Critical theory has been little used in archaeology, despite its exceptional ability to understand social relations and circumstances, both past and present. In this paper, I develop the concept of a localized critical theory that connects broadscale global processes, such as colonialism and capitalism, to cultural processes that occur at the local level. This expression of archaeological practice has the power to hear, cultivate, and share the voices of individuals and communities as they speak about their respective histories, while recognizing and acknowledging their broader social context. I explore how lnuvialuit Elders' memories are portrayed and interpreted within the lnuvialuit Living History project, focusing particularly on their memories of traditional beluga-whaling in the Mackenzie Delta of Canada’s Western Arctic that were evoked through the identification and handling of ancestral whaling artifacts. I use localized critical theory to explore how Elders’ distinctive perspectives and experiences of beluga-whaling through the course of the mid-twentieth century articulate with and comment on wider historical processes and the agendas of the Canadian nation-state.

Remains of earth ovens with rock heating elements of various sizes and configurations are common at hunter-gatherer sites around the world. They span the last 30,000 years in the Old World and some 10,000 years in the New World. Although various foods were baked in these ovens, plants predominate. Earth ovens are ethnographically well documented as family-size and bulk cooking facilities, but related technology and its archaeological signatures remain poorly understood and understudied. These ubiquitous features are often mischaracterized as generic cooking facilities termed hearths. It is proposed that, in fact, most rock “hearths” are heating elements of earth ovens. Reliable identification and interpretation of earth ovens requires documentation of heating elements, pit structure, rock linings, and various remnants thereof. Fundamental technological concepts for investigating their archaeological signatures include thermodynamics, construction designs, and life cycles in systemic context, as informed by ethnographic, archaeological, and experimental data. Earth oven technology explains well the primary purpose of labor-intensive thermal storage for long-term cooking and conserving fuel. Information from the extensive archaeological record of earth ovens on the Edwards Plateau of south-central North America illustrates these points.

Fluctuations in climatic regimes and biodiversity through time are linked in complex ways to human behavior and socioeconomic processes. We use macrobotanical evidence from Chumash village sites on California’s Channel Islands to investigate the relationship between late Holocene climatic perturbations and one region of the larger Chumash world. Carbonized plant remains provide evidence of the shifting availability of native plants during the Transitional period (A.D. 1150–1300), when droughts impacted island floral diversity and the Chumash had to cope with changes in vegetation regimes that likely curtailed food availability. We find that drought-resistant plant resources appear in higher relative frequencies in proveniences dating to the Transitional era, and at least one food resource was first imported from the mainland around that time. These findings support the proposition that the Chumash intensified cross-channel trade in part to respond to dietary needs during episodic resource stress. This is also the time when several economic specializations blossomed, including intensive shell bead making. These specializations persisted for six centuries and were central to the development of institutionalized leadership and political complexity in the region ca. A.D. 1200. Various strategies to preserve stability in the plant diet were important elements in the broader reorganization of labor in coastal southern California.

This paper presents the first detailed record of Paleoeskimo occupation history of Foxe Basin, Nunavut, Arctic Canada, the traditional Paleoeskimo “core area.” Rather than continuous, stable occupations from approximately 4000–1000 B.P. traditionally assumed for the core area, the region has undergone a series of demographic oscillations, including several instances of abandonment of key areas, most notably Igloolik. The Foxe Basin demographic trends are reminiscent of Paleoeskimo “boom and bust” cycles recognized elsewhere, but show no consistent chronological pattern either within Foxe Basin or inter-regionally. Equally important, our results bear on the critical question of the Pre-Dorset to Dorset transition. Rather than having been a gradual in situ process centered within the core area, the demographic patterns, including the abrupt and widespread appearance of semi-subterranean dwellings during earliest Dorset, are consistent with newly arrived populations from outside of Foxe Basin. While there is no obvious “parent” culture to Dorset within the Eastern Arctic, it is suggested that a Western Arctic origin, specifically Norton Culture, invoking to some extent Jorgen Meldgaard’s “smell of the forest”, may have played a significant role.

The Middle Woodland period in eastern North America witnessed a florescence of monumental architecture and material exchange linked to widespread networks of ritual interaction. Although these networks encompassed large geographic areas and persisted for several centuries, extant archaeological models have tended to characterize Middle Woodland interaction as an historically unitary process. Using new data from the Garden Creek site in North Carolina, I argue that these frameworks obscure important historical shifts in Middle Woodland interaction. Recent collections-based research, geophysical survey, targeted excavation, and 14C dating (including Bayesian modeling) of this site reveal two coeval diachronic changes: a shift from geometric earthwork construction to platform mound construction; and a shift from the production of special artifacts {mica, crystal quartz) to the consumption of exotic artifacts in association with platform mound ceremonialism. These data hint at important changes in interregional relationships between the Appalachian Summit, the Hopewellian Midwest, and the greater Southeast during the Middle Woodland period, and provide a springboard for considering how processes of culture contact contributed to precolumbian cultural change.

The growth and decline of large village communities is a topic of considerable interest for archaeologists studying the development of complex regional polities. In this article, demographic information is presented for the transitional Mississippian period Washausen mound center located in the American Bottom region of west-central Illinois. Population estimates are calculated based on data for residential architecture collected in 2011 during an extensive geophysical survey and excavations at the site. A magnetometer survey was conducted over 8 ha and produced a relatively complete site map revealing numerous household clusters organized around a central, earthen mound-and-plaza complex. Population estimates and site spatial information for Washausen are compared with similar data for earlier village communities located nearby, as well as other global village sequences, producing a demographic profile demonstrating a pattern of village growth and decline in the area after the onset of sedentism and agricultural intensification. Information from the region and elsewhere suggests that the development of larger communities through time resulted in part through frequent population movements as village segments fissioned and aggregated to form new communities. This research finding has the potential to inform models for the growth of much larger American Bottom centers such as Pulcher and Cahokia.

Native American communities underwent significant upheaval, ethnic blending, and restructuring in the Spanish colonial period. One archaeological example is the appearance of a seven-room stone and adobe structure in western Kansas, known as the Scott County Pueblo (14SC1). Previous researchers used Spanish documents to attribute the site to Puebloan refugees from Taos or Picuris in the mid- to late 1600s. Here we examine the Smithsonian and Kansas Historical Society ceramic collections for evidence of Puebloan women at the site. We find a high proportion of bowls at 14SC1, suggesting the maintenance of Puebloan food-preparation and-serving patterns, as well as some vessels apparently made by Puebloan potters in western Kansas. We cannot falsify our null hypothesis that the Scott County Pueblo included people from one or more northern Rio Grande pueblos during the mid-1600s, or A.D. 1696–1706, or both.

The transition from the Pueblo 11 Period (A.D. 1050–1150) to the Pueblo III Period (A.D. 1150–1300) in the San Juan Basin marks an intensification of turkey use, evidenced by an increase in the percentage of faunal assemblages representing turkey bones. We examine stable carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen ( δ15N) isotopic values of turkey bones from three ancestral Puebloan sites in the Middle San Juan Region to test the hypothesis that this intensification is linked to an increase in the amount of maize in the turkeys’ diets. We find no significant change in δ13C or δ15N across the two time periods, and all of the specimens’ values indicate maize consumption. A plot of bone apatite δ13C against collagen δ13C is consistent with a model of diets high in C4 protein, indicating that the turkeys did not use an alternative source of protein to maize and/or fauna that fed on maize. The reliance of both humans and turkeys on maize indicates a degree of turkey-human interdependency not previously known in the Middle San Juan Region. Future inquiries into the paleodiet of turkeys should target times and places where there is likely to have been a transition from hunting to domestication.

Unnotched triangular arrowpoínts and point fragments are sometimes found in large numbers on village sites in the Midwest and East. The possible reason or reasons for this are rarely considered. These points were used for both warfare and hunting. An attack on a village with a volley of arrows provides the most obvious explanation for large numbers of points and point fragments. Alternatively, using arrowpoints that detached within their target prey would have resulted in points and point fragments being brought back to a village in meat. These possibilities are considered in explaining the large number of points from an iroquoian village site in western New York.