Introduction: Archaeological Approaches to Lithic Production Skill and Craft Learning

This paper introduces the volume by considering what skill is and how archaeologists have looked at issues of skill in stone tool production, along with anthropological and archaeological approaches to the ways in which individuals become skilled craftworkers. Archaeological studies of flintknapping skill tend to be isolated from most larger debates, but both the archaeological and the nonarchaeological literature highlight how intimately skill and craft learning are woven into the fabric of society, although they also highlight significant methodological and interpretive issues.     

House-Yard Burials of Enslaved Laborers in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica

Four burials were excavated from discrete house-yard compounds in an eighteenth century African Jamaican slave settlement at Seville plantation. Though only four in number, these individuals provide significant information on burial practices and physical conditions within a clearly defined African Jamaican community. The analysis of material remains illuminate living conditions and social relations within the African Jamaican community. Each individual was interred within a separate house-yard and with a unique set of artifacts that yield information about their unique identities and positions within the Seville community. Bioarchaeological assessments describe the osteological remains and detail findings concerning pathologies. To date, they are the only excavated individuals who represent the African Caribbean practice of house-yard burial.     

Seasonal stability in Late Holocene shellfish harvesting on the central California coast

Oxygen isotope determinations from 92 California mussel (Mytilus californianus) shells from ten archaeological sites in central coastal California show relatively stable seasonal harvesting patterns between 3600 CAL BP and historic contact (AD 1769). Coastal occupants harvested mussels nearly year-round and seem to have occupied individual residential bases throughout the seasonal cycle. Interior groups returned with mussels from the coast mostly in the spring and early summer, but almost never in the late summer/early fall when nut crops were harvested. These findings suggest two inter-dependent groups with distinct seasonal settlement strategies: inland people, reliant on acorns and other nut crops harvested in the fall, and coastal inhabitants who were less involved with acorns. This pattern is supported by accounts recorded by the first Spanish explorers in AD 1769. While some interior groups may have been seasonally migrating “collectors,” coastal populations were less mobile, inhabiting individual residential sites throughout the year, albeit not necessarily on a permanent basis. These findings highlight the strong influence of coastal environments and resources on hunter-gatherer mobility.