Projectile points,people, and Plains Paleoindian perambulations

Archaeologists generally agree that Paleoindian residential groups moved regularly over extremely large ranges. However, on the Great Plains, this argument depends substantially on datasets derived largely or entirely from projectile points rather than from systematic analysis of a wide range of artifacts. This paper argues that projectile points differ from most Paleoindian tools in ways that make such datasets unlikely to be reliable sources of information on range sizes. Furthermore, evidence from Paleoindian tool caches and the condition of discarded points suggest strongly that the raw material used to produce projectile points at least sometimes moved across the Plains independently of material used to make most other kinds of flaked stone tools. This, in turn, implies that not all stone used during Paleoindian times was procured by visits of whole residential groups to raw material sources, raising serious questions about the validity of widespread views of Paleoindian mobility.     

Investigating the peopling of North America through cladistic analyses of Early Paleoindian projectile points

The initial colonization of North America remains a controversial topic. There is widespread agreement that Clovis and related cultures of the Early Paleoindian period (∼11,500–10,500 BP) represent the first well-documented indications of human occupation, but considerable differences of opinion exist regarding the origins of these cultures. Here, we report the results of a study in which data from a continent-wide sample of Early Paleoindian projectile points were analyzed with cladistic methods in order to assess competing models of colonization as well as several alternative explanations for the variation among the points, including adaptation to local environmental circumstances, cultural diffusion, and site type effects. The analyses suggest that a rapidly migrating population produced the Early Paleoindian projectile point assemblages. They also suggest that the population in question is unlikely to have entered North America from either the Isthmus of Panama or the Midatlantic region. According to the analyses, the Early Paleoindians are more likely to have entered North America via either the ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets that is hypothesized to have opened around 12,000 BP, or the Northwest Coast.     

Early Paleoindian Mobility and Watercraft: An Assessment from the Mississippi River Valley

Several researchers have suggested use of watercraft during the Early Paleoindian period 11,500 and 10,800 rcybp (13,400–12,700 cal B.P.), but none have brought empirical data to bear on this possibility. This paper addresses the potential for fluted point-making groups to have made and used boats circa 11,000 rcybp (13,000–12,800 cal B.P.). Fluted point data from a large region of the upper and central Mississippi River valley strongly suggest that the Mississippi River was a barrier to movement and that Early Paleoindians in the midcontinent did not routinely use watercraft.     

Radiocarbon calibration curves,summed probability distributions,and early Paleoindian population trends in North America

Archaeologists increasingly examine summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates to search for temporal trends in ancient human populations, including early North American population trends across the onset of the Younger Dryas climatic period (10,900 BC). We use both IntCal04 and IntCal09 to simulate and calibrate sequences of radiocarbon dates that represent evenly spaced calendar ages from 12,000 to 9000 BC and use IntCal09 to simulate two different demographic processes across this interval. The shapes of the calibrated summed probability distribution from our first set of simulations mirror many trends that have been interpreted in demographic terms and this shape shows clear links to the shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve. This is true for both IntCal04 and IntCal09, although these different curves produce different probability distributions. The shapes of the calibrated summed probability distribution from our second set of simulations differ somewhat but show virtually identical trends at points where the actual frequencies of calendar dates are very different. We conclude that changing frequencies of radiocarbon dates over time probably do contain demographic information, but that extracting this information is more difficult than archaeologists have acknowledged.     

Task-Specific Sites and Paleoindian Landscape Use in the Shaw Creek Flats,Alaska

The Shaw Creek Flats and nearby middle Tanana river, in central Alaska, constitute one of the areas in the Americas with the densest known distribution of Late Glacial (about 14,500–11,700 cal. B.P.) archaeological sites. Local high rates of sediment deposition and low post-depositional disturbance allow for the interpretation of the function of archaeological occupations within larger economic and mobility strategies. Residential sites used over the long term seem to be located near critical but immovable resources such as clear water and vegetation. The spatial association of artifacts and faunal remains at other sites in the Flats suggest that they were specialized, short-lived locations dedicated to a single or few activities. For instance, the site of Swan Point Cultural Zone 4b is interpreted as a workshop related to the production of composite tools, particularly on mammoth ivory, and the site of Keystone Dune is interpreted as a camp related to wapiti (Cervus elaphus) hunting. These task-specific sites and others were probably used as part of a predominantly logistical mobility and economy strategy, which maximized efficiency in harvesting and processing resources that were distributed heterogeneously on the landscape.     

Serpentine Hot Springs,Alaska: results of excavations and implications for the age and significance of northern fluted points

The dispersal of Homo sapiens across the New World is one of the greatest chapters in the history of our species; however, major questions about this late Pleistocene diaspora remain unanswered. Two contentious issues are the timing of colonization of the Bering Land Bridge and origin of Clovis, which at 13,000 calendar years ago is the earliest unequivocal complex of archaeological sites in temperate North America, known by its specialized fluted spear points. One hypothesis is that fluting technology emerged in Beringia and from there was carried southbound, with fluted points becoming the diagnostic “calling card” of early Paleoindians spreading across the Western Hemisphere. Fluted points have long been known from Alaska, yet until now they have never been found in a datable geologic context, making their relationship to Clovis a mystery. Here we show that a new archaeological site at Serpentine Hot Springs, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska, contains fluted points in a stratified geologic deposit dating to no earlier than 12,400 calendar years ago. Our results suggest that Alaska's fluted-point complex is too young to be ancestral to Clovis, and that it instead represents either a south-to-north dispersal of early Americans or transmission of fluting technology from temperate North America. These results suggest that the peopling of the Americas and development of Paleoindian technology were much more complex than traditional models predict.     

Cultural transmission, copying errors, and the generation of variation in material culture and the archaeological record

Archaeologists are adept at analyzing variation in artifacts. The discipline has well established and tested methods to track change through time and to evaluate the function of artifacts that depend upon measures of variation in the archaeological record. Although a critical concept, the means by which variation in material culture is generated is not well understood. This paper explores one source of variation, copying errors, and systematically examines how cultural transmission processes act to amplify, reduce, or maintain such variation. Using simple models, we generate expected distributions for the amount of variation that occurs through time under varying circumstances. This variation is caused by small errors that are transmitted from one person to another in the propagation and replication of cultural traits. These baseline values provide useful null models for explaining variation in prehistoric assemblages of artifacts. We use measurements of projectile points from Owens Valley and Woodland ceramics from Illinois to demonstrate the value of this approach.     

The When, Where, and How of Novices in Craft Production

Archaeologists frequently underestimate the importance of children as well as craft skill acquisition in the formation of archaeological assemblages. Perhaps even more often they conflate the terms “novice” and “child” in ways that oversimplify the factors that are involved in incorporating new producers into craft production. In particular, the skill acquisition involved in stone tool production is influenced by a variety of factors, including danger, raw material value, raw material availability, and raw material recyclability, as well as a variety of social factors. This paper examines the influence of each of these factors and also suggests patterns useful in recognizing and distinguishing between novices and children in the archaeological record.

Measuring use-related fracture velocity in lithic armatures to identify spears,javelins, darts,and arrows

This study employs a brittle fracture-mechanics-based approach to explore the relationship between lithic fracture velocity and precursory loading rate in fine-grained lithic armatures. The data demonstrate that only high-speed dart and arrow armatures are subject to dynamic loading events, whereas spear and javelin armatures are limited to rapid (and quasi-static) loading. The data presented were derived from controlled experiments employing spears, javelins, spearthrower darts, and arrows. Armatures associated with both bow and spearthrower technologies are reliably identified and distinguished from those of low-speed technologies such as spears and javelins. Javelin armatures may also sustain higher velocity fractures than spear armatures, thus permitting the further differentiation of these technologies. The methodology offers a quantitative, non-subjective means to identify the delivery technology associated with a lithic armature.     

The origins of lithic projectile point technology: evidence from Africa,the Levant,and Europe

Projectile weaponry is a human cultural universal, but its origins and antiquity remain poorly understood. Stone- and bone-tipped projectile weapons have long been treated as emergent features of the "Upper Paleolithic" behavioral revolution. Recently it has been proposed that projectile technology was in widespread use among Homo sapiens populations in Africa during Middle Stone Age (MSA) times. One obstacle to researching the origins of projectile point technology is that the criteria archaeologists employ for recognizing plausible and implausible stone projectile points are largely subjective (overall tool shape, microwear traces). Tip cross-sectional area (TCSA) is a ballistically significant dimension that works well at discriminating North American stone projectile points (spearthrower dart tips and arrowheads) from spear points. This paper compares the TCSA values of ethnographic North American stone projectile points to hypothetical Middle and Upper Paleolithic stone projectile points from Africa, the Levant, and Europe. The results of this comparison do not support the hypothesis of widespread use of stone-tipped projectiles in Africa, the Levant, or Europe prior to 40 Ka. In the New World and in Australia, where we have the richest ethnographic record of stone projectile point use, these implements are largely employed in big-game hunting and in warfare. One or both of these factors may have played a role in the widespread adoption of stone projectile point technology after 40 Ka.     

西周石玦的生产形态:关于原料、技术与生产组织的探讨——周原遗址齐家制玦作坊个案研究之二

长期以来,技术被看作与生产组织密切相关的一个重要因素.因此,技术的复杂程度常常作为判定生产组织和社会复杂化程度的重要依据①.     

Clovis,Folsom, and Midland components at the Debra L. Friedkin site,Texas: context,chronology, and assemblages

The archaeological transition from Clovis to Folsom and Midland in the North American Great Plains coincides with the end of the Pleistocene and onset of the Younger Dryas. Comparisons exploring the adaptive changes that took place during this period frequently employ regional-scale approaches. The focus on regional-scale analyses largely results from the dearth of sites repeatedly visited by multiple early Paleoindian groups. However, regional-scale comparisons have the potential to overlook smaller-scale differences. The Debra L. Friedkin site, Texas offers an opportunity to study Midland, Folsom, and Clovis technology and site-use at a single site. This paper presents the context and chronology of the Midland, Folsom, and Clovis assemblages and a site-scale analysis of lithics from the Friedkin site. It is argued that point production and late-stage reduction were primary activities, and the use of bifacial cores for flake tools was important throughout these occupation periods. Site use at Friedkin differs from early Paleoindian occupation at the nearby Gault site and expands our understanding of settlement and technological organization in the region.     

Measuring Paleoindian range mobility and land-use in the Great Lakes/Northeast

Distance and direction to source data were compiled on the main toolstones employed at 83 Paleoindian sites with concave-based points (ca. 11,000–10,000 B.P.) from across the recently deglaciated Great Lake-Northeastern area of North America. These data were used in order to more rigorously evaluate several much debated ideas about annual range mobility scale and land use patterns and how they changed over time as these groups colonized and settled into the area. Movements are significantly biased to north–south axes, strongly suggesting these represent mainly seasonal moves and procurement of toolstones during regular travels rather than by specialized task groups. Means of comparing the scale of range mobility to ethnographic norms are explored and the results clearly show that these groups, especially the earliest occupants, had large annual range mobility scales and distinctive patterns of land use that are rarely seen or approached historically. They had to have been intensively targeting widely spaced but relatively abundant resources on the landscape. The only ethnographic groups who come close to such patterns historically were all caribou hunters, a perspective consistent with the idea these groups regularly exploited that resource. As long suggested, these land use patterns are probably related to the colonization of new lands in which there were little or no existing populations.     

Middens,Construction Fill,and Offerings: Evidence for the Organization of Classic Period Craft Production at Tikal,Guatemala

Abstract

The production of artifacts of stone, shell, and bone at Tikal, an important center in the Southern Maya Lowlands, created quantities of durable waste, referred to as debitage. Yet debitage is not a reliable indicator of production area because of the spatially flexible nature of Prehispanic technology and site-maintenance activities that shifted manufacturing debris into secondary contexts. Nevertheless, debitage, even in secondary context, provides important information on the organization of craft production at Tikal, particularly during the Classic Period (ca. A.C. 250–850). Most crafts were organized as household industries, carried on by independent, part-time specialists living in the central area that surrounded the monumental core of the city. The elite probably supported some full-time production to satisfy their demands for status goods and tools for construction projects. Expedient production by nonspecialists, using locally available materials such as chert and bone, occurred at all times.

Production waste was recovered from the construction fill of public and residential architecture and from household middens, mixed with domestic trash. The largest concentrations, however, were found exterior to elite chamber burials and within cached offerings. The delayed identification of debitage from ritual contexts exemplifies the reflexive nature of the way archaeologists classify material culture and their interpretations of the contexts from which it is recovered.     

From the Ground Up: Agency,Practice, and Community in the Southwestern British Bronze Age

Embodied, sensual, engagements between people, earthly elements, and celestial bodies during focused, periodic acts of ritual construction and artifact deposition in the southwestern British Bronze Age resulted in the remaking of identities, local communities, symbolic/mythical knowledge, and the landscape itself. To appreciate how material culture, time, and space were employed to define the criteria by which people understood themselves and their world necessitates an archaeological focus upon shared practices in particular settings that served to define rules of engagement with the environment based upon shared human perceptions. Agency appears in this encounter as central in the construction and perpetuation of symbolic perception, shared social memory, and community identity.     

A Filtered Past: Interpreting Salt Production and Trade Models from Two Remnant Brine-Enrichment Mounds at the Ancient Maya Paynes Creek Salt Works,Belize

The mounds at Witz Naab and Killer Bee are the only known remaining aboveground evidence of a once-thriving salt industry in Punta Ycacos Lagoon, a large saltwater system in Paynes Creek National Park, Belize. Over one hundred ancient Maya salt works dated to the Classic period (a.d. 300–900) have been submerged by sea-level rise in the lagoon. We have hypothesized that mounds were once numerous features on the landscape prior to a sea-level rise that occurred in the area during the Terminal Classic period. Lacking at these underwater sites are earthen mounds formed by discarded soil from the leaching process in which the salinity of seawater was enriched by leaching brine through salty soil. Enriching the salinity of seawater by leaching or by solar evaporation is virtually universal in ethnographic case studies. Data from the excavations are evaluated to interpret the ancient activities that produced the earthen mounds, scales of production, and how the coastal Maya of southern Belize participated in the larger Classic Maya economy.     

Seizing the Means of Circulation: Choke Points and Logistical Resistance in Coco Solo,Panama

Recent studies of logistics have embraced the “choke point” thesis: the notion that a strategically positioned group of workers or insurgents can exercise outsize power by disrupting the circulation of goods through the supply chain. This article examines this proposition through the case of Coco Solo, Panama, an informal community situated at the epicentre of Panama’s transit economy but persistently excluded from its benefits. Between 2001 and 2014, as part of a protracted struggle over housing, Coco Solo residents repeatedly blockaded key ports and logistics facilities. Despite their location at a critical node in global capitalist commodity circuits, the community’s actions met with limited success. I draw on the case to refine existing theorisations of logistical resistance, emphasising the contingent factors that influence the effectiveness of such tactics, the diverse contexts in which they are mobilised, and the value of going beyond workerist and insurrectionist accounts of supply chain disruption.     

Craft Production, Exchange, and Political Power in the Pre-Incaic Andes

This article explores the relationship between craft production, exchange, and power in the pre-Incaic Andes, with a focus on recent archaeological evidence from Chavín, Nasca, Tiwanaku, Wari, and Moche. I argue that craft production and exchange in concert with materialized ideologies played vital roles in the development of political power in the Andes. In later state societies, craft production, exchange, and materialization were critical in maintaining and legitimizing established political power.     

Competition and conflict in the Upper Belize River Valley: Insights from the ancient Maya minor center of Callar Creek,Belize

Political relationships typically entail competition and conflict. Within the ancient Maya world, the Upper Belize River Valley (UBRV) offers one example of an arena of intense political contestation, and recent investigations at the minor center of Callar Creek offer insights into this complex and occasionally antagonistic political landscape. During the Late and Terminal Classic periods (a.d. 600–900), for example, those living at the Callar Creek center appear to have affiliated themselves with the larger center of Buenavista, but not to have developed political ties with those in surrounding hinterland communities. Indeed, Callar Creek provides an example in which the political fortunes of a minor center and its surrounding hinterlands followed divergent paths. Furthermore, a termination event suggests that part of the Callar Creek center was purposefully destroyed by adversaries in the Terminal Classic period, and that discordant relationships in the UBRV at times turned violent.     

Between the Living and the Dead: Trauma Medicine and Forensic Medicine in the Mid-Qing

This paper analyzes the influence of forensic medicine on therapeutic medicine through a case study of Qian Xiuchang and Hu Tingguang, two Chinese doctors who specialized in treating traumatic injuries. During the early nineteenth century, both men compiled medical treatises that sought to improve on a scholarly model of “rectifying bones” articulated in 1742 by the Imperially-Compiled Golden Mirror of the Medical Lineage. Both texts also incorporated information from forensic medicine, including official inquest diagrams and checklists promulgated by the Qing government. I show that they drew on these forensic materials to help address two interlinked medical issues: understanding the effects of injury on different parts of the body, and clarifying the location and form of the body’s bones. Overall, I suggest that the exchange of ideas between the realm of therapeutic medicine and forensic medicine was an important epistemological strategy that doctors and officials alike employed to improve their knowledge of the material body.