Ethnoarchaeology has, from its inception, suffered from the lack of a clear theoretical framework to productively link its two constituent parts: ethnography and archaeology. In this paper, I propose a framework that allows the integration of ethnographic and archaeological datasets at various levels of abstraction. I argue that it is only through innovative combinations of ethnography and archaeology, applied with proper caution and disclosure and at explicit levels of abstraction, that ethnoarchaeologists can hope to construct an ethnoarchaeology that is greater than the sum of its parts.

This paper provides a cultural context for the cache of early domesticated seeds found in Newt Kash Shelter in eastern Kentucky. Based on the abundant fibers, bedding, nuts, cradleboard, bedrock mortar, shell spoons, abundance of potential medicinal plants, infrequent fauna, and arrangement of pits, Newt Kash may have been a women's retreat place during menstruation, birthing, and sickness, and possibly the meeting place of a medicine society. There are other possible retreat shelters in this region and elsewhere.

Between 1769 and 1834, the Spanish missions of Alta California were pluralistic communities. Faced with cultural entanglement, residents of particular missions formed communities of practice, out of which a shared social identity may have emerged. This process of colonial identity construction is illustrated by the patterned ways potters at one mission, Mission San Antonio de Padua, constructed Plainwares. Potters within this mission community selected the same local raw materials and fired ceramics in open fires. As potters participated in shared traditions of ceramic production, with regard to these steps in the manufacturing sequence, they may have created a shared social identity. In addition to the creation of a shared community identity, potters may have produced and reproduced other social identities that served to create arenas of division. For example, variability in primary forming techniques may suggest that gender identities were created out of the way some potters, possibly women, hand modeled vessels while others, possibly men, threw vessels on a wheel. Through ceramic production, potters at Mission San Antonio de Padua may have at one scale fostered a sense of belonging to the mission community, but at other scales created arenas for social distinction within the indigenous population.

The prehistoric earthworks of Ohio have played a major role in the development of American archaeology and they continue to figure prominently in archaeological research. However, while a select group of larger earthwork sites have been intensively studied and resurveyed with geophysical survey instruments, much of the ongoing earthwork research, and reference to less-well-known sites, still relies on nineteenth-and early twentieth-century maps. In this article, we present the results of magnetic gradient surveys at three earthwork complexes in south central Ohio. Though much degraded by agricultural plowing and other historic impacts, our survey results show that despite near invisibility at the surface, Ohio's earthwork sites are (1) readily detected in geophysical surveys, (2) more complex than most early maps suggest, and (3) more numerous and varied than once thought. Given the major role these sites have taken on in studies that explore topics ranging from community structure and burial ceremonialism to population mobility and the development of socioeconomic complexity, a radical redrafting of the nineteenth-century maps could have far-reaching implications in the study of Woodland period (specifically, ca. 300 B.C.-A.D. 500) cultures in the Midwest U.S.

Recent excavations carried out in several Bed I and Bed II sites have shown that hominins at Olduvai Gorge used both bipolar and freehand knapping methods for quartz reduction. Due to the petrographic nature of quartz and to its heterogeneous response to fracture, the identification of bipolar knapping at any given site can be ambiguous and controversial. This work aims to overcome this problem by developing an experimental referential framework for the recognition of characteristic features of flakes produced through both bipolar and freehand reduction of Naibor Soit quartz cores. The final goal of this work is to use a set of variables related to the response of local Olduvai quartz to freehand and bipolar fracture, obtained through two independent controlled experiments, in order to statistically differentiate the diagnostic technological traits that best indicate bipolar reduction on this raw material type.

The Gulf Coastal Plain of Texas was populated by hunter-gatherers from the Early Archaic (ca. 7000 B.P.) through to the Late Prehistoric period (ca. A.D. 700-1400). In order to characterize past dietary adaptations along the coast and further inland, stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen were analyzed in preserved bone from 198 individuals from mortuary sites. In addition, 140 samples of faunal bone were analyzed to elucidate the stable isotope ecology for each region. The results indicate long-term stability in dietary adaptations with regional variation among coastal, riverine, and inland groups, including an early and, substantial, use of freshwater and marine resources. There is also evidence for constrained mobility and increasing use of plant resources within regions as populations increased in size and density.

Paleoindian archaeology on the Great Plains is often characterized by the investigation of large mammal kill/butchery bonebeds with relatively high archaeological visibility. Extensively documented aspects of Paleoindian behavioral variability include the form and composition of weaponry systems, hunting strategies, carcass exploitation, and hunter mobility. Non-hunting oriented aspects of settlement and subsistence behavior are less documented. Information from Component 2 at the O.V. Clary site, in Ash Hollow, western Nebraska, lessens this imbalance of knowledge. It provides a fine-grained, spatially extensive record of Late Paleoindian (Allen Complex) activities at a winter base camp occupied for 5-7 months. This paper highlights elements of site structure and activity organization, emphasizing domestic behaviors including hearth use, site maintenance, and hide working. ArcGIS 9.3.1 (ESRI) and GeoDa 0.9.5-1 (Anselin 2003; Anselin et al. 2006) are employed in conjunction with middle-range observations and expectations to document and interpret spatial patterning in the distribution of over 57,000 artifacts, ecofacts, and red ochre nodules. More broadly, results are related to two models of Paleoindian residential mobility: the place-oriented model and the high-tech forager model. Rather than mutually exclusive scenarios, Component 2 indicates that these models reflect complementary structural poses within the overall behavioral system.

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that ancestral Pueblo people living in the central Mesa Verde region of the U.S. Southwest maintained long-distance contacts with other Pueblo peoples. Questions of Pueblo interactions through time and across space have traditionally been addressed using ceramic sourcing data. This research uses obsidian source data to argue that, from A.D. 600 to 920, residents of the central Mesa Verde region obtained obsidian from throughout the U.S. northern Southwest, but that from A.D. 1060 to 1280 they acquired obsidian almost exclusively from the Jemez Mountains area of north-central New Mexico. In addition, importation of obsidian from the Pajarito Plateau increased during the period of population decline in the Mesa Verde region, and population expansion on the Pajarito. Characteristics of the obsidian assemblage from central Mesa Verde region sites also suggest that Jemez obsidian entered the region primarily in the form of finished arrows, arrow points, and arrow-point preforms. We argue that these patterns reflect return migration by early immigrants from the Mesa Verde region to the northern Rio Grande, an early stage in the development of a migration stream between the two regions.