Temporal nature and recycling of Upper Paleolithic artifacts: the burned tools from the Molí del Salt site (Vimbodí i Poblet,northeastern Spain)

Recent research in Paleolithic archeology has stressed the importance of temporal issues in assemblage interpretation. Archeological assemblages are temporal constructs, formed by the addition of an unknown number of depositional events. This temporal dimension is also evident at the artifactual level, since single artifacts may undergo different events of modification and/or uses over time. The recycling of previously discarded blanks for tool production is one of the best examples of the temporal nature of artifacts. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the importance of recycling in a Late Upper Paleolithic site, examining a type of artifact – burned tools – that has up to now been little used to approach this issue. Our results suggest that recycling was probably a significant component of Upper Paleolithic provisioning behavior, with important implications in site formation processes and the typological variability of assemblages. The expedient or curated character of recycling is also discussed.     

Flake selection and scraper retouch probability: an alternative model for explaining Middle Paleolithic assemblage retouch variability

It has been proposed that the relative abundance of retouched objects in Paleolithic assemblages can serve as a measure for artifact transport and by extension a proxy for site occupation duration. This approach is based on the assumption that retouch represents curatory effort for extending the service time of transported artifacts when raw material access is uncertain or limited, a condition that could arise when groups move frequently over long distances across the landscape. This paper proposes an alternative model that explains retouch as a probabilistic outcome of an expedient, on-site flake selection process. A simulation illustrates that the model is capable of producing assemblage retouch configurations akin to those commonly observed in Paleolithic settings. The simulation also indicates that the threshold applied by past individuals for selecting particular artifacts is an important parameter for explaining assemblage retouch variability. Using artifact weight as a proxy for flake selection criteria, several Middle Paleolithic assemblages exhibit patterns that support predictions made from the model simulation. Findings suggest that variation in scraper frequency among the studied assemblages can be accounted for by an interaction between the abundance of artifact production events and shifting artifact selection criteria, without appealing to higher-level behaviors of technological and mobility strategies.     

Effects of distance from stone source on landscape-scale variation in Oldowan artifact assemblages in the Paleo-Olduvai Basin,Tanzania

Ongoing excavations at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, reveal tremendous variability among stone artifact assemblages across the Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Lake Basin during Bed I and lower Bed II times. Theoretically, stone artifact traces of Oldowan hominin land use are determined by the distribution of larger mammal carcasses and arboreal refuge from predation as well as proximity to stone material sources.     

An archaeological test of the “Exchange Expansion Model” of contact era change on the Northwest Coast

Recent anthropological studies show that traditional views of indigenous communities in the wake of European colonialism are constrained by Eurocentric biases. These biases can be overcome, in part, by greater reliance on archaeological data as an independent line of evidence and increased attention to indigenous internal sociocultural processes. This study uses these strategies to examine colonial era shifts in indigenous exchange systems on the Northwest Coast of North America. Obsidian artifact data from late precontact and early postcontact deposits are used to test what I call the “Exchange Expansion Model” (EEM) of colonial period shifts in Northwest Coast exchange systems. According to the EEM, both the volume and geographic scope of supralocal exchange among indigenous communities increased as a result of European influences. This study tests the model using obsidian artifact data from three Lower Columbia River sites – Cathlapotle (45CL1), Clahclellah (45SA11), and Meier (35C05). The results support the hypothesized increase in volume, but not the hypothesized increase in geographic scope, of indigenous supralocal exchange. To explain the departure from expectations, I propose a revised version of the EEM which considers more fully how Native demography and internal sociocultural dynamics developed in the context of introduced diseases, horses, and the fur trade. I suggest these variables facilitated increases in the flow of prestige goods, but declines in the flow of less valued goods such as obsidian, from interior sources to the Lower Columbia River. Exchange alliances between Lower Columbia Chinookans and nearby Willamette Valley inhabitants were more resistant to disruption, so obsidian importation from the Willamette Valley to the Lower Columbia stabilized, and perhaps intensified, during the postcontact era. These findings illustrate the power of archaeology for empirically testing ethnohistorical models of colonialism and for illuminating the significance of indigenous internal sociocultural processes in colonial entanglements.     

Differences in Manufacturing Traditions and Assemblage-Level Patterns: the Origins of Cultural Differences in Archaeological Data

A relationship between behavioral variability and artifactual variability is a founding principle of archaeology. However, this relationship is surprisingly not well studied empirically from an explicitly “microevolutionary” perspective. Here, we experimentally simulated artifactual variation in two populations of “artifact” manufacturers, involving only a single behavioral difference in terms of their “tradition” of manufacturing tool. We then statistically analyzed shape variation in the resultant artifacts. In many respects, patterned differences might not have been expected to emerge given the simple nature of the task, the fact that only a single behavioral variable differed in our two populations, and all participants copied the same target artifact. However, multivariate analyses identified significant differences between the two “assemblages.” These results have several implications for our understanding and theoretical conceptualization of the relationship between behavior and artifactual variability, including the analytical potency of conceiving of artifacts as the product of behavioral “recipes” comprised of individual “ingredient” behavioral properties. Indeed, quite trivial behavioral differences, in generating microevolutionarily potent variability, can thus have long-term consequences for artifactual changes measured over time and space. Moreover, measurable “cultural” differences in artifacts can emerge not necessarily only because of a strict “mental template” but as the result of subtle differences in behavioral ingredients that are socially learned at the community level.     

Miniature dissonance and the museum space: reconsidering communication through miniaturisation

Miniature objects from non-European contexts have ideological elements which are often overlooked in the museum space because their small size and iconic relations make them difficult to accurately interpret and disrupt curatorial efforts to impose meaning upon them; a situation I term miniature dissonance. This article will examine this phenomenon using three related case studies featuring miniatures from the Northwest Coast of North America. It will consider what might have been misunderstood in these objects and what they might originally have been intended to achieve, followed by an example from a recent Ancient Egyptian exhibition which demonstrates that this problem is both more widespread and problematic than is often recognised. These miniatures disrupt curatorial intentionality in the museum space, and it is only by carefully considering their origins and affordances that they can be adequately and accurately interpreted and displayed.     

Continuity Amidst Change: Village Organization and Fishing Subsistence at the Dionisio Point Locality in Coastal Southern British Columbia

Shifts over time in faunal representation in Northwest Coast archaeological sites have been viewed as reflecting changes in economic organization and social complexity. We use fish faunal data from the Parry Lagoon Midden (site DgRv-006) in the Salish Sea region of coastal southwestern British Columbia, Canada, to evaluate the relationship between change in subsistence strategies and community organization. We describe and compare fish assemblages recovered from a shell midden generated by habitation at two sequentially occupied village sites. The lower midden layers include faunal remains derived from the Marpole Period plankhouse village occupation at site DgRv-003 (1500 to 1300 cal BP), while the upper layers were generated during the occupation of a Late Period plankhouse within site DgRv-006 (1000 to 600 cal BP). We compare the two faunal records to ascertain if subsistence re-organization accompanied the social change associated with abandonment and later re-establishment of a village in the Dionisio Point Locality. Results indicate continuity of a diverse fishing economy for the two occupations, and therefore across the Marpole to Late Period transition. This study adds to the recent trend in Northwest Coast archaeology to reconsider the long-standing view that social and subsistence change necessarily occurred in tandem.     

Spatial and Temporal Variation in Mesopotamian Agricultural Practices in the Khabur Basin,Syrian Jazira

While archaeologists have long recognized the value of regional analysis to define economic systems, relatively few archaeological data sets—principally settlement patterns, ceramics and lithics—have been used to assess regional-scale spatial variation and temporal change. As with other archaeological data sets, resolution of archaeobotanical data at a regional scale poses some formidable challenges. A new approach in the Near East uses archaeobotanical remains from multiple sites. The data have been drawn from midden assemblages that exhibit high variability between assemblages, requiring the use of random effects logistic regression models that can accommodate high variability. Our approach detects changes over time and over geographical region and tests the statistical significance of these changes. Results show a significant rise in crop-processing wastes, most probably from a specialized focus on barley processing at settlement and storage sites during the 3rd millenniumbc (Ninevite 5 and Early Jazira Periods). This shift to a greater representation of barley-processing by-products represented in middens can most probably be linked with an emerging specialization in pastoral production and re-settlement in arid regions of the northern Mesopotamian steppe in the 3rd millennium bc.     

Current Research on the Gulf Coast of Mexico

The Gulf Coast of Mesoamerica is a culturally and environmentally heterogeneous area that encompasses the lowlands along the Gulf of Mexico as well as rugged inland highlands. Blessed with a wealth of valued resources and a favorable geographical setting, the pre-Hispanic Gulf Coast played a critical role as a cultural and economic crossroads, and its cultures contributed vital elements to other Mesoamerican traditions. Gulf Coast archaeology currently is experiencing the most active period in its history. This recent research underscores the diversity and dynamism of the area's cultures and environment. An enormous expansion of settlement pattern studies reveals considerable diversity in sociopolitical organization, urbanism, and human–land relationships. A second important trend focuses on documenting and understanding variation in craft production and exchange systems. A third is the continuing emphasis on interregional interaction through all time periods. These three foci merge in a growing interest in variation and change in Gulf Coast political economies. Future research will need to incorporate theoretical perspectives that focus on the generation of cultural variation, including agency-based models of technological choice and political economy, as well as those, like Darwinian approaches, that emphasize the differential persistence of variation.     

Detecting the effects of selection and stochastic forces in archaeological assemblages

Detecting and diagnosing the causes of change through time in archaeological assemblages is a core enterprise of archaeology. Evolutionary approaches to this problem typically cast the causes of culture change as being either stochastic in origin, or arising from selection. Stochastic sources of change include random innovations, copying errors, drift and founder effects among dispersing groups. Selection is driven by differences in payoffs between cultural variants. Most efforts to identify these evolutionary forces in the archaeological record have relied on assessing how well the predictions from a neutral-stochastic model of cultural transmission fit a data set. Selection is inferred when the neutral-stochastic model fits poorly. A problem with this approach is that it does not test directly for the presence selection. Moreover, it does not account for the fact that both neutral-stochastic and selective forces can act at the same time on the same cultural variants. A different approach based on the Price Equation allows for the simultaneous measurement of selective and stochastic forces. This paper extends use of the Price Equation to the analysis of selective and stochastic forces operating on multiple artifact types within an assemblage. Ceramic data presented by Steele et al. (2010, Vol. 37(6): 1348–1358) from the Late Bronze Age Hittite site of Bo?azköy-Hattusa, Turkey, provide an opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of this model. The results suggest that selection is a dominant process driving the frequency evolution of different bowl rim types within the assemblage and that stochastic forces played little or no role. It is also clear, however, that we should be attentive to combinations of direct and indirect selective effects within assemblages consisting of multiple artifact types.     

Reflections on North American Pacific Coast prehistory

The Pacific Coast of North America was occupied by many distinctive groups of coastal hunter-gatherers at the times of early contacts with Europeans. Despite significant cultural diversity, Pacific Coast peoples shared lifeways oriented toward generally similar marine, nearshore, littoral, and estuarine habitats. In this paper, we examine some major issues that guide much of the archaeology done along the Pacific Coast, then discuss some of the theoretical and methodological problems that limit the efficacy of archaeological reconstructions. Most archaeological research conducted on North America's Pacific Coast has been oriented toward the search for the origins and development of a variety of cultural patterns. A comparative review of California and Northwest Coast sequences provides interesting parallels and discrepancies in the approaches taken in studying some of the major issues in Pacific Coast prehistory.     

Mapping of subsurface shell midden components through percussion coring: examples from the Dundas Islands

Following earlier examples of mapping the subsurface of shell bearing sites using augering, we employ percussion coring to identify early Holocene shell midden components at two types of sites on the Northwest Coast of North America. We describe a method for mapping subsurface components at shell bearing sites including basal deposits, paleosols and transitions between distinct cultural components. Our research was undertaken for the purpose of identifying early Holocene shell middens above the modern shore, and as components below large shell midden villages. Our results augment the developmental trajectory of shell middens on the Northwest Coast by suggesting that pre-5000 BP forms of these sites may be more common than previously thought. In light of these results, we argue that the Northwest Coast cultural historical sequence, which locates an increase in the number and rate of accumulation of shell middens beginning 5000 years ago, to be premature. However, there are insufficient data from shell middens in the early Holocene, a sampling problem that the percussion coring methods described here can address.     

Economic and Land-Use Implications of Prehistoric Fire-Cracked-Rock Piles,Northern Arizona

Abstract

Intensive archaeological survey of 14.5 sq km of the Upper Basin, an area located near the Grand Canyon's eastern South Rim in northern Arizona, has discovered 126 fire-cracked-rock piles that are surrounded by artifact scatters of varying size and assemblage composition. Because these phenomena are unprecedented in upland conifer ecosystems of the American Southwest, several hypotheses are explored regarding their formation histories. Analyses of artifact assemblages, botanical remains, pollen, and faunal remains recovered from four excavated sites indicate that they result from flaked-stone artifact production, ground-stone artifact reuse and recycling, ceramic-vessel-fragment recycling, and animal and plant processing. In addition, radiocarbon dates and temporally diagnostic projectile-points and ceramics imply that the sites differ in terms of frequency, intensity, and patterns of use, and with respect to the groups of people who formed them (Anasazi, Cohonina, Havasupai, or Hopi). Byproducts of a little-known, long-term land-use pattern in Southwestern prehistory (ca. A.D. 417–1650), these sites represent a key source of information for understanding how different sources of variability come to be expressed in archaeological landscapes.     

INSIGHTS FROM THE ANALYSIS OF ANGEL MOUNDS POTTERY TROWELS

Archaeologists have recovered pottery trowels in excavations at numerous historic and pre-Columbian archaeological sites in North America since the late nineteenth century. Despite these facts, pottery trowels have not been the subject of thorough scientific analysis or interpretation. In this study, I define and implement a new method of analysis for pottery trowels, using a sample of 188 pottery trowels from the Mississippian site of Angel Mounds (12VG1). After describing the quantitative and qualitative attributes of pottery trowels, I define categories of frequently occurring pottery trowel bell and handle types. The extensive variability of pottery trowel shapes and sizes discovered at Angel Mounds is then discussed with regard to alternative or multiple uses for the tools and the spatial and temporal distributions of pottery trowel types. As an artifact type that provides opportunities to analyze technology, craft production and specialization, and daily practices in past societies, I argue pottery trowels may hold important future insights into a number of topics of interest to archaeologists.     

Variability in Ethnographic Hidescraper Use among the Hadiya of Ethiopia: Implications for Reduction Analysis

The contemporary use of flaked stone tools provides a rare opportunity to study various aspects of lithic technology. Variables that must be inferred in archaeological contexts can be observed and more easily studied in ethnographic ones. The Hadiya hideworkers of southern Ethiopia, like a few other groups in this region, still retain the tradition of making and using obsidian scrapers on a daily basis for hide-working activities. This ethnoarchaeological study demonstrates how differential access to raw material and the resultant procurement strategies result in intra-group variability in scraper-use intensity. Results show that raw material acquisition costs, which are difficult to identify in archaeological assemblages, represent significant impacts on tool use life and curation.     

The oldowan reassessed: A close look at early stone artifacts

Early Stone Age assemblages called “Oldowan” and early “Developed Oldowan” are discussed, based on the results of a long-term study of Plio-Pleistocene sites at Koobi Fora, Kenya and an extensive experimental research program of replicating and using early stone artifact forms. Five major conclusions are drawn from this investigation: (1) many Oldowan core forms (“core-tools”) are probably simple by-products of flake manufacture rather than representations of stylistic norms; (2) flakes and retouched flakes - were essential tools in Oldowan technology, particularly for activities involving cutting; (3) this simple technology does not necessarily reflect the cognitive abilities of the early hominids that manufactured the stone artifacts; (4) there is evidence to show that Oldowan technology can be viewed as a simple curated one, in which raw material was intentionally carried from place to place for future use; (5) early hominid populations that made and used stone implements were not necessarily dependent upon them for their survival.     

The Standard Model,the Maximalists and the Minimalists: New Interpretations of Trypillia Mega-Sites

The currently prevailing view of the Trypillia mega-sites of the fourth millennium BC has been the dominant model for over 40 years: they were extra-large settlement examples of the Childean ‘Neolithic package’ of permanent settlement, domesticated plants and animals, and artifact assemblages containing polished stone tools and pottery. Trypillia mega-sites have therefore been viewed as permanent, long-term settlements comprising many thousands of people. This view of these extraordinary sites has been identical whatever the various opinions on their urban or other status. In recent mega-site publications, a maximalist gloss has been put on this standard view—with population estimates as high as 46,000 people (Rassmann et al. in J Neolit Archaeol 16: 96–134, 2014). However, doubts about the standard view have been emerging over the past two decades. As a result of the last six years’ intensive investigations, a tipping point has been reached, with as many as nine lines of independent evidence combining to create such doubts that the only logical response is to replace the standard model (not to mention the maximalist model) with a version of the minimalist model that envisions a less permanent, more seasonal settlement mode, or a smaller permanent settlement involving coeval dwelling of far fewer people (the ‘middle way’). In this article, I seek to construct an evidential basis for the alternatives to the standard view of Trypillia mega-sites.     

Experimental and archaeological investigations of backed microlith function among Mid-to-Late Holocene herders in southwestern Kenya

This study takes an experimental and comparative approach in order to evaluate the circumstances driving the deployment of microlithic tool technologies by food-producing mobile herders during the Mid-to-Late Holocene in southern Kenya. The predominately obsidian microliths used by contemporaneous, but culturally distinct, herding communities were replicated and used as arrow tips in archery experiments and within composite knives used in animal processing. This allowed for patterns of damage associated with production, different forms of projectile use, and butchery to be identified on microlithic specimens and evaluated against each other to assess the criteria for diagnostic macrofracture and wear patterns reflective of each activity. Experimentally generated criteria were used to identify the most likely functions for microlithic tools in three archaeological assemblages belonging to early Kenyan pastoralists. The analyses showed that while the same microlithic form is shared by culturally distinct groups across a wide time range, these tools were being used to vary different functions that do not clearly correlate with subsistence economy, culturally affiliation, or time period. Environmental variability and instability throughout the Late Holocene likely contributed to the persistence of highly adaptable microlithic toolkits. These data contribute to ongoing dialogues on the emergence and evolution of microlithic toolkits.