Casas Grandes (or Paquimé), in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, is the largest and possibly the most complex community in the prehistoric Pueblo world. The literature is, and always has been, dominated by models that attribute the origin of this center to impulses coming from outside of the region. These arguments rest on the assumptions that the Casas Grandes area was underpopulated before the development of the center, and that there was little cultural continuity between Casas Grandes and its local predecessors. We use old and new data to argue against both of these ideas and in favor of in situ development of the center of Casas Grandes.

This paper provides an analysis of radiocarbon dates acquired during earlier and recent field seasons at the Keatley Creek site, southern British Columbia. Results indicate that early occupations predating 1900 cal. B.P. occurred, but were not likely associated with population aggregation and large housepits. The aggregated village appears to have emerged by approximately 1700 cal. B.P. and was abandoned at approximately 800 cal. B.P. A break in the occupational sequence is recognized at 1450-1350 cal. B.P. and one other short break may have occurred shortly after 1250 cal. B.P. Peak socioeconomic complexity appears to have been achieved between 1350 and 800 cal B.P. Climatic warming may have provided a selective environment favoring population aggregation and intensification during this time. The final abandonment of the Keatley Creek village appears to have been part of a regional phenomenon suggesting the possibility that climatic factors were important in this case as well.

Patterns of use of ceramic objects and masonry architecture at Chaco Canyon in the southwestern United States indicate refurbishing of some vessels and architectural forms. Ceramic cylinder jars show evidence for obliteration of earlier designs and subsequent repainting and refiring of new designs. Communal structures, or kivas, were dismantled and rebuilt. Three possible explanations for these patterns are explored: revision of errors, restoration of worn surfaces, or ritual renewal. Renewal appears the most likely explanation for most of the patterning seen, providing a fuller picture of Chacoan ritual life and beliefs. Implications for research in the Chaco area and greater Southwest are discussed.

Recent excavation and analysis of the remaining section of the endangered Rapidan Mound site (44OR1) in the central Virginia Piedmont provide new insights into a unique complex of burial mounds in the Virginia interior. Known since Thomas Jefferson's eighteenth-century description, the mounds are both earth and stone and accretional earthen mounds. Thirteen are recorded, all dating to the late prehistoric and early contact era (ca. A.D. 900-1700). Typically containing few artifacts, the accretional mounds are unusual in North America in the numbers of individuals interred, more than one thousand in at least two cases, and in the nature of the secondary, collective burial ritual that built up the mounds over centuries. Following a review of the characteristics of the mound complex, we focus on the Rapidan Mound and the analysis of the collective, secondary burial features in the mound. Precise provenience information and bioarchaeological analyses of two large and intact collective burial features provide new information on health and diet, and several lines of evidence for demographic reconstruction. Finally, we discuss the mortuary ritual conducted at the mounds within the cultural and historical context of the region.

Low lake levels, due to drought in spring and summer 2000, revealed the decayed remnants of over 100 dugout canoes buried in the sediments of Newnans Lake near Gainesville, Florida. Radiocarbon assays revealed that 41 of 55 canoes studied were from the Late Archaic period, dating between 2300 and 5000 B.P. Analysis of canoe form and comparison to the small number of other known Florida Archaic period canoes correct previous ideas about early canoes. Patterns of wood choice and manufacturing techniques known from younger canoes were in place during the Late Archaic. The Archaic period canoes from Newnans Lake are indistinguishable from canoes produced in later periods and are not the crude, short, blunt-ended type thought to represent the earliest dugout canoes. Thwarts or low partitions on almost half of the Archaic canoes studied confirm a long temporal span to the canoe-making tradition of peninsular Florida. Middle and Late Archaic groups had boat-building and related technologies in place 7,000 years ago and were expanding into areas with newly emerging freshwater resources created by higher water tables.

Traditionally, hunter-gatherers of the Clovis period have been characterized as specialized hunters of large terrestrial mammals. Recent critiques have attempted to upend this position both empirically and theoretically, alternatively favoring a more generalized foraging economy. In this paper, the distinction between subsistence specialists and generalists is framed in terms of forager selectivity with regards to hunted prey, following a behavioral ecological framework. Faunal data are compiled from 33 Clovis sites and used to test the two alternative diet-breadth hypotheses. The data support the older “Clovis as specialist” model, although some use of small game is apparent. Furthermore, data from modern hunter-gatherers are marshaled to support the theoretical plausibility of specialized large-mammal hunting across North America during the Late Pleistocene.

Excavations of colonial period sites in Maryland and Virginia have produced human remains dating to the seventeenth century. In this study, we analyze stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen from these remains to explore aspects of the diets of the individuals represented. Analyses of both stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes were conducted on preserved protein while stable carbon isotope analysis was also conducted on preserved biological apatite. Carbon isotope values (δ13N‰) ranged from -10.5 to -20.5 for collagen and -5.1 to -12.5 for bioapatite. Nitrogen isotope values (δ15N‰) ranged from 9.9 to 14.4. The data suggest dietary diversity among the individuals examined. Three factors contribute to this diversity: the availability of maize, variation in immigration histories of the individuals, and the differing lengths of time they spent in the American colonies.

The Owasco culture is a critical taxon in William A. Ritchie's culture history of New York. In its final construction, Owasco was viewed by Ritchie as representing the onset of recognizable northern Iroquoian traits. This interpretation is widely accepted among archaeologists currently working in New York. An examination of the history of the taxon shows that it is nothing more than a subjectively defined unit based on the thoughts of Ritchie and his predecessor Arthur C. Parker. Recent empirical research has shown that the key traits Ritchie used to define Owasco have very different histories than he thought. Owasco does not stand either theoretically or empirically and should be abandoned as a unit of analysis.

Various lithic measures have been invoked to argue that human foragers moved over greater or lesser distances, or moved with greater or lesser frequency when compared with other foraging groups. This paper examines one of those measures—the reduction of blade end scrapers from early Upper Paleolithic Aurignacian and Perigordian occupations in southwestern France. Evidence of end scraper reduction is compared with faunal diversity and lithic material provenience, the former a potential catalyst of and the latter a potential reflection of mobility. A relationship between less-intense end scraper reduction, somewhat elevated percentages of distant raw materials, and reindeer-dominated fauna is noted during cold and apparently open environmental conditions. Less consistency in the extent of end scraper reduction is observed among assemblages associated with more diverse and at times less-mobile fauna. These observations argue for the importance of a fine-grained comparison of lithic and other data, the complexity of procurement strategies, and the recognition that greater or lesser reduction does not translate directly into greater or lesser mobility.

In recent years, zooarchaeological research has begun to examine the roles of animals as part of the suite of symbols employed in the ongoing social, ceremonial, and political dynamics of prehistoric cultural systems. In the southeastern United States, studies of late prehistoric Mississippian chiefdoms have documented differences in species composition and meat cuts associated with particular social contexts of consumption—for instance, ceremonial feasting vs. private meals—and also with gross distinctions in social rank—elite vs. commoner. Differences in the latter reflect elite control of procurement as well as cultural rules that assign meanings to certain species, which in so doing regulates access to their consumption. Faunal samples collected by recent mound excavations at the Moundville site in west-central Alabama provide the basis for an examination of more subtle differences in the consumption patterns of elite residents. Zooarchaeological samples produced by two elite households, although generally similar and fitting expectations for elite consumption well, are distinguished by differences in the distribution of rare species, the role of fish, and possibly by evidence of differences in food waste, distinctions that can be associated with interpretations of these households' relative status in Moundville society drawn from other classes of archaeological data.

Hilltop features reported around the site of Paquimé, the political center of a prehistoric complex polity in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, have been interpreted as a fire-signaling network by archaeologists. If these hilltop platform features functioned as such a communication system, it provides important information for our interpretation of regional integration and interaction for the Paquimé polity. This paper reports the results of a survey of hilltops in the area and a subsequent GIS-based intervisibility analysis, which determined that a series of hilltop platforms in the region were ideally situated for fire-signaling purposes. I discuss the need for implementing tests for intervisibility and tests for determining the significance of that intervisibility, and then consider some implications of the Paquimé fire-signaling system on sociopolitical organization and integration.

Radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples and a re-examination of the artifacts from the Volcanic Debris layer in Ventana Cave were conducted in 1992-1994. The goal of this research was to better understand the chronological position and cultural affinities of the Ventana Complex, the name applied to the assemblage recovered from the Volcanic Debris. Ten new Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) 14C ages suggest that the Volcanic Debris accumulated between approximately 8800 B.P. and 10,500 B.P., and the lack of stratigraphic ordering of the dates indicates that the Volcanic Debris was subjected to considerable turbation as it accumulated. This turbation may have led to the incorporation of bones of extinct fauna from an underlying conglomerate deposit rich in horse remains, creating the impression of their association with artifacts. The artifacts are probably the product of episodic, special-purpose occupations spanning centuries or millennia. Technological and morphological studies of the stone tools indicate few similarities with classic Paleoindian industries, and greater similarities to early Holocene Archaic occupations in the Great Basin and Southwest. Correlations of the Ventana Cave stratigraphy with that of southeastern Arizona and with the late Pleistocene and Holocene record of Northern Hemisphere climate are explored.

Great Basin ethnography contains little information concerning rock art, suggesting that much of it is pre-Numic. The presence of historic rock art, however, should permit differences between pre-Numic and Numic populations to be identified. Anthropological theory suggests pioneer groups use ritual to socialize the landscape. Rock art may also be associated with colonizing groups to secure access to new resources. Numic populations seem to have responded to pre-Numic rock art through modification of the art. Once the landscape had been re-socialized rock art was generally avoided. This explains why rock art production became sporadic, and memory of it lost.

Douglas Bamforth's recent paper in American Antiquity, “Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology,” charges that Darwinism has little to offer archaeology except in a metaphorical sense. Specifically, Bamforth claims that arguments that allegedly link evolutionary processes to the archaeological record are unsustainable. Given Bamforth's narrow view of evolution—that it must be defined strictly in terms of changes in gene frequency—he is correct. But no biologist or paleontologist would agree with Bamforth"s claim that evolution is a process that must he viewed fundamentally at the microlevel. Evolutionary archaeology has argued that materials in the archaeological record are phenotypic in the same way that hard parts of organisms are. Thus changes in the frequencies of archaeological variants can be used to monitor the effects of selection and drift on the makers and users of those materials. Bamforth views this extension of the human phenotype as metaphorical because to him artifacts are not somatic features, meaning their production and use are not entirely controlled by genetic transmission. He misses the critical point that in terms of evolution, culture is as significant a transmission system as genes are. There is nothing metaphorical about viewing cultural transmission from a Darwinian point of view.

We previously suggested that the abandonment of large housepit villages along the Mid-Fraser River ca. 1200 B.P. was due to landslides that decimated salmon stocks and the main subsistence staples of the villages. Kuijt has questioned the plausibility of such a scenario. However, he confuses the two landslide episodes we discuss and raises unrealistic expectations about lake formation, migration behavior, and residual populations. He also confuses the lacustrine vs. fluvial effects of landslide blockages. While he attributes to us specific interpretations to which we are not tied and which are not critical for our basic argument, he offers no real alternative explanation for why the large Mid-Fraser villages were abandoned.

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between metric variability of ceramic vessels of a single type and intensity of production. This relationship is examined on the basis of vessels made by Indian and Spanish potters whose rates of production vary from low to high. Results are compared with Filipino data to embrace different cultures and therefore possibly different emic conceptions of standardization. We conclude that rate of production affects the degree of standardization. However, only in a high-rate production situation do we have motor habits that transcend emic conceptions of standardization. Indeed, factors like size classes, emic conception of size classes, and skill may induce a certain variability despite similar rates of production. Indexing degrees of standardization needs, in other respects, to take into account the cumulative effect of production events that play on the CV (Coefficient of Variation) values. Applied to Mesopotamian data, our results suggest that third millennium ceramic production can be compared to low-rate production observed ethnographically.

In a recent paper in American Antiquity (2002:231-256), Hildebrandt and McGuire argue that archaeofaunal patterns in California document an ascendance of artiodactyl hunting during the Middle Archaic. They also suggest that such a trend is inconsistent with predictions derived from optimal-foraging models. Given the apparent failure of foraging theory, they advance a “showing off” model of large-game hunting. While their presentation is intriguing, we do not see a theoretical warrant for predicting that show-off hunting would have increased during the Middle Archaic. We present here an alternative hypothesis for the increase in artiodactyl abundances and the hunting-related patterns they identify. That hypothesis follows directly from the prey model itself under what appears to have been a dramatic artiodactyl population expansion after the drought-dominated middle Holocene period.

The suggestion by Jones et al. (2002) that a terminal Pleistocene-early Holocene California site contains evidence for a separate coastal migration into the New World is challenged. The authors ignore the fact that some 100 or more generations passed since the initial New World colonization event(s) and the occupation of their site (Cross Creek), during which time many cultural changes could be expected, including post-big-game-hunting coastal adaptations throughout the Americas. Moreover, the amount of food refuse is so minuscule that inferring the exact nature of the initial Cross Creek economy is doubtful at best. The recovered chipped stone artifacts have no diagnostic value for economic function or ecological correlation, and the grinding stones suggest more seed than sea exploitation. Lastly, what is known about the biological origins, variation, and microevolution of Native Americans does not support a direct coastal migration from Siberia to California.

O'Brien, Lyman, and Leonard's comment misrepresents my paper and obscures the problems evolutionary archaeology faces. In particular, I took the ongoing operation of natural selection among modern humans as one of my fundamental assumptions and I did not limit evolution to genetic change. The assertion that the selectionists have identified the operation of natural selection in the archaeological record fails to meet the most basic standards of archaeological reasoning.

Owsley and Jantz (2001) allege that we (Swedlund and Anderson 1999) misunderstand and misrepresent the events surrounding the controversy over Kennewick Man, and that we misconstrue statements they have made regarding Spirit Cave Man. They then move to their own analysis of Gordon Creek Woman to demonstrate the value of their morphometric techniques in addressing questions of biological affinity. In this reply we clarify and amplify our position on the key issues on which they challenge us, and we evaluate their morphometric analysis of Gordon Creek Woman. To our previous call for bioarchaeologists to more explicitly acknowledge the political environment in which questions of biological affinity currently arise, we add our concern that the methodologies used have their own set of problems and limitations.