The Plainview/Folsom-aged bison Bonebed 2 at Bonfire Shelter, originally excavated in the 1960s, is argued to be the earliest North American bison jump (Dibble 1970; Dibble and Lorrain 1968). Yet, it is far older than all other known jumps, and well south of where the great majority of these sites are found. Dibble (1970) reasonably argued that its age and location was not compelling evidence against it being a bison jump. However, Binford (1978) observed that the skeletal composition of Bonebed 2 did not resemble a kill. To assess whether Bonfire Shelter could have been utilized as a jump and whether it was, we explore two lines of evidence bearing on the issue, a GIS analysis of the site and upland topography, and zooarchaeological analysis of the recovered bison remains. Although our GIS analysis indicates that Bonfire Shelter meets many of the criteria of a jump locality, our reanalysis of the faunal remains suggests this was not the primary kill locus, but instead a processing area to which high-utility portions of at least 24 bison were transported and butchered. Where the bison were killed, and how, is not known.

Middle Archaic earthen mound complexes in the lower Mississippi valley are remote antecedents of the famous but much younger Poverty Point earthworks. Watson Brake is the largest and most complex of these early mound sites. Very extensive coring and stratigraphic studies, aided by 25 radiocarbon dates and six luminescence dates, show that minor earthworks were begun here at ca. 3500 B.C. in association with an oval arrangement of burned rock middens at the edge of a stream terrace. The full extent of the first earthworks is not yet known. Substantial moundraising began ca. 3350 B.C. and continued in stages until some time after 3000 B.C. when the site was abandoned. All 11 mounds and their connecting ridges were occupied between building bursts. Soils formed on some of these temporary surfaces, while lithics, fire-cracked rock, and fired clay/loam objects became scattered throughout the mound fills. Faunal and floral remains from a basal midden indicate all-season occupation, supported by broad-spectrum foraging centered on nuts, fish, and deer. All the overlying fills are so acidic that organics have not survived. The area enclosed by the mounds was kept clean of debris, suggesting its use as ritual space. The reasons why such elaborate activities first occurred here remain elusive. However, some building bursts covary with very well-documented increases in El Niño/Southern Oscillation events. During such rapid increases in ENSO frequencies, rainfall becomes extremely erratic and unpredictable. It may be that early moundraising was a communal response to new stresses of droughts and flooding that created a suddenly more unpredictable food base.

Concepts of residential and logistic mobility are applied to survey assemblages from multiple decades of research along the interior drainages of central lower Michigan. Drawing on the ethnographic record of boreal hunter-gatherers and archaeological interpretations of long-distance logistic mobility from the Mesolithic of northern England and continental Europe, it is argued that the importance of logistic mobility is underrepresented in summaries of northern hemisphere hunter-gatherers. Reconstruction of Middle Holocene environments suggests that the resource structure of the central Michigan uplands was one that fostered use of logistic mobility, and that interior Middle Archaic assemblages and site structures reveal special function activities systemically tied to residential and other special function sites at lower coastal elevations, as well as currently submerged under Lake Huron. We conclude that rising levels of Lake Huron ca. 4500 B.P. resulted in decreased land area, population packing, and a consequent shift to residential mobility by the Late Archaic. Further, the results of this analysis can serve as a comparative framework for recognizing the role of logistic mobility in the evolution of hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies in other regions.

Over the last several decades, there has been an increasingly robust body of ethnographic research indicating that the sharing of meat is strongly linked to the fitness pursuits of individuals, where successful male hunters achieve various forms of prestige that ultimately lead to greater reproductive success. We argue that the effects of prestige hunting and other similar displays can be traced archaeologically in subsistence, settlement, and material culture profiles, and in the gender division of labor of even the simplest foraging societies—in this case Great Basin Middle Archaic (4500-1000 B.P.) hunter-gatherers. In contrast with optimal faraging and other efficiency models that attempt to account for such behaviors, we apply costly signaling theory to explain when foraging currencies shifted from calories to prestige among Great Basin foragers. The application of such an approach has the ability to integrate a series of disparate, subsistence- and non-subsistence-related observations regarding Great Basin lifeways and, in so doing, revise our traditional understanding of prehistoric culture change in this region.

Recent papers published in American Antiquity and elsewhere have debated whether there were more artiodactyls available to human foragers during the relatively cool and moist Late Holocene compared to the relatively warm and dry Middle Holocene in the Great Basin. If so, how did human foragers respond to changes in artiodactyl abundance, and what explanations may be offered to account for any changes in human behavior across the Middle Holocene-Late Holocene boundary? A critical examination of the data used in this debate does not support the interpretation that human foragers across the Great Basin intensified artiodactyl hunting during the Late Holocene relative to Middle Holocene levels. Depending on location and setting, individual sites occupied during the Middle Holocene may show decidedly more intensive artiodactyl hunting at this time. At other sites, artiodactyl hunting remained consistent throughout the Middle and Late Holocene, while small game hunting and gathering significantly varied. New data presented below suggest that a change from encounter or ambush hunting involving small family groups to the communal hunting of pronghorn by larger numbers of people occurred near the Middle Holocene-Late Holocene boundary. I suggest that changes in social organization and technology also occurred at this time.

This article presents a hypothetical, general model that describes the processes involved in one aspect of traditional Southwestern agriculture: the interactions between soil hydrology and farming technology. In conjunction with extensive participation in hand cultivation with Hopi farmers, studies of soil hydrologic processes in Hopi maize fields have identified hydrological processes directly linked to Hopi field location criteria and farming practices. Field location criteria select for locations where soil textures and soil profile heterogeneity control rates of moisture infiltration, as well as loss to runoff, bare soil evaporation, and drainage. Farming practices, including clearing, maintenance, plant spacing, seed depth, and planting pit morphology, operate in conjunction with soil profile attributes to increase the amount of moisture available to plants and the mobility of that moisture. Effects of both soil profile attributes and farming practices are integrated into the discrete soil volume model of hydrologic processes occurring in the basic unit of Hopi farming, the individual plant clump. This information provides basic insights on ways archaeologists might evaluate the productive potentials of soils, the extent of farmable land around prehistoric communities, and the ranges of climate conditions that permit crop growth on that land.

Previous 14C determinations obtained on two segments of a single mastodon bone recovered from Monte Verde, Chile, were highly discordant, differing by more than 5,000 years. Because of the significance of this site in discussions concerning the earliest peopling of the Western Hemisphere, additional 14C and new δ13C values have been obtained on organic fractions isolated from both segments. The constituent amino acid profiles indicate that both bone segments retain significant amounts of protein (mostly collagen) residues. Four accelerator mass spectrometry-based 14C values obtained on total amino acids and ultrafiltered gelatin fractions—two from each segment—are statistically identical and indicate an age of 12,460 (± 30) BP for the mastodon. This value is concordant with 14C values obtained on other culturally affiliated organics associated with the MV-II levels at this site.

The large radiocarbon database now established for Paleolithic sites in Siberia and the Russian Far East can be used to build up a picture of relative population size in these regions. We consider the time period of ca. 46,000 to 12,000 B.P. for which we have assembled and critically studied 437 radiocarbon dates. All dates from individual sites that fall within 1,000 14C years are considered as a single event and called occupation episode. The results of our analysis show that the number of 14C dates until ca. 28,000 B.P. is small and increases at ca. 28,000–20,000 B.P, and dates decrease in frequency for the ca. 20,000–16,000 B.P. time range. It is after ca. 16,000 B.P. that we see a substantial rise in the number of 14C dates. In terms of the relative size of Siberian Paleolithic populations based on the frequency of occupation episodes, population density was small until ca. 36,000 B.P. Subsequently, population size increased gradually at ca. 36,000–16,000 B.P., and the growth rate became almost exponential at ca. 16,000–12,000 B.P. The number of occupations from ca. 20,000 to 18,000 B.P. did not decrease, running counter to arguments that Siberia was completely or considerably depopulated during the Last Glacial Maximum.