This paper presents the results of several experiments to investigate how the detection functions of surveyors vary for different artifact types on surfaces with differing visibility when visual surface inspection (“fieldwalking”) is the survey method. As prospecting theory predicts, successful detection declines exponentially with distance away from transects and detection as a function of search time displays diminishing returns. However, these functions vary by visibility, artifact type, and other factors. The incidence of false targets–incorrect identifications of artifacts–has somewhat more impact at greater range but has little or no relationship with search time. Our results provide a rationale for selection of transect intervals and distribution of survey effort, and also facilitate evaluation of survey results, allowing more realistic estimates of how much a survey missed.

Ancient DNA identification of salmon remains from the site of Namu on the central coast of British Columbia shows use of a variety of species and an emphasis on pink salmon over the course of the past 7,000 years. These results support arguments that Namu was a permanent village settlement dependent on a salmon storage economy throughout this time. This pattern of subsistence and settlement predates by several millennia the first substantial evidence for population expansion or social differentiation in the region. Periodic salmon shortages in the period after 2000 cal B.C., which are associated with local and regional disruptions in settlement and increased reliance on more marginal resources, appear to be the result of failures in the pink salmon fishery.

We describe an experiment that tests the hypothesis that projectile points with high thickness: length ratios are more durable than points with low thickness: length ratios. Fifty obsidian projectile points were manufactured to specific lengths, widths, and thicknesses. These were then fired into a deer carcass with a bow repeatedly until each point broke. None of the points were resharpened. The hardness of the material struck was a significant predictor of a point's durability. Controlling for this variable, however, we found that points with a high thickness: length ratio (>.121) were slightly albeit significantly more durable than those with a low ratio. No other attribute of size or shape was a significant predictor of durability.

For nearly 150 years Stallings Island, Georgia has figured prominently in the conceptualization of Late Archaic culture in the American Southeast, most notably in its namesake pottery series, the oldest in North America, and more recently, in models of economic change among hunter-gatherer societies broadly classified as the Shell Mound Archaic. Recent fieldwork resulting in new radiocarbon assays from secure contexts pushes back the onset of intensive shellfish gathering at Stallings Island several centuries; enables recognition of a hiatus in occupation that coincides with the regional advent of pottery making; and places abandonment at ca. 3500 B.P. Analysis of collections and unpublished field records from a 1929 Peabody expedition suggests that the final phase of occupation involved the construction of a circular village and plaza complex with household storage and a formalized cemetery, as well as technological innovations to meet the demands of increased settlement permanence. Although there are too few data to assess the degree to which more permanent settlement led to population-resource imbalance, several lines of evidence suggest that economic changes were stimulated by ritual intensification.

The analysis of DNA extracted from archaeological specimens to address anthropological questions is becoming increasingly common. Despite widespread interest in ancient DNA (aDNA), the difficulties inherent in aDNA analysis are not generally appreciated by researchers outside of the field. The majority of samples subjected to aDNA analysis often fail to produce results, and successful analysis is typically limited to specimens that exhibit excellent preservation. Contamination of samples with exogenous DNA is an ongoing problem and requires careful design of research strategies to limit and identify all DNA contaminants. Overall, aDNA analysis is a highly specialized and technical field that requires extensive training and can be quite expensive. Thus, each aDNA study should be carefully planned with significant input from archaeologists, physical anthropologists, linguists, and related researchers and should focus on well-preserved samples that are likely to produce a clear answer to a question that is not amenable to nongenetic analysis. In this manuscript, I explain the problems and prospects of various anthropological applications of aDNA technology. I present a series of previously published studies, which are of general anthropological interest, to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of aDNA methods in each case. I also provide a checklist of questions to evaluate the utility of archaeological remains for aDNA analysis and to provide guidelines when designing an aDNA study.

This forum reports the results of a National Science Foundation—funded workshop that focused on the integration and preservation of digital databases and other structured data derived from archaeological contexts. The workshop concluded that for archaeology to achieve its potential to advance long-term, scientific understandings of human history, there is a pressing need for an archaeological information infrastructure that will allow us to archive, access, integrate, and mine disparate data sets. This report provides an assessment of the informatics needs of archaeology, articulates an ambitious vision for a distributed disciplinary information infrastructure (cyberinfrastructure), discusses the challenges posed by its development, and outlines initial steps toward its realization. Finally, it argues that such a cyberinfrastructure has enormous potential to contribute to anthropology and science more generally. Concept-oriented archaeological data integration will enable the use of existing data to answer compelling new questions and permit syntheses of archaeological data that rely not on other investigators' conclusions but on analyses of meaningfully integrated new and legacy data sets.

A recent paper by Truncer (2004) perpetuates the recalcitrant misconception that soapstone vessel technology uniformly predates the inception of pottery across eastern North America. Whereas soapstone vessels indeed preceded the local adoption of pottery in limited areas, the bulk of stratigraphic and independent radiometric data supports the conclusion that soapstone vessels either accompanied or postdated the inception of pottery in many parts of the Eastern Woodlands. I reiterate here my criticism of benchmark studies that have been uncritically accepted to support the greater antiquity of soapstone. Given the coincidence of pottery and soapstone in many areas of the Eastern Woodlands, any explanation for the use of soapstone vessels must consider the relative costs and benefits of alternative container technology. Moreover, evidence for use of soapstone vessels in mortuary contexts, caches, and in locations far from geological sources of soapstone suggests that their significance resided not simply in the domestic economy of nut processing, as suggested by Truncer, but in the political economy of group formation and alliance.

The relative amount of retouch on stone tools is central to many archaeological studies linking stone tool assemblages to broader issues of human social and economic land-use strategies. Unfortunately, most retouch measures deal with flake and blade tools and few (if any) have been developed for hafted bifaces and projectile points. This paper introduces a new index for measuring and comparing amount of retouch on hafted bifaces and projectile points that can be applied regardless of size or typological variance. The retouch index is assessed initially with an experimental data set of hafted bifaces that were dulled and resharpened on five occasions. The retouch index is then applied to a hafted biface assemblage made from tool stone that has been sourced by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF). Results of both assessments show that the hafted biface retouch index (HRI) is effective for determining the amount of retouch and the degree to which the hafted bifaces have been curated.

For more than 40 years archaeologists have been engaged in a self-conscious appraisal of the factors influencing the development of archaeological theory. The importance of external social and political forces has been widely acknowledged; however, less attention has been paid to the ways in which routine disciplinary practices authorize and reproduce particular theoretical standpoints. To illustrate how the growth of archaeological theory is intertwined with the practice of archaeological research, the goals and structure of one of the nation's first large-scale public archaeology projects, the River Basin Surveys' Missouri Basin Project (MBP), are considered and their effects on contemporary theory in Plains archaeology are evaluated. Today, theory in Plains archaeology remains implicit and for many projects culture history remains the central focus. The persistence of this research tradition can be traced in part to the success of the MBP in establishing new standards of practice for the region. Throughout the 1950s, MBP archaeologists pursued a distinctive research agenda that institutionalized inductive, culture-historical investigations. However, by the late 1960s many American archaeologists had adopted a new model of preservation, one that necessitated a new set of research practices. Because the MBP was not replaced by a new exemplar of practice, the culture historical research it championed continues to influence theory in Plains archaeology today.

The hypothesis presented by Jones and Klar (2005) that elements of prehistoric Chumash technology and language arrived from East Polynesia is considered. Trans-oceanic diffusion in general should not be rejected out of hand, but in this case it is improbable that it involved East Polynesia. There are substantial differences in the sewn-plank canoes at issue and the compound hooks are of a general form that is not confined to Polynesia. The chronology of East Polynesian colonization is probably too late for diffusion to southern California before A.D. 700. East Polynesian seafaring may have been inadequate to reach the Californian coast. If the explanation is diffusionary, then a source in East Asia is more plausible.

How archaeologists conceive variation in the archaeological record influences the kinds of explanations they produce. By treating all variation as potentially informative, evolutionary explanations stand in sharp contrast with transformational models which regard variation as noise. I show that variation in the timing of steatite vessel manufacture is not only less problematic than Sassaman proposes, but crucial to understanding how and why this technological change occurred. Evolutionary models have the additional benefit of requiring explanations to be in the form of tested hypotheses, something not inherently required by transformational models. My conclusion-that the most common function of steatite vessels was to process red oak acorn-has thus far stood up to a range of empirical testing, making it a stronger explanation than untested interpretations.

A recent article has suggested that maintenance of complex tools and associated tasks in a group depends on the presence of skilled individuals to serve as targets for imitation. The expected number of skilled target individuals, it is argued, relates to the population size. It is predicted that population size and maximum complexity of tools and/or tasks should correlate, hence a decrease in population size could lead to maladaptive loss of skills. Data from Tasmania are said to support the argument. However, the argument neither agrees with the archaeological data from Tasmania nor ethnographic observations on hunter-gatherer societies. Instead of being an example of a group that underwent maladaptive loss, the indigenous people of Tasmania appear to have used tools sufficient for the tasks at hand. An alternative model is proposed that distinguishes between motor skills and knowledge needed to do tasks effectively and takes into account assessment of the time cost for developing skills. Loss of skills more likely relates to change in the mode of resource procurement or change in technology rather than a shortage of skilled, target individuals due to decrease in population size.

While we appreciate Atholl Anderson's willingness to consider transoceanic diffusion as a viable possibility, he misrepresents parts of our argument and ignores others, particularly the linguistics that suggest that the Chumash and Gabrieliño borrowed the technique of sewn-plank construction and words related to that technique—not the word for boat or the specific design of a boat. The composite bone fishhook that appears in the Santa Barbara Channel ca. A.D. 700–900 matches simpler Hawaiian variants yet shows a significant stylistic departure from earlier southern California types. A chronological window of A.D. 400–800 for Polynesian contact is still consistent with realistic estimates for both the timing of the appearance of the sewn-plank boat technology in southern California and the initial settlement of Hawaii.

Karen Harry's study indicates that agricultural marginality is an unlikely explanation for ceramic specialization in the prehistoric U.S. Southwest. Economic theory provides an alternative model for the exchange of pottery for food.

This reply to Read's (2006) critique of my paper (Henrich 2004) is divided into three parts. Part I clarifies misinterpretations and mischaracterizations of both Dual Inheritance Theory in general and my model specifically. Part II addresses several problems in Read's empirical analyses of forager toolkits, and presents an alternative analysis. Part III tackles some common misunderstandings about the relationship between cost-benefit models (such as Read's) and cultural evolutionary modeling approaches, as well as highlighting some concerns with Read's efforts. In writing this, I have tried to introduce the reader to the issues in debate, but to fully understand this reply, one should read both my paper and Read’s critique.