North American archaeology

Although it is now commonplace for archaeologists to study use-alteration patterns on ceramics, the same cannot be said of one of the most ubiquitous classes of hunter-gatherer artifacts, fire-cracked rocks (FCR). It can be shown, however, that many of the same methods and theories applied to the study of cooking ceramics are also relevant to the investigation of rocks used as heating elements. Because use alteration analyses of FCR are so scarce, I describe a range of attributes with the goal of helping researchers identify use alterations (e.g., sooting, reddening, various fracturing patterns) on lithic artifacts from sites worldwide and evaluate their potential function in various cultural practices. These attributes are also outlined in order to create a standardized terminology for describing FCR use-alteration patterns. I discuss my analysis of FCR from three Late Archaic sites (Duck Lake, 913, and 914) on Grand Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, followed by an interpretation of their cooking contexts, as a case study. The results indicate great intersite variability among FCR characteristics, cooking methods, and cooking facilities (earth oven, stone boiling, and rock griddle). This use alteration analysis can be applied in archaeological contexts worldwide where similar materials are recovered.

This short note from "Contexts: the Annual Report of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology" explores the potential implications of changes in the selection of lithic raw materials across the Narragansett Basin at the start of the Late Woodland period for understanding the role of color as a variable in quarry choice and the production of symbolically meaningful material culture.

If belief drives behavior, what did first nations peoples believe? Though a material approach attempts to bridge the gap, other disciplines such as philology may be of assistance and compatible with a strict material diagnostic. This paper marries material evidence and current theory with immaterial evidence from other disciplines for a working model to understand the most basic questions as to why there were people in America before Columbus.

Evidence from house structures, artifacts and fauna are used to infer political and economic changes at the Benson site, a late sixteenth century Huron village near Balsam Lake, Ontario. It  is suggested that one household acquired trade links to Europeans in the St. Lawrence valley, and as a result became the largest and most prestigious household in the community. Subsequently, a second household expanded to a comparable size, but did so in opposition to the first house, and represented the “traditionalist” faction.  Ultimately, the traditionalist faction prevailed, and the more progressive house was dismantled, and its inhabitants moved elsewhere.

A series of 50 AMS dates on charred cooking residues removed from the interiors of pottery sherds is reviewed. The sherds were recovered from many of the key sites and components used by Ritchie and Funk to create the Woodland Stage of their New York culture history; we are now able to securely date these sites and components. The cooking residue dates demonstrate that the so-called Middle- to-Late Woodland transition in central New York is not as well understood as was previously thought. Pottery vessels attributable to Ritchie and MacNeish's early Point Peninsula types are dated as early as 300 B.C. to A.D. 5, and pottery vessels attributable to their Late Woodland "Owasco" types appear as early as AD 400-600. There is also substantial temporal overlap between types assigned to their Point Peninsula and Owasco types. These data, along with subsistence and settlement data published elsewhere argue that the last 2500 years of New York State's pre-European-contact Native American history is in need of substantial revision.

Although a lot of undocumented archaeology has been undertaken in the Big Bend area in the past, the most significant early work (late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) was carried out by three men: Clarence B. Moore, Elias H. Sellards, and J. Clarence Simpson. These researchers brought some professionalism to the work, and made efforts to disseminate the results of their excavations and other studies. They also ensured that archaeological collections were deposited in museum collections where they would be curated and available for study by other researchers. None of them had professional training in archaeology, but they nevertheless made lasting contributions to our knowledge of the region.

The Eastern Subarctic has long been portrayed as a place without history. Challenging this perspective, History in the Making: The Archaeology of the Eastern Subarctic charts the complex and dynamic history of this little known archaeological region of North America. Along the way, the book explores the social processes through which native peoples “made” history in the past and archaeologists and anthropologists later wrote about it. As such, the book offers both a critical history and historiography of the Eastern Subarctic.

Radiocarbon dating  of an extirpated species of  elk from New Paris No. 2 cave site in Pennsylvania provides a much more recent age than expected.  The elk bones included a vertebra with an embedded projectile point section.  The Carnegie Museu,m Section of Vertebrate Fossils kindly provided a sample of bones from the elk skeleton for dating to Lawrence Jackson of Northeastern Archaeological Associates.  An uncorrected bone collagen date of 1130 +- 100 years B.P. (I-14,149) suggests an age circa 820 A.D. in the late Middle Woodland period for the death of the elk.  Since the arrowhead trauma on the elk neck vertebra was partially healed over, this hunting event likely predates the death of the elk.

A basic premise of archaeology is that the more frequently two human populations interacted with one another the more similar was their material culture. A corollary of this is that the closer two human populations are to one another geographically, the more frequently they will interact. This corollary has been expressed in the archaeological study of northern Iroquoia since the 1950s on the basis of historical ethnic territories. The expectation has been that after ca. A.D. 1000 to 1300 there was more interaction between village populations within these historical territories than between village populations located in different historical territories. Here I test this corollary with pottery decoration data from 114 northern Iroquoian village sites dating from c. A.D. 1350 to 1640. Results indicate that geographic distance has little effect on pottery assemblage similarity.

Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Saturday, April 13, 2019

[340] Forum · #METOO IN ARCHAEOLOGY (SPONSORED BY SAA ETHICS COMMITTEE)

110 Galisteo

1:00–3:00 PM

Moderators: Heather Thakar, Jason De Leon and Pamela Geller

Participants:
Susan Chandler—Discussant
Christopher Dore—Discussant
Arlen Chase—Discussant
Lisa Lucero—Discussant
Julie Stein—Discussant
David Carballo—Discussant
Barra ODonnabhain—Discussant
Chelsea Fisher—Discussant
Laura Heath-Stout—Discussant
Valorie Aquino—Discussant
Michael Balter—Discussant - Replaced by Ryan Harrod
Heather Thakar—Discussant


Archaeology has for too long offered safe harbor to perpetrators of sexual misconduct, harassment and violence; this has long been known anecdotally and has been confirmed in recent years by more systematic research. Survivors of sexual violence in archaeology may feel pressure to keep silent about their experiences for many (valid) reasons. #MeToo in Archaeology will provide a platform for people to anonymously share their stories of sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, and sexual violence directly experienced on archaeological projects and/or within the archaeological community. A panel of archaeologists will read a selection of representative narratives aloud during this open forum. Making space for survivors to share their stories through the #MeToo conversation does more than simply acknowledge and validate their experiences: this conversation is a first step in a much longer path towards structural change. #MeToo in Archaeology pushes our discipline to confront the work we need to do to make archaeology a more intersectional and more feminist field. When done well, as we aspire to do with this forum, the #MeToo movement and its offshoots commit to an intersectional framework that is sensitive to the dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic inequality underlying sexual violence.

In the past decade more than 700 archaeomagnetic samples have been collected from the Hohokam area of southern Arizona. Four hundred twenty of the dated archaeomagnetic
samples could be assigned to specific phases and phase transitions and this large data set is useful in analyzing the absolute chronology of the Hohokam area. Mean dates and date ranges for each phase and transition provide the data for a new calibration of the Hohokam chronology and a discussion o f the nature of Hohokam phases. The exercise serves to illustrate the utility of large sets of absolute dates in general, and of archaeomagnetismin particular, in contributing to chronological  issues

For thousands of years, Native Americans throughout the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains used the physical act and visual language of tattooing to construct and reinforce the identity of individuals and their place within society and the cosmos. The act of tattooing served as a rite of passage and supplication, while the composition and use of ancestral tattoo bundles was intimately related to group identity. The resulting symbols and imagery held important social, civil, military, and ritual connotations within Native American society. Yet despite the cultural importance that tattooing held for prehistoric and early historic Native Americans, modern scholars have only recently begun to consider the implications of ancient Native American tattooing and assign tattooed symbols the same significance as imagery inscribed on pottery, shell, copper, and stone.

"Drawing with Great Needles" is the first book-length scholarly examination into the antiquity, meaning, and significance of Native American tattooing in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains. The contributors use a variety of approaches, including ethnohistorical and ethnographic accounts, ancient art, evidence of tattooing in the archaeological record, historic portraiture, tattoo tools and toolkits, gender roles, and the meanings that specific tattoos held for the Dhegihan Sioux and other Native American groups, to examine Native American tattoo traditions. Their findings add an important new dimension to our understanding of ancient and early historic Native American society in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains.

Introduction / Carol Diaz-Granados and Aaron Deter-Wolf
1. Native American Tattooing in the Protohistoric Southeast / Antoinette B. Wallace
2. Needle in a Haystack: Examining the Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Tattooing  / Aaron Deter-Wolf
3. Swift Creek Paddle Designs as Tattoos: Ethnographic Insights on Prehistoric Body Decoration and Material Culture / Benjamin A. Steere
4. Tattoos, Totem Marks, and War Clubs: Projecting Power Through Visual symbolism in Northern Eoodlands Culture / Lars Krutak
5. The Art of Enchantment: Corporeal Marking and Tattooing Bundles of the Great Plains / Lars Krutak
6. Identifying the Face of the Sacred: Tattooing the Images of Gods and Heroes in the Art of the Mississippian Period / F. Kent Reilly III
7. Dhegihan Tattoos: Markings That Consecrate, Empower, and Designate Lineage / James R. Duncan
8. Snaring Life from the Stars and the Sun: Mississippian Tattooing and the Enduring Cycle of Life and Death / David H. Dye

A compilation of known sites from the upper reaches of the Trent valley and the Gull River extending into the Haliburton Highlands indicates that throughout much of prehistory the area witnessed little, if any, human occupation. Two episodes of significant occupation are the Middle Archaic and the Late Iroquoian period. The Middle Archaic is represented by a number of early Laurentian occupation sites and later Laurentian find spots, suggesting a brief colonization of the area during the earlier period, followed by a period of less intensive use. Parallels between the Archaic and Iroquoian episodes of occupation prompt the suggestion that while climate may have been a factor in both cases, other less archaeologically tangible factors are equally likely to have been at work.

Twenty-three AMS age determinations, obtained from annual plant remains and ceramic residues,
are presented as a guide in addressing potential changes to the chronology of the central Plains
Woodland period. When compared to older conventional wood charcoal dates, these new AMS dates
demonstrate the need to critically evaluate existing temporal ranges of several Woodland cultures. In
particular, the new dates help fill in temporal gaps in our understanding of significant cultural transitions
during the Plains Woodland. Areas for further research on the Plains Woodland are also suggested.

Sophisticated diagnostics have allowed archaeologists to make great inroads in understanding America's First people. At the same time, modern archaeology has assumptions about reality that have limited its scope and ability to integrate other disciplines into its theories, disciplines that would clarify and cement a harmony of the disparate and isolated work sites into a model of global proportions. If beliefs determine behavior, it runs near impossible to paint a holistic picture as to what drove the complex peopling of America from the material record alone.  This paper marries material evidence and current theory with immaterial evidence from other disciplines for a working model to understand the most basic questions as to why there were people in America before Columbus. This paper was originally submitted for scholastic review in 2014.

British and Hessian troops occupied Raritan Landing in Middlesex County, New Jersey, from January until June of 1777. They left behind a changed community, a shell of its former self. Twenty-five years of archaeological excavations have revealed rich archaeological deposits associated with the British occupation of Raritan Landing. Military artifacts have been found throughout the community, but appear clustered on certain properties. Just outside the town archaeologists relocated and tested the remains of a British winter camp. The military artifact assemblages from these two areas, the camp and the community, are significant material sources of information regarding the activities of the British Army in the aftermath of the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. They augment the limited documentary record by provide new information about the units present at the Landing, their disposition, equipment, and daily activities.

Bassett, Hayden F. (2021). Book Review: The Archaeology of Virginia’s First Peoples. edited by Elizabeth A. Moore and Bernard K. Means, Richmond, The Archaeological Society of Virginia, 2020, v, 301 pp., ill., maps. $40.00 (paper), ISBN: 979-8696091860

Beads of copper are among the oldest and most widespread ornament forms known in North America. Native copper was an important material used by prehistoric Americans, and certainly the most important metal. It was collected, transported and traded over wide areas from as early as seven thousand years before present, and its for ornaments persisted until it was gradually replaced by European metals over the many years of the contact period. A recently discovered cache of copper beads, bead preforms, awls, a crescent knife and scraps of raw copper at site 20KE20 in northern Michigan offers insight into the process of copper-bead production in fifth century North America.