Some proponents of niche construction challenge the validity of optimality models for investigating agricultural origins, but offer no alternative strategy for understanding the economic context of human foraging decisions. They refer to the Eastern Agricultural Complex as an example of how seed cultivation can result from resource enhancement rather than population-induced resource depression, contradicting a prediction inferred from the prey choice model. Low-return seed cultigens were harvested in environments offering more highly ranked hickory nuts in abundance, apparently supporting their interpretation. A marginal value model demonstrates that in years of low mast yield, foragers could more profitably fill food stores from nearby seed plots than from distant hickory trees. Cultivating seeds would have been economically worthwhile when population circumscription constrained mobility, consistent with trends indicating regional population growth. Surges in walnut shell relative to small seeds are also consistent with the model, suggesting that foragers intensified their use of local, anthropogenic vegetation communities as populations grew, stimulating development of horticultural economies. This illustrates the value of foraging models used in conjunction with niche construction for investigating agricultural origins, particularly when model predictions initially fail to accord with archaeological evidence.

Shell mounds have not been investigated as prominent ritual features in southern California, despite evidence to the contrary. The largest extant shell mound in the region is on Santa Cruz Island, measures 270 by 210 m (44,532 m² in area), is 8 m higher than the terrace it rests on, is covered with 50 house depressions, and dates to 6000–2500 B.P. In the 1920s, three cemeteries were excavated at the top of El Montón; one young woman stood out among the over 200 individuals in that she was buried with 157 stone effigies. Analysis of multiple lines of evidence, including stratigraphic profiles of features, 85 radiocarbon dates, ground penetrating radar, and mortuary data, supports my claim that the mound was a persistent place where early visitors had significant feasts, constructed dwellings, buried their dead, and performed ceremonies where select groups of infants, children, and adults were revered. These mortuary rites conveyed the symbolic power of the place and created a history of events that became part of a mythical and real past that was repeatedly visited, modified, and (re)interpreted as social relationships were reinforced. This study supports the idea that shell mounds are socially constructed landscapes, not just accumulations of refuse.

A robust collection of mammal, bird, fish, and shellfish remains from an 8,000-year residential sequence at Morro Bay, a small, isolated estuary on the central California coast, shows a strong focus on marine species during the Middle-Late Transition cultural phase (950–700 cal B.P.), which largely coincides with the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA). Previous studies have provided modest evidence for increased fishing and rabbit hunting during the MCA in adjacent regions, but the Morro Bay findings suggest a distinctive marine-focused subsistence refugium during the period of drought. Specifically, the sequence shows striking all-time peaks in marine and estuarine birds, fish NISP/m3, and fish/deer + rabbits during the MCA. Heavy exploitation of fish, aquatic birds, rabbits, and shellfish suggests that the bow and arrow, which seems to have arrived in the area at this time, had little impact on local subsistence strategies.

Anthropogenic climate change is increasingly threatening cultural heritage; cultural resource managers, communities, and archaeologists are confronting this reality. Yet the phenomenon is happening over such a wide range of physical and sociocultural contexts that it is a problem too big for any one organization or discipline to tackle. Therefore, the sharing of best practices and examples between the communities dealing with this problem is essential. This article presents examples from communities, cultural resource managers, and archaeologists who are engaging with climate change–based threats to cultural heritage. Our presentation of these international activities follows the US National Park Service (NPS) four-pillar approach to climate-change threats to cultural heritage: science, mitigation, adaptation, and communication. We discuss this approach and then present a number of cases in which communities or institutions are attempting to manage cultural heritage threatened by climate change through these four pillars. This article restricts itself to examples that are taking place outside of the USA and concludes with some general recommendations for both archaeologists and funding entities.

This article builds upon two convergent trends in landscape archaeology: (1) investigations of symbolic meaning and (2) collaboration with descendant and stakeholder communities. The recent merger of these research agendas in the Southwest US provides an innovative approach to addressing meaning in the past. But the interpretations that result can inadvertently propagate notions of static and unchanging indigenous landscapes. Archaeologists can develop more dynamic studies of meaning and landscape by paying greater attention to the indexical properties of the archaeological record. To illustrate this point, I present a case study focused on ancestral Jemez (Pueblo) meanings associated with the Valles Caldera in northern New Mexico between AD 1300 and 1700. By combining contemporary Jemez understandings of this landscape with the indexical properties of obsidian revealed through pXRF analysis, this study illustrates how the uses of this landscape changed through time, particularly as a result of European colonization in the seventeenth century. It concludes that increased attention to the indexical properties of the archaeological record is critical for archaeological studies of meaning to reconstruct more robust and dynamic past landscapes.

The historical timing and movement of Navajo communities in the U.S. Southwest continue to be key, but unresolved, issues. This paper analyzes tree-ring data to consider initial Navajo settlement patterns in the Little Colorado River watershed, Black Mesa, and nearby regions in northern Arizona. We are critical of previous studies that deem all tree-ring dates to be equally valid, so we present a new approach to systematically identify potential early Navajo sites. After analyzing hundreds of tree-ring specimens from 774 sites, we conclude that dendrochronological evidence offers moderate-to-high confidence that 18 Navajo sites in the study area were settled prior to 1882. These dendrochronological data support the hypothesis of a westward Navajo migration from the Dinétah, reaching Black Mesa in Arizona about 1840, other areas north and east of the Hopi Mesas in the 1850s, and land west of Hopi in the 1870s after the release of Navajos from Fort Sumner in 1868.

Ice patches and the alpine are important elements of the sociocultural landscape of the Greater Yellowstone Area, and they transcend the jurisdictional boundaries that divide the lands on which they occur. The ice patch record complements traditional sources of archaeological knowledge through the addition of well-dated organic artifacts, such as shafts from hunting tools, recovered in a readily recognizable context. This paper examines the types of wood used in the manufacture of hunting implements recovered at Greater Yellowstone Area ice patches through the analysis of nine unique wooden shafts and shaft fragments from five sites. Five shafts are birch (Betula spp.), two are willow (Salix spp.), one is fir (Abies sp.), and one is pine (Pinus sp.). The shafts included in this analysis range in age from 9230 ± 25 B.P. to 215 ± 20 B.P. Diagnostic Oxbow and Pelican Lake chipped stone projectile points recovered in association with ice patches provide additional temporal resolution regarding use of these features. One of the four sites that yielded wooden shafts contains a record of bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) hunting between 3885 ± 25 B.P. and 879 ± 23 B.P.

The late adoption of pottery technology in the North American Arctic between 2,500 and 2,800 years ago coincides with the development of a specialized maritime economy. Arctic pottery technologies present an excellent case study for examining possible correlations between hunter-gatherer pottery and aquatic resource use. Review of the timing and distribution of early pottery in Alaska shows that early pottery is rare and dates at the earliest to 2,500 years ago; the earliest pottery is found in small numbers and primarily in coastal areas. Despite expectations that pottery use would be strongly linked to marine lipids, biomarkers and compound-specific δ13C values of 20 sherds from the Cape Krusenstern site complex, dating from 2700 to 200 cal B.P. years ago, are most consistent with freshwater aquatic resources; mixtures of freshwater aquatic, marine aquatic, and terrestrial resources are also possible. While additional analysis of a larger sample and zooarchaeological reference specimens is necessary, our study suggests that the development of pottery production by Arctic peoples is more complex than previously appreciated. This research is the first synthesis in over 30 years of early pottery in Alaska and is the first to include residue analysis of a small sample of pre-1500 B.P. pottery.

Archaeological evidence of the ancestral Huron-Wendat Nation of Southern Ontario, Canada, shows a population increase from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries, suggesting high fertility. Birth timing and infant survival are influenced by mothers' decisions about weaning. This study explores trophic enrichment of δ15N in horizontal dentine slices from 35 deciduous molars (n = 33 dm1, n = 2 dm2) and 39 permanent first molars (M1) representing five Huron-Wendat ossuaries, dating from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Weaning was normally incomplete at the end of dm formation, at an age of about 2.5 years. Post-weaning dentine values appear by the end of crown formation of M1. The weaning process began between 8 and 18 months and was complete in all cases by 3.5 years. Timing of the weaning process does not support the idea that Huron-Wendat population increase was associated with early weaning of infants. Communities from the sixteenth century and thereafter show earlier completion of weaning. Reasons for earlier cessation of breastfeeding may be found in the social and biological disruptions of the era of European contact. Values from permanent teeth of mandibles with sex attributed suggest a more homogeneous, possibly venison-oriented, post-weaning diet among males.

Excavations at two Late Archaic shell rings on St. Catherines Island, Georgia, revealed evidence of significant amounts of subterranean storage. Based on botanical evidence, ethonographic analogies, and interpretations of other Late Archaic sites, hickory nuts and acorns are the most likely resource being stored, and quantifying the capacity found at each ring highlights the prevalence and importance of mast storage. These findings are important because large-scale storage has rarely been proposed for Late Archaic coastal peoples and, therefore, its impact as a potential factor for social changes enacted during this time period, including increasing sedentism, formalization of intragroup relations, and regionalization of cultural identities, has yet to be explored.

Quebec City (Canada) is well-known for its unique wild environments and its protected cultural heritage, which have attracted tourists to the area for centuries. Often taken for granted or overlooked, the interactions between its natural and cultural landscape have been scantly investigated in a diachronic perspective in archaeology. This article explores the relationship between Quebec City's colonists/inhabitants and their surrounding territory, through the study of food plants for the period between 1535 and 1900. It contrasts visitors’ accounts and official discourses with daily experience using a combination of historical and archaeobotanical evidence to unravel how changing historical, social, and political contingencies impacted past perceptions of “wilderness” as manifested in food choices. In this process, the consumption of local indigenous plants has been interpreted as a form of incorporation of local environments that can enlighten us about popular attitudes toward the New World's natural features.

The contemporary relevance of archaeology would be greatly enhanced if archaeologists could develop theory that frames human societies of all scales in the same terms. We present evidence that an approach known as settlement scaling theory can contribute to such a framework. The theory proposes that a variety of aggregate socioeconomic properties of human networks emerge from individuals arranging themselves in space so as to balance the costs of movement with the benefits of social interactions. This balancing leads to settlements that concentrate human interactions and their products in space and time in an open-ended way. The parameters and processes embedded in settlement scaling models are very basic, and this suggests that scaling phenomena should be observable in the archaeological record of middle-range societies just as readily as they have been observed in contemporary first-world nations. In this paper, we show that quantitative scaling relationships observed for modern urban systems, and more recently for early civilizations, are also apparent in settlement data from the Central Mesa Verde and northern Middle Missouri regions of North America. These findings suggest that settlement scaling theory may help increase the practical relevance of archaeology for present-day concerns.

The degree to which prehispanic societies in the northern upland Southwest were hierarchical or egalitarian is still debated and seems likely to have changed through time. This paper examines the plausibility of village-spanning polities in the northern Southwest by simulating the coevolution of hierarchy and warfare using extensions to the Village Ecodynamics Project's agent-based model. We additionally compile empirical data on the population size distribution of habitations and ritual spaces (kivas) and the social groups that used them in three large regions of the Pueblo Southwest and analyze these through time. All lines of evidence refute an “autonomous village” model during the Pueblo II period (A.D. 890–1145); rather, they support the existence of village-spanning polities during the Pueblo II and probably into the Pueblo III period (A.D. 1145–1285) in some areas. One or more polities connecting the northern Southwest, with tribute flowing to an apex in Chaco Canyon, appears plausible during Pueblo II for the areas we examine. During Pueblo III, more local organizations likely held sway until depopulation in the late thirteenth century.

While the North American archaeological record signals the presence of early humans along the northeastern Pacific coast by the Late Pleistocene, we know little about the technological systems employed by these coastally oriented colonizing groups. We here report the discovery of the earliest unequivocal evidence for the use and manufacture of shell fishhooks in the western hemisphere. Four single-piece shell fishhooks dating to the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene transition (between ~11,300 and 10,700 cal B.P.) have been excavated on Isla Cedros, Baja California, Mexico. One hook is directly dated at 9495 ± 25 B.P. with a marine reservoir–corrected age of 11,165–9185 cal B.P. Radiocarbon ages associated with three other shell fishhooks range between 8900 ± 25 B.P. and 10,415 ± 25 B.P, while median ages for the earliest contexts confirm occupation of the island by at least 12,600–12,000 cal B.P. The stratigraphic levels from which the fishhooks were recovered contained a diverse assemblage of fish remains, including deepwater species, indicative of boat use. Thus, some of the earliest known inhabitants of the Pacific coast of the Americas employed shell hook and line technology for offshore marine fishing at least by the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, if not earlier.

Past research on the development of Archaic ideological complexity in eastern North America has focused on ritualism and ceremony related to mortuary behaviors, with less attention to ritualism within what is commonly thought of as domestic contexts without overt mortuary ceremonialism or monumental architecture. The recent discovery of puddled clay architecture and associated features at the Burrell Orchard site (33LN15) in northeast Ohio provides new evidence of significant, nonmortuary ritualism within Late Archaic basecamp contexts. That such activity took place alongside normal seasonal subsistence tasks is revealed by thick midden deposits containing abundant burned rock, nutshell, and deer bone. The many bone and stone tool deposits associated with the floors, along with the labor-intensive nature of the clay construction for what appears to have been individually short-term use, support the interpretation of these features as shrines possibly associated with hunting ritualism.

Casas Grandes Medio–period (A.D. 1200–1450) human effigies are unique in the North American Southwest in that they depict primary and secondary sexual traits, making determination of sex and gender roles possible. Here, we build on previous discussions by considering the importance of depictions of clothing (e.g., belts and sashes), personal adornments (e.g., necklaces and bracelets), facial decorations, and other aspects of dress. We find that Medio-period symbolism for males and females was based on gender complementary that combined the productive, reproductive, and ritual activities of men and women within a single symbolic and ritual system. Some clothing styles are found on both males and females (e.g., arm bands), but there are also sex-based differences. Women wear low horizontal belts across their hips, whereas men primarily wear sandals and elaborate headbands. Aspects of dress also appear to be continued from previous cultures such as the Classic Mimbres (A.D. 1000–1150) and continued into historic northern Mexican and southwestern groups (e.g., headgear and some sandal types). Ultimately, we find that males have more elaborate dress and are associated with a specific set of ritually important symbols. Females are associated with cloud/fertility symbolism, sternal decorations, and birds.

Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers are often interpreted as playing an important role in the development of early cereal cultivation and subsequent farming economies in the Levant. This focus has come at the expense of understanding these people as resilient foragers who exploited a range of changing micro habitats through the Last Glacial Maximum. New phytolith data from Ohalo II seek to redress this. Ohalo II has the most comprehensive and important macrobotanical assemblage in Southwest Asia for the entire Epipaleolithic period. Here we present a phytolith investigation of 28 sediment samples to make three key contributions. First, by comparing the phytolith assemblage to a sample of the macrobotanical assemblage, we provide a baseline to help inform the interpretation of phytolith assemblages at other sites in Southwest Asia. Second, we highlight patterns of plant use at the site. We identify the importance of wetland plant resources to hut construction and provide evidence that supports previous work suggesting that grass and cereal processing may have been a largely “indoor” activity. Finally, drawing on ethnographic data from the American Great Basin, we reevaluate the significance of wetland plant resources for Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers and argue that the wetland-centered lifeway at Ohalo II represents a wider Levantine adaptive strategy.

Using archaeological data of two human intestinal parasites from seventeenth- to early twentieth-century contexts, we explore the intersection of biological and cultural variables that shaped the ecology of cities in northeastern North America during the modern period. These parasites are useful because they require a developmental period in the soil, thus providing a link between human activities and changing environments. Prior to the last decades of the eighteenth century, Trichuris eggs dominate the archaeoparasitological assemblage. Around 1800, there is a shift to increasing proportions of Ascaris eggs, which appears to be largely complete by 1850—a period of increasing urbanization in the northeast United States. Both environmental and behavioral factors play a role in this shift and include the relationship between parasite biology and changing microenvironments, attempts to deal with waste, and use of urban spaces. During this period, poorer households would likely have been at greater risk of parasites because of the ways they used yard spaces, their delayed access to sanitary technology, and the changing nature of urban vegetation in densely occupied neighborhoods.

Bone grease processing is frequently used in archaeology to investigate human diet breadth because it constitutes a costly mode of lipid procurement. However, problems of equifinality often complicate the identification of this activity. This paper develops new criteria focused on morphology, the presence of micro-inclusions, and forms of damage that were derived from a bone grease rendering experiment that involved red deer (Cervus elaphus) long bones. Because they are poorly represented in a distinct experiment focused exclusively on marrow extraction, the criteria presented here appear to provide robust signatures of bone grease processing. A survey of the actualistic literature shows that certain bone processing activities, such as stewing and soup making, mostly involve coarse spongy fragments. Because these fragments are too large to be ingested, grease can be extracted from them only through heating or boiling. In contrast, bones ingested in bone meal or as flour necessitate pulverization. A high percentage of coarse fragments may therefore provide a proxy for cooking technology or, minimally, the use of fire, if other patterns are consistent with grease extraction. Given the evolutionary significance of these innovations, the criteria presented here may help to strengthen arguments about dietary shifts during the Paleolithic and later periods.

Except for the addition of modern material remains, the archaeological record is a finite resource, which means that, at some point in the future, there will be nothing left to find. In this paper, we model trends in archaeological discovery based on the growth of the field and the probability of site discovery. We compare this model to seven diverse datasets of archaeological discovery trends: (1) all sites from the state of Wyoming, USA; (2) high-altitude archaeological sites from the state of Colorado, USA; (3) mostly complete Neandertal crania; (4) monumental sites of the Maya Classic period; (5) proboscidean kill/scavenge sites globally; (6) Upper Paleolithic sites from Europe; and (7) a compilation of shipwreck discoveries. We forecast discovery trends over the current century. We show that, for all datasets, rates of discovery are in decline, and some segments of the record are near depletion.