating by the uranium daughter products technique suggests an age of about 20,000 years for the gray sand, somewhat excessive in terms of cultural correlations although supported by a single radiocarbon date and not unreasonable for the faunal assemblage. Ten radiocarbon dates from the Midland, Blackwater Draw, Lubbock Lake, and Plainview sites are discussed in terms of three possible correlations of the geological, climatic, faunal, and cultural events in the Southern High Plains.

Despite their growing importance in the study of prehistoric human ecology, regional subsistence-settlement models continue to be developed and justified largely on intuitive grounds. This shortcoming can be at least partially overcome by using multivariate statistical techniques to clarify and refine these models. Such an approach is illustrated using classical factor analysis and discriminant analysis to explicate and improve a regional subsistence-settlement model previously developed for Owens Valley, eastern California.

After study of the murals recently discovered at Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala, Mexico, I conclude: (1) that the role played by the Late Classic Maya in the central Mexican highlands during the period A.D. 700—900 was much greater than previously assumed; (2) that a post-Teotihuacán art style and mythology was carried into the central Mexican highlands by conquering people from the Gulf Coast lowlands; and (3) that the term “Mexicanized Maya” can be reasonably rendered “Mayanized Mexican,” particularly in the context of later Toltec developments.

An evolutionary and ecological approach is used in an attempt to define the causes and motivations involved in the process of Oneota development in Wisconsin. A primary thesis of this paper is that the Oneota life-way emerged from a Woodland base modified in the direction of the Mississippian pattern. The rapid appearance of a qualitatively distinctive pattern of socio-political organization, the multi-band or "tribal," is thought to be responsible in part for the difficulty in tracing this development. It is suggested that this level of integration became firmly established as the dominant socio-political structure throughout the northeastern United States by A.D. 1100-1200. Early Oneota settlements (A.D. 900-1300) are then contrasted to late Oneota settlements (A.D. 1300-1600) in Wisconsin and a difference in cultural ecological adaptation is suggested. Examples of organizational change in other cultures are briefly illustrated to suggest that the pattern of development may be at least in part recurrent.

The evolution of material wealth-based inequality is an important topic in archaeological research. While a number of explanatory models have been proposed, rarely have they been adequately tested. A significant challenge to testing such models concerns our ability to define distinct, temporally short-term, residential occupations in the archaeological record. Sites often lack evidence for temporally persistent inequality, or, when present, the palimpsest nature of the deposits often make it difficult to define the processes of change on scales that are fine enough to evaluate nuanced model predictions. In this article, we use the detailed record of Housepit 54 from the Bridge River site, interior British Columbia, to evaluate several alternative hypotheses regarding the evolution of persistent material wealth-based inequality. Results of our analyses indicate that inequality appeared abruptly coincident with a decline in intra-house cooperation associated with population packing and the initiation of periodic subsistence stress. We conclude that persistent inequality in this context was a byproduct of altered social networks linked to a Malthusian transition and ceiling.

The resemblance of certain objects from the Crystal River Mound in Florida to others taken from mounds of the Hopewell culture in Ohio was first noted by Shetrone in 1931. Willoughby discussed a certain type of design on a round copper plate, interpreted by him as representative of the foot of a bear, and commented upon the presence of such Hopewell-like objects as plummets of shell, stone, and copper, copper ear spools, and conjoined copper tubes. The resemblances between these widely separated mound groups are much more numerous than have been listed in any publication up to the present date, but the Crystal River Mound and other related mounds in Florida have been denied inclusion in the Hopewellian culture for the reason that most of the pottery found in them is not of the Hopewell type.

Analysis of nearly 200 prehispanic upland farming locations around Casas Grandes in northwestern Chihuahua indicates that land modification was widespread and involved a range of farming strategies depending on microtopographic setting. Most significantly, some cultivation seems to have been organized or controlled by the leaders of the Casas Grandes polity. Unusually large fields associate with small sites that likely served special administrative and/or ritual roles and that are in sparsely occupied locations.

The incentive for an archaeological reconnaissance of this region (see map, Fig. 29) by Mrs. Gifford and myself in the fall of 1944, and again for a single day in November, 1945, came from reading references to kitchen middens in the report of the conchologist H. N. Lowe: “The numerous large kitchen middens at Punta Peñasco and Punta La Cholla contained thousands of these Glycimeris maculata with rarely a valve of the much larger G. gigantea. With these were quantities of the huge Cardita affinis, Chione, Ostrea, Paphia, Cardium, and large Murex. No stone artifacts or black earth were noted in any of these shell heaps. Perhaps the early inhabitants preferred their shell-fish raw.” At Punta Peñasco these “middens” proved to be uplifted marine deposits which Dr. Leo G. Hertlein of the California Academy of Sciences identified as Late Pleistocene, basing his opinion on specimens and photographs.

Native American communities occupying the western Great Plains during the postcontact period exemplify the highly contingent relationships between artifactual data and cultural processes. Here, cultural evolutionary theory and quantitative analyses are used to approach this challenge. Two sets of artif actual products were examined: parfleche attributes and moccasin decorative features, both products of female craftswomen.A model of “isolation by distance “ drawn from population genetics is used as a baseline expectation. This model predicts that, all else being equal, between-group geographic relationships will correlate with intergroup patterns of artif actual variation. Linguistic affinity and known patterns of intertribe alliance and hostility were also examined. The analyses reveal the operation of differing degrees of social transmission and differing patterns of selective bias in each artif actual case. In the case of parfleches, their potential to act as visible signals led to a patterned distribution reflecting intertribe alliance and hostility. The analyses reiterate the necessity of a cultural evolutionary approach to material culture, not only because this method facilitates the requisite flexibility toward particular historical trajectories of artifactual lineages, but also because evolutionary principles provide a range of theoretical models and practical tools of analysis, which facilitate an empirical and quantitatively analytical approach to this problem.

Archaeological models of Clovis adaptations are divided between those that argue for a single hunting adaptation characterized by high residential mobility without fixed territories and those that argue for a diversity of environment-specific adaptations and settlement systems. The Dietz site (35LK1529), the largest Clovis site in the Pacific Northwest, is composed of many overlapping, spatially coherent artifact clusters from which 75 whole and fragmentary fluted points have been recovered. The artifact assemblage is inconsistent with use of the site as a kill, camp, or quarry site. Geoarchaeological data show that the site area during the Clovis occupation was a sparsely vegetated, seasonal playa that is unlikely to have supported large herds of game animals. However, the site sits astride what was probably a major transportation corridor linking highly productive ecosystems in the adjoining basins, and Clovis foragers appear to have camped at Dietz repeatedly while traveling between these nearby basins. The systematic and redundant use of a geographically small landscape by Clovis foragers is inconsistent with expectations based on a model of residentially mobile foragers occupying new territories.

This study makes a comparative evaluation of geological and biological evidence, on the one hand, and of plant pollen data, on the other, bearing on late Quaternary climates in southeastern Arizona. The findings support the conclusions based on the former and reject the contrary claims based on pollen by Martin, Schoenwetter, and Arms. The increase of pine pollen in the Cochise-Sulphur Spring and the Cochise-Cazador beds at Double Adobe from a few per cent to 28% was much too sudden to be accounted for by the spread of pine from the mountains to Double Adobe, and does not prove a change of the climate from arid to subhumid. The beds themselves indicate a subhumid climate throughout. The low frequency of pine may be due to such causes as scanty production, decomposition, and failure of the pollen to settle in flowing water.

No pollen data are at hand from the mid-postpluvial or Altithermal age of erosion. The preceding and the succeeding beds have long been referred by Antevs to the pluvial/postpluvial transition and to the relatively moist early Medithermal, respectively. The most typical features of the age, arroyo cutting and accumulation of caliche, are most competently explained by a long sharp drought. There seems to be no evidence for the view of Martin and associates that the Altithermal was an age of intense summer precipitation.

The entire synthetic postpluvial pollen profile is alternately dominated by composites and chenopods-amaranths. The last shift to chenopods-amaranths occurred at times ranging from about 4000 years ago to the 19th century. The dominations are apparently controlled by unknown edaphic conditions and are therefore of little or no use for correlation, dating, or climatic conclusions. Still, because of their great numbers, these pollens together with pine pollen are used as the main basis for the division into pollen zones. This leads to incorrect dating of Medithermal deposits and to disregard of documented arroyo erosions and droughts. Schulman's finding, that the radial growth of the ponderosa (yellow) pine, which is completed by the end of July, shows best agreement with the October-July precipitation, implies that the ring width is in accord with some 75 to 80% of the annual rainfall. Thus normally a narrow ring means deficient rainfall. The Great Drought of the 1200's did exist and caused arroyo erosion.

The northwestern part of Florida is a strip of land about 225 miles long, extending from Pensacola Bay to Apalachee Bay, in which are recognized two physiographic regions, “Flatwoods and Hammock Lands,” along the coast, and “Southern Pine Hills,” inland. The coastal region, in which are located most of the sites to be considered, is quite flat and of uniformly low elevation, and includes several contrasting types of landscape. The greater part of the land is occupied by the flatwoods or open groves of longleaf and other pines interspersed with grassy meadows and the hammock lands, which support a denser vegetation characterized by palmetto and hardwoods. Along the major rivers are swamps through which wind creeks and bayous.

Archaeological models of increasing sociopolitical complexity have over-privileged processes of centralization in comparison to decentralization. In western Burkina Faso, ethnologists have long been intrigued by several “village societies,” with complex communities characterized by heterogeneous populations (in kin and ethnicity), endogamous socioeconomic specialist groups, diverse ritual systems, and strong village autonomy. Rather than structured by a hierarchical sociopolitical organization, these multifaceted communities are defined by village communalism and an intricate horizontal organization. This paper presents the developmental trajectory of a community ancestral to a modern “village society,” through an exploration of the dynamic political strategies of multifamily houses at the Iron Age archaeological site of Kirikongo, located in Burkina Faso (ca. A.D. 100–1700). Extensions of power by Kirikongo’s founding house in the 1st millennium A.D. led gradually to increasing inequalities and a subversion of common descent. However, in the early 2nd millennium A.D. these developments were rejected through an egalitarian revolution that transformed the identity of the house, leading to an increased importance of the village community and civic institutions. In addition to exclusionary power strategies, I stress the transformative role of egalitarian behaviors in shaping the nature of power and leadership, particularly when derived from collective action by the community.

Most studies on the use of punched cards and computers in archaeology seem to take for granted that scientific standards exist to express the data upon which algorithms are to be performed, for retrieval or classification purposes. The author's view is different; examples are given of descriptive codes which have been designed under his direction since 1955 for the storage of archaeological data (artifacts, abstract or figured representations, buildings, etc.) on punched cards of various kinds (marginal, peek-a-boo, IBM, etc.). In order to obviate the shortcomings of natural language, three categories of rules are required: orientation, segmentation, differentiation. The concluding remarks concern the relation of the descriptive languages which are thus obtained to scientific language in general; differences are stressed, as well as reasons for postulating a continuum from the former to the latter.

Obtaining radiocarbon assays on objects of chronological interest is always preferable to obtaining assays on spatially associated charcoal. The development of Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) dating has expanded the number of objects that can be directly assayed because it requires only a few milligrams of material. Pottery can be directly assayed when charred cooking residues adhering to the interior walls are present. The accuracy of AMS ages derived from residues has been questioned in cases where cooking freshwater aquatic organisms may have introduced carbon from ancient carbon reservoirs into residues. Here we provide analytic protocols for examination of this phenomenon and the results of systematic modeling of age estimates on residues formed from fish and maize with varying percentages of dead carbon. We present a regional case study using a large series of AMS age estimates on residues from the Finger Lakes region of northeastern United States to demonstrate how the paleolimnological record and lipid analysis of residues can help to determine if dates on residues from a given region are likely to have been affected by the presence of ancient carbon. In the case of the Finger Lakes, there is no evidence that ancient carbon affected the age estimates.