A central tenet of the so-called demographic hypothesis is that larger populations ought to be associated with more diverse and complex toolkits. Recent empirical tests of this expectation have yielded mixed results, leading some to question to what extent changes in population size might explain interesting changes in the prehistoric archaeological record. Here, I employ computer simulation as a heuristic tool to address whether these mixed results reflect deficiencies in the formal models borrowed from population genetics or problems with the generalizations archaeologists have derived from them. I show that two previously published and highly influential models highlight two different effects of demography. My results illustrate how natural selection and cultural selection weaken the relationship between census population size, cultural diversity, and mean skill level, suggesting that one should not expect population size to predict the diversity or complexity of a cultural trait under all conditions. The concept of effective population size is central to understanding why the effects of population size can vary among traits that are passed by different mechanisms of cultural transmission within the same population. In light of these findings, I suggest ways to strengthen (rather than abandon) empirical tests of the demographic hypothesis.

The origins and evolution of market-based economies remain poorly understood in part because the data from nascent markets are scarce and methods available to archaeologists are underdeveloped. Studying how markets evolved is vital for understanding the origins of a process that dominates modern economies around the world and has significant policy implications. We show how refining abstract models of exchange networks with household-scale distributional analyses and regional-scale computational agent-based models (ABMs) can lead to new understandings about the organization of a prehistoric economy. The Sedentary-period Hohokam of central Arizona—particularly for the middle Sacaton phase (A.D. 1020–1100)—have been identified as a middle-range society that traded pottery in a market-based economy, but the structure of their exchange networks is not well understood. We analyzed ceramic data from recent archaeological excavations at two sites in the Phoenix Basin using new network-inspired distributional approaches to evaluate exchange systems. Initial results were then assessed using simulated data generated by an ABM of Hohokam exchange networks. Final results indicated that the best-fitting ABM model configurations were those consistent with openly accessed market-based exchange and contributed new insights into the influence of natural landscape barriers such as the Salt River on exchange in the Phoenix Basin.

Explanations for the use of pots as practical domestic tools permeate the literature of technological adoption and change. While many arguments focus on the economic merits of pots, few have attempted to trace the conditions that promote or deter the adoption of pottery. This is especially true for the use of pottery by mobile peoples. We adapt an established model of technological investment to draw attention to three key variables affecting pottery adoption: manufacturing time, utility, and use time. We use the logic of this model to examine how social and environmental contexts, specifically residential mobility in marginal environments, impacts use of and investment in ceramic technology. We further illustrate how the model can be used to reveal seasonal patterns of behavior from the spatial distribution of pottery discarded by mobile foragers and herders.

Identifying the relationships between prehistoric technologies and their role in food processing is important in understanding the timing, constraints, and motivations for dietary shifts in the past. However, direct evidence linking tools to specific plant foods is often lacking. This is especially true for archaeological assemblages dating to the early Holocene in the Great Basin. During this period, the appearance of milling stones and coiled basketry has often been assumed to represent a dietary transition marked by an increased reliance on lower-return plant foods, specifically small seeds. Here we evaluate the role of milling stones and basketry in the processing of low-return seeds by analyzing starch granules recovered from artifacts dating to the early and mid-Holocene from Hogup Cave, Utah. Results suggest that basketry and milling stones were used to process different resource types. Starch granules on milling stones primarily represent geophytes, while those from baskets are limited to small-seeded plant taxa mainly within the amaranth family. Results lead us to reevaluate the hypothesis that the appearance of these tools signals dietary broadening and prompt an array of new questions about early Holocene diets, the role and costs of processing technology, and the relative value of seed resources.

We document the use of organic raw material in late Pleistocene eastern Beringia through the study of the site of Swan Point CZ4b, in central Alaska. CZ4b is attributed to the Dyuktai culture and dates to about 14,000 cal B.P. We interpret the occupation as a specialized workshop dedicated to the production and maintenance of organic-based tools following three lines of evidence: (1) limited on-site consumption of megafauna, (2) diversity of organic raw materials and techniques used in processing them, and (3) spatial demarcation of specialized activity areas. Specialized workshops are located in the vicinity of naturally occurring accumulations of mammoth bones in both western and eastern Beringia and suggest similarities in animal resource use across Beringia for the Dyuktai culture. Organic technology was a major portion of Dyuktai technology in eastern Beringia, and its lack of visibility in archaeological assemblages is probably due to taphonomic reasons. Changes in the availability of organic raw material throughout the Late Pleistocene offer some implications for the evolution of lithic technology and material culture.

In eastern North America, there are few stratified sites dating to the Late Pleistocene epoch (> 11,700 cal B.P.). Instead, researchers have relied on the distribution of surface sites and isolated finds to make inferences about how the early inhabitants of the region used the landscape. While proxies for modern recovery bias have been found to affect artifact recovery at a national scale, in the southeastern United States, I argue, they are poor predictors for the frequency of Clovis type bifaces (ca. 13,250–12,850 cal B.P.) from counties in the southeastern United States as reported in the Paleoindian Database of the Americas (PIDBA). Instead, counties with the highest density of Clovis bifaces are near sources of lithic raw material, and in particular the intersection of major rivers, physiographic boundaries, and lithic raw material sources. I contend that these locations could represent seasonal aggregation loci. Alternatively, they could reflect areas where lithic raw material is more readily available, which may have resulted in higher rates of artifact discard. Determining which of these hypotheses is a more accurate reflection of past human behavior requires that we untangle the degree to which the amount of time people spent at these locations was successive versus coeval.

In the lower American Southeast, regional scale social interactions burgeoned alongside the growth of nucleated villages, widespread mound-building projects, and conspicuous mortuary ceremonialism during the Middle and Late Woodland periods (ca. A.D. 100–800). A premier material for understanding the scale and significance of social interactions across the southern landscape comes from Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery, a ubiquitous class of material culture that provides direct evidence of connections between specific sites at a multitude of scales and in myriad contexts. By combining design data and determinations of vessel provenance through Neutron Activation Analysis of a total of 825 sherds and 130 clay samples, this research ascertains types of social interaction and their predominant directions and levels of intensity across multiple ecological, social, and cultural contexts. The results indicate two main patterns: first, that vessels were frequently transported from habitation sites and civic-ceremonial centers to distant burial mounds; and second, that people traveled to ceremonial centers from outlying villages for events that included the exchange of wooden paddles. These patterns reveal a high level of social coordination within integrated networks that were inextricable from the region-wide trends toward population aggregation and heightened monumentality and rituality.

Identifying stone tool production techniques in the archaeological record can inform on prehistoric economy, time budgets, shared cultural practices, and the spatiotemporal occurrence of technological innovations and adaptations. The pressure flaking technique is one such innovation that appears on every continent Homo sapiens colonized. Pressure flaking has long been associated with the ability of flintknappers to produce small, regularly shaped flakes that were used to maintain particular edge shapes and resharpen dull tool edges with minimal loss of raw material. Despite the importance of pressure flaking, a method for supporting the identification of pressure flakes in the archaeological record is lacking. Here, we present a stone tool replication experiment that statistically compares flakes derived from bifacial pressure flaking and soft hammer percussion flaking. Our analyses show that pressure flakes are on average lighter, shorter, narrower, and thicker than soft hammer percussion flakes. Discriminant analyses indicate that pressure flakes can be correctly classified at a rate of 70 percent in a mixed sample. Furthermore, our findings validate the assumption that pressure flakes are less variable in form compared to soft hammer percussion flakes. Based on our results, we suggest quantitatively reevaluating the presence of pressure flaking in the global archaeological record.

The Wold Bison Jump (48JO966) is a communal bison (Bison bison) hunting site in Johnson County, Wyoming. It likely represents a single kill event precipitated by Great Plains foragers between A.D. 1433 and 1643. Operating the jump required that prehistoric hunters drive stampeding bison up a steep slope in order to position them within a V-shaped drive line configured to funnel them toward a cliff. Using iterative models of least cost paths, topographic cross-sections, and visibility analysis, we test which landscape-embedded variables are optimized at the jump site as compared to other potential localities across the study area. We find that this site’s placement is primarily explained by minimizing the distance at which the cliff face is visible and secondarily by minimizing the cost of slope and curvature routes ascending into the drive lines. Our procedure could hypothetically be used to predict optimal jump locations on similar landscapes.

Fisher’s (2015) reanalysis of data presented by Hildebrandt and McGuire (2002) fails to include the original finding that the Middle Archaic was the trans-Holocene high-point of large-game hunting in southeastern California, nor does his reliance on climatic change contribute anything new to the ascendance of hunting debate.