This article seeks to define common ground from which to build a more integrated approach to the persistence of indigenous societies in North America. Three concepts are discussed—identity, practice, and context—that may prove useful for the development of archaeologies of persistence by allowing us to counter terminal narratives and essentialist concepts of cultural identity that are deeply ingrained in scholarly and popular thinking about Native American societies. The use of these concepts is illustrated in an example that shows how current archaeological research is challenging long-held scholarty and popular beliefs about the effects of colonialism in coastal California, where the policies of Spanish colonial missionaries have long been thought to have driven local native peoples to cultural extinction. By exploring how the sometimes dramatic changes of the colonial period were internally structured and are just one part of long and dynamic native histories, archaeologies of persistence may help to bring about a shift in how the archaeology of colonialism presents the histories of native peoples in North America—one that can make archaeology more relevant to descendant communities.

Maize agriculture is often regarded as a key component in understanding and evaluating the Mississippian culture and related cultures. It is becoming clear that the spread and intensification of maize agriculture relates to the dissemination of Mississippian cultural traits in a variety of ways, rather than through a set trajectory. In this article, we focus on the Caddo, who have been postulated to have subsisted on smaller amounts of maize than other Mississippian-like groups to their east and northeast. The use of stable isotope analysis provides a direct means of comparing the amounts of maize consumed among various Mississippian-related cultures. We synthesize the results of Caddo stable isotope studies to compare the process of maize agricultural intensification among the Caddo to other archaeological cultures that shared Mississippian traits. We find that the Caddo consumed less maize throughout the prehistoric sequence than their neighbors.

With one exception, which has been described as a suspended “kiva bell,” long stone rods have been interpreted throughout the archaeological literature of North America as whetstones or pestles. Two particularly long rods in a collection of prehistoric artifacts from New England raise questions as to the real use of some of these objects. The prevailing interpretations of the two artifacts may be incorrect, or at least incomplete, because the rods lack the kinds of wear that are found on most whetstones or pestles. They also have different acoustical properties from true pestles, which are usually shorter, and are identical in materials, acoustics, and form to probable prehistoric lithophones from the Old World, which can be played on the lap. The identification of the pair of rods as good candidates for being the first known cylindrical, two-toned prehistoric lithophones from New England introduces a new avenue for the study of fossil sounds and rituals in both the region and continent because it is likely that similar artifacts will be examined for characteristic wear, tested acoustically, and recognized as the objects of prestige and ceremony that they may have been in their role as un-suspended musical instruments.

The Spanish missionary entrada (A.D. 1769 to 1833) along the California coast created a series of complex encounters between multiple cultural discourses. The Franciscan mission system directly brought colonial and indigenous cultural metaphorical understandings into play. Missionary and indigenous discourse interacted largely via the media of material culture, animals, embellished architecture, and landscape—media interpreted through preexisting cultural metaphors and understandings. Investigating how metaphors played a role in constituting colonial entanglements is important in understanding cultural interactions and change. Metaphors structured colonial interactions, simultaneously hindering and enabling missionary–indigenous relationships. These relationships created parameters for unforeseen transitory configurations: a process best theorized under the term polyvalence. By adopting polyvalence, the processes of colonialism can be approached without usage of ethnic or racialized terms such as creolization, hybridity, or amalgamation. In the case of indigenous south-central California, it is suggested here that widely different forms of evidence can be better appreciated without recourse to terms laden with racial or ethnic connotations. The evidence suggests that while missions may have failed to create entirely new ethnic groups, missionary endeavors did result in unanticipated outcomes, presenting problems and creative opportunities for indigenous groups living within immediate coastal and extended interior populations.

Artistic reconstructions of ancient life are powerful blends of archaeological interpretation and imagination. Like other narratives about the past, they can project contemporary gender roles and relations on ancient peoples, and can reinforce or transform ideas about gender in the present. This article examines the construction of gender ideologies in National Geographic illustrations of prehistoric life. Our analysis of 204 pictorial reconstructions from 1936 to 2007 reveals that women and women’s work are significantly underrepresented and undervalued, while exhibiting evidence of temporal change in response to societal factors and editorial influences. A vigorous archaeology of gender has had little impact on the magazine’s imagined past; in some respects, the ancient women depicted in the last twenty years are just as scarce, passive, and subordinate as they were in the postwar “backlash” of the 1950s.

In recent years, lithic studies have emphasized the role of technology in the overall adaptation of past societies to their environments, including the economization of lithic resources. This paper explores how particular characteristics of individual, unretouched flakes can be altered in ways that increase their economy, as reflected in the ratio of edge length to mass. Results of controlled laboratory experiments are presented that identify exterior platform angle and platform depth as being primary independent variables affecting this ratio. These relationships are then tested against a number of archaeological assemblages.

Paul Sidney Martin identified two “watershed” moments in his career: (1) his adoption of the tenets of the New Archaeology and (2) the changes he made in his approach to pedagogy at the Vernon field school. We explore the relationship between these two watershed moments using Martin’s archival record. We find that, rather than being watershed moments, these changes have deeper roots in the trajectory of Martin’s work and career and moreover are clearly linked to broader historical occurrences, such as World War II, the G.I. Bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the establishment of the National Science Foundation. Furthermore, we find that the New Archaeology’s emphasis on egalitarian science—the metaphor of “archaeology as commune”—serves as a link among its theoretical innovations, methodology, and pedagogy.

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.

Tracking broad-scale behavioral patterns using both lithics and faunal remains offers one line of evidence for investigating both prehistoric subsistence activities and the consequences of aggregation and increases in population size. Accumulation research, which examines the ratio of projectile points to cooking pottery sherds from the same context, shows a higher ratio of projectile points in areas with lower population densities. This pattern holds true when examining faunal assemblages and large-game procurement practices from A.D. 900 to 1300 in southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah. This research demonstrates that social processes such as aggregation and increases in population density influence human hunting strategies as much as changes in natural environment, which lead to changes in a group’s dietary regime.

Preliminary research on hand stencils found in the Upper Paleolithic cave sites of France and Spain showed that sexual dimorphism in human hands is expressed strongly enough to allow empirical determination of the sexes of the individuals who made some of them. Further research increased the sample of measurable cases from 6 to 32, a large enough sample to show that persons who made hand stencils in the caves were predominantly females. This finding rebuts the traditional assumption that human hand stencils in European parietal art were made by male artists, either adults or subadults. Findings further suggest that the sexual dimorphism of hands was more pronounced during the Upper Paleolithic than it is in modern Europeans. Attempts to apply the same algorithms to a sample of North American Indian handprints confirms the view that different populations require separate analyses.

The timing of the arrival of the bow and arrow in the New World and reasons for its adoption have long been discussed by archaeologists. It typically has been assumed that the bow and arrow provided mechanical and physical advantages over the atlatl and dart, particularly in long-range killing power. This experimental study examines the effectiveness of traditional bows and arrows to deliver lethal wounds to prey species of different sizes. The results suggest that the bow and arrow was effective in hunting prey species such as antelope and deer but ineffective in bringing down larger animals unless changes in hunting strategies were adopted. In contrast, the atlatl and dart would have excelled in large game hunting. It is proposed that the adoption of the bow and arrow and the abandonment of the atlatl and dart were conditioned by their distinct performance advantages and changes in the game species targeted over time.

The Graveline Mound (22JA503) is a sand platform mound in Jackson County, Mississippi, built on a low, late Pleistocene terrace on the Mississippi Sound. The Late Woodland mound (A.D. 590–780) is composed of local soils, and its presence today is a testament to the ancient builders’ knowledge of earthen construction materials and methods. Central to the study of the mound is an integrated geoarchaeological approach that uses stratigraphy and micromorphology to decipher material source and selection, construction techniques, and periodicity, in combination with more traditional artifacts, revealing the activities that created this ultimately monumental space. The mound was built in three rapid stages beginning with a low earthwork demarcating a ritual precinct used during late spring/early summer. Stage II quickly followed with a series of alternating zoned fills, sealing the space that was then subsequently covered by Stage III, a massive hard red surface that marked the location with a platform mound.

The notion that Paleoindians used bifaces as “mobile cores” is widespread in Late Pleistocene lithic research, although it can be difficult to test empirically. Here, we use experimental replication to establish two quantitative predictions that would be indicative of biface-core transport. If bifaces are being used as mobile cores, then we should see among a group of sites of varying toolstone procurement distances (a) a negative relationship between toolstone procurement distance and the mean unifacial tool maximum-thickness value from each site; and (b) a negative relationship between toolstone procurement distance and the variability (standard deviation) of maximum flake thickness values from each site. We then test these predictions against data from six Clovis sites of varying toolstone procurement distance in the Lower Great Lakes region. The results show that both sets of data possess a strong, positive relationship with increasing toolstone procurement distance, which is inconsistent with the notion that biface-cores were transported. Since the Clovis presence in the Lower Great Lakes is widely acknowledged to be a colonization pulse, we conclude that the lack of biface-core transport there is an economizing and risk-mitigating behavior consistent with the models of Kuhn (1994) and Meltzer (2002, 2003, 2004).

Ceramics typologies have long been used to build artifact, site, and regional chronologies. Direct accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating of shell-tempered ceramics offers a promising tool for updating and improving these chronologies. Few studies have 14C dated shell fragments from shell-tempered pottery, however, and questions remain about potential biases from “old shell,” the reservoir effect, and other variables. Forty-five direct AMS 14C assays on shell-tempered pottery and associated shell, charcoal, and bone from nine archaeological sites in Virginia and Maryland provide a framework to test this method. AMS 14C assays from one site may have problems with old shell, but most of the calibrated direct and associated age estimates overlap. One of our samples is the oldest securely dated shell-tempered pottery in North America at ~1000 cal B.C. Our study demonstrates the promise of AMS 14C dating shell-tempered pottery for refining ceramic and regional chronologies in coastal and other areas around the world.

Analysis of taphonomic processes observable in undoubtedly cultural Younger Dryas-age faunal collections at the Paisley Caves establishes what cultural bone modification looks like in post-Clovis deposits at the site. Clearly stating the criteria by which these bones have been identified as culturally modified by stone tools, we apply the same criteria to bones found at the noncultural paleontological site of Mineral Hill Cave, Nevada, and find no cases of stone-tool-cut-marked bones. Applying these same criteria to bones recovered from pre-Clovis stratigraphie contexts at the Paisley Caves resulted in the identification of two cut-marked specimens, a mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis) mandible and a small artiodactyl rib that were both found in close proximity to human coprolites and artifacts. Directly radiocarbon dated prior to the beginning of the Clovis era (ca. > 13,100 cal B.P.), these specimens increase the number of culturally modified items recovered from pre-Clovis contexts and support previous DNA studies indicating that the northern Great Basin was occupied at least a millennium before Clovis points became widespread throughout North America.

The earliest widespread pottery in northeastern North America is known as Vinette 1, a designation made by Ritchie and MacNeish (1949) over 60 years ago. While variation exists within this type (Taché 2005), external and internal cordmarked surfaces, thick walls, and large crushed-rock temper generally characterize this pottery. The history of this pottery, including its inception, geographical spread, temporal overlap with steatite vessels, and eventual replacement by other pottery technologies, is far from clear. In this article, we examine the existing database of radiocarbon assays associated with Vinette 1 pottery and steatite vessels, perform a chronometrie hygiene of those age estimates, and introduce 21 new AMS assays on charred cooking residues adhering to Vinette 1 sherd interiors. The results suggest a much more temporally restricted history for Vinette 1 pottery technology and a long period of coexistence with steatite vessels. However, the small number of reliable age estimates available for both technologies prevents a detailed assessment of their respective histories.

The early evidence (2400 ± 105 B.P.) for wetland maize agriculture at the archaeological site of Fort Center, a large earth-work site in South Florida, USA, is frequently cited in discussions of the emergence of agriculture in the Eastern Woodlands of North America. The evidence for maize, however, rests on controversial pollen data; some researchers accept it, others remain skeptical of its identification or chronological placement. We present microbotanical data (pollen and phytoliths), macrobotanical data, and radiocarbon dates from recent excavations from this site. We argue that maize agriculture did not occur until the historic period at this site and that the identification of maize in earlier deposits is likely a result of contamination.

Typological cross-dating is the primary means by which archaeological sites are placed into chronological frameworks. This approach relies on the assumption that artifacts at undated sites—usually projectile points—are coeval with similar artifacts found at Other, dated sites. While typological cross-dating is necessary in regions dominated by open-air lithic scatters, the approach can be problematic when undated and dated sites are separated by significant distances. Here, we present radiocarbon dates on projectile points with organic hafting material still attached or found within organic storage bags. Our results provide unequivocal ages for various morphological projectile point types at several Great Basin locales and should be useful to researchers seeking local age estimates for those point types, which often involves relying on chronological data from more distant sites. The results also highlight potential issues with uncritically applying typological cross-dating using typologies based on metric attributes, and in two cases, suggest the need to revise the age ranges for certain point styles in the western Great Basin.

Coiled basketry dates to more than 8,000 years ago in the Eastern Great Basin and is found in the Western Basin by 4,500 years ago. In the Northern Great Basin, archaeological basketry is dominated by twineware; fewer than 20 fragments of coiled basketry have been reported. Coiling has long been thought to have appeared very late in the Northern Basin, and the perceived late presence of coiling in the north has been considered by some to be an indicator of a late Numic incursion from the south. Recent direct radiocarbon dating of fiber samples from the coiled specimens from the Northern Great Basin undermines the previous assumptions of a uniformly late age. Though rare, coiling has a consistent presence in the region for more than 2,500 years. Further, its distribution suggests that this technological influence may have derived primarily from eastern, rather than southern, sources.

We report on thin section petrographic analysis of plainware ceramic sherds from two Late Prehistoric hunter-gatherer sites in the Peninsular Ranges of San Diego County, California. We describe several distinctive compositional groups and compare these with previously analyzed ceramics and geological field samples to infer probable raw materials and provenance. In addition, taking into account archaeological and ethnohistoric context, we suggest cultural processes that may have contributed to the observed distribution across sites of three dominant compositional groups distinguishable within the general "brownware" category. The study demonstrates the potential of a compositional approach for investigating cultural practices among prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations with plainware ceramic craft traditions.