Archaeologists have pointed to certain architectural or decorative designs as representing “elite styles” that mark status distinctions. We look at one such style—Dogoszhi—that was applied to several pottery wares across the Chaco World of the northern Southwest. Using a large database of ceramics, we test whether this style comprised an elite style or whether it signaled participation in a broader Chaco social network. We compare the distribution of Dogoszhi style to measures of settlement importance, including site size and network centrality, and we investigate whether this style occurs differentially at Chacoan great houses as opposed to small houses, or by subregion. We also compare its spatial distribution to an earlier style, called Black Mesa style, similarly applied to a number of different wares. Our results indicate that both styles were consistently distributed within Chaco communities (whether great houses or small houses) but variably distributed across subareas and most measures of settlement importance. We conclude that Dogoszhi style was used to mark membership in social networks that cross-cut great house communities, a pattern more typical of heterarchical rather than hierarchical social structures. Such variation questions the uniform category of “elites” and points to the ways that representational diversity may be used to interpret different regional histories and alliances.

Any relative nutritional differences among the diverse maize (Zea mays L.) landraces traditionally maintained in the Greater Southwest are little understood. In this article, we investigate a range of nutritional traits of five indigenous maize landraces in the US Southwest based on different kernel endosperm types: pop, flour, flint, dent, and sweet. We present macronutrient and micronutrient values for accessions of each landrace grown in the same environmental grow-out experiment. Macronutrient values vary considerably across these endosperm accessions. Sweet and flour maize had higher values of fat and protein, whereas dent had the highest carbohydrate content. Sweet and flour maize were comparatively the best sources of micronutrients. Sweet maize yielded the highest values of potassium, thiamin, and magnesium, and flour kernels had the highest riboflavin and niacin content. These results indicate that the maintenance of diverse maize landraces had nutritional as well as ecological, symbolic, and culinary value in both the past and today. Compared to modern commercial maize standards, traditional southwestern maize landraces had a somewhat higher caloric value, many had higher vitamin and mineral content, and all accessions but dent displayed higher protein values. This suggests that southwestern maize-focused diets that included diverse landraces may have been more nutritious than previously understood.

El Fin del Mundo is an archaeological site in Sonora, northwest Mexico, that contains a buried Clovis megafauna kill in a lowland area and concentrations of Clovis and later lithic materials scattered on the deflated surface of the surrounding uplands. The Clovis lithic assemblage from the site, identified by its technological and typological features, has been classified into three modes: bifaces, unifaces, and blades. The kill locality only contains Clovis points, whereas the assemblage from the uplands includes multiple bifaces reflecting diverse stages of the manufacture process from blank production to finished, highly reduced, and discarded broken Clovis points, numerous end scrapers, and blades and blade manufacture byproducts. This assemblage is indicative of a campsite where stone tool production and possibly other domestic tasks took place. In addition, a rhyolite outcrop near both the campsite and the kill was intensively exploited, as reflected in the high proportion of this raw material in the Clovis assemblage. Unequivocal association of the kill locality and the campsite is not confirmed; however, the configuration of the site indicates that the campsite was established in uplands near locations with water, game, and lithic resources.

Recent research at Jaketown, a Late Archaic earthwork site in the Lower Mississippi Valley, suggests that the culture-historical framework used to interpret Jaketown and contemporary sites in the region obscures differences in practices across sites. As an alternative, we propose a framework focused on variation in material culture, architecture, and foodways between Jaketown and Poverty Point, the regional type site. Our analysis indicates that people used Poverty Point Objects and imported lithics at Jaketown by 4525–4100 cal BP—earlier than elsewhere in the region. By 3450–3350 cal BP, people intensively occupied Jaketown, harvesting a consistent suite of wild plants. Between 3445 and 3270 cal BP, prior to the apex of earthwork construction at Poverty Point, the community at Jaketown built at least two earthworks and multiple post structures before catastrophic flooding sometime after 3300 cal BP buried the Late Archaic landscape under alluvium. These new data lead us to conclude that the archaeological record of the Late Archaic Lower Mississippi Valley does not reflect a uniform regional culture. Rather, relationships between Jaketown and Poverty Point indicate a multipolar history in which communities selectively participated in larger social phenomena—such as exchange networks and architectural traditions—while maintaining diverse, localized practices.

Fluting is a technological and morphological hallmark of some of the most iconic North American Paleoindian stone points. Through decades of detailed artifact analyses and replication experiments, archaeologists have spent considerable effort reconstructing how flute removals were achieved, and they have explored possible explanations of why fluting was such an important aspect of early point technologies. However, the end of fluting has been less thoroughly researched. In southern North America, fluting is recognized as a diagnostic characteristic of Clovis points dating to approximately 13,000 cal yr BP, the earliest widespread use of fluting. One thousand years later, fluting occurs more variably in Dalton and is no longer useful as a diagnostic indicator. How did fluting change, and why did point makers eventually abandon fluting? In this article, we use traditional 2D measurements, geometric morphometric (GM) analysis of 3D models, and 2D GM of flute cross sections to compare Clovis and Dalton point flute and basal morphologies. The significant differences observed show that fluting in Clovis was highly standardized, suggesting that fluting may have functioned to improve projectile durability. Because Dalton points were used increasingly as knives and other types of tools, maximizing projectile functionality became less important. We propose that fluting in Dalton is a vestigial technological trait retained beyond its original functional usefulness.

The Middle Mississippian component at Aztalan was a mixed, Late Woodland / Mississippian occupation sited within a heavily fortified habitation and mound center that is located on a tributary of the Rock River in Wisconsin. It represents the northernmost large Cahokian-related village recorded. The Oneota Lake Koshkonong Locality of the Rock River drainage is located approximately 20 km south of Aztalan, and it consists of a 25 km2 area along the northwest shore with a small cluster of habitation settlements. Sixty-eight radiocarbon measurements have been obtained from Aztalan, and 52 from Oneota settlements in the Lake Koshkonong Locality. We discuss how to best interpret this dataset, and we use Bayesian chronological modeling to analyze these dates. The results suggest that (1) Aztalan's Late Woodland (Kekoskee phase) occupation began in the AD 900s or early AD 1000s, (2) Aztalan's Mississippian occupation ceased in the AD 1200s, (3) Oneota occupations at Lake Koshkonong began after AD 1050 and were established by the AD 1200s, and (4) Oneota occupations at Lake Koshkonong continued after Aztalan's Mississippian abandonment until at least the late AD 1300s. Additionally, the results demonstrate that Aztalan was fortified with a palisade with bastions for much of the Mississippian occupation, suggesting a contested presence in a multiethnic landscape.

Paleoethnobotanical perspectives are essential for understanding past lifeways yet continue to be underrepresented in Paleoindian research. We present new archaeobotanical and radiocarbon data from combustion features within stratified cultural components at Connley Caves, Oregon, that reaffirm the inclusion of plants in the diet of Paleoindian groups. Botanical remains from three features in Connley Cave 5 show that people foraged for diverse dryland taxa and a narrow range of wetland plants during the summer and fall months. These data add new taxa to the known Pleistocene food economy and support the idea that groups equipped with Western Stemmed Tradition toolkits had broad, flexible diets. When viewed continentally, this work contributes to a growing body of research indicating that regionally adapted subsistence strategies were in place by at least the Younger Dryas and that some foragers in the Far West may have incorporated a wider range of plants including small seeds, leafy greens, fruits, cacti, and geophytes into their diet earlier than did Paleoindian groups elsewhere in North America. The increasing appearance of diverse and seemingly low-ranked resources in the emerging Paleoindian plant-food economy suggests the need to explore a variety of nutritional variables to explain certain aspects of early foraging behavior.

Robert Heizer excavated Leonard Rockshelter (26Pe14) in western Nevada more than 70 years ago. He described stratified cultural deposits spanning the Holocene. He also reported obsidian flakes purportedly associated with late Pleistocene sediments, suggesting that human use extended even farther back in time. Because Heizer never produced a final report, Leonard Rockshelter faded into obscurity despite the possibility that it might contain a Clovis Era or older occupation. That possibility prompted our team of researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and Desert Research Institute to return to the site in 2018 and 2019. We relocated the excavation block from which Heizer both recovered the flakes and obtained a late Pleistocene date on nearby sediments. We minimally excavated undisturbed deposits to rerecord and redate the strata. As an independent means of evaluating Heizer's findings, we also directly dated 12 organic artifacts housed at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Our work demonstrates that people did not visit Leonard Rockshelter during the late Pleistocene. Rather, they first visited the site immediately following the Younger Dryas (12,900–11,700 cal BP) and sporadically used the shelter, mostly to store gear, throughout the Holocene.

An enduring problem in North American archaeology concerns the nature of the transition between the Clovis and Folsom Paleoindian complexes in the West. Traditional models indicate a temporal hiatus between the two complexes implying that Folsom was a population replacement for Clovis. Alternatively, if Folsom was an innovation that occurred within Clovis populations and subsequently spread, we would expect to see a temporal overlap. Here, we test these hypotheses using high-quality radiocarbon dates and Bayesian statistics to infer the temporal boundaries of the complexes. We show that the Folsom complex initially appears between 12,900 and 12,740 cal BP, whereas Clovis disappears between 12,720 and12,490 cal BP. Therefore, Folsom may have appeared about 200 years before Clovis disappeared, and so the two complexes likely co-occurred in the West for nearly eight generations. This finding suggests that Folsom was a successful adaptive innovation that diffused through the western Clovis population, eventually going to fixation over multiple generations.

Artifacts, including ceramics, ground stone, and soil samples, as well as dental calculus, recovered from sites in the eastern North American central Plains were submitted to multiple laboratories for analysis of microbotanical remains. Direct accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) dates of 361–197 cal BC provide evidence for the earliest use of maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) in this region. Squash (Cucurbita sp.), wild rice (cf. Zizania spp.), and palm (Arecaceae sp.) microremains were also found. This research adds to the growing evidence of the importance of microbotanical analysis in documenting plant use and in the identification of early maize. The combined data on early maize from the eastern Plains adds to our understanding of the timing and dispersal of this crop out of the American Southwest. Alternative explanations for the adoption and early use of maize by eastern central Plains communities include its value as a secondary resource, as an addition to an existing farming strategy, or as a component of Middle Woodland rituals.

Archaeologists see the value, if not the allure, of formation theory. Before inferring what happened in the past and why, we must know how the material record formed. Pottery is abundant and informative, therefore a common analytical subject. Understanding size and composition of ceramics assemblages requires formation theory, including knowledge of vessel use life. This fundamental quantity has two salient properties. The first—central tendency measured by mean or median—is widely acknowledged. Use life's second, equally important, property is the distribution of failure-age by specimen across assemblages. This article considers how and why both use-life properties affect size and composition of pottery assemblages. From a longitudinal ethnoarchaeology of household pottery in Michoacán, Mexico, it identifies vessel-size measures that correlate with use-life mean, and it demonstrates archaeologically innovative ways to characterize distributions that improve both analysis of assemblages and comparison between them.

Landscape archaeology has been widely used as a framework for understanding the myriad ways in which people lived in their natural and built environments. In this study, we use systematic survey data in conjunction with ceramic chronology building to explore how residents of the Lion Mountain area in Central New Mexico created and sustained community landscapes over time as memories and stories became linked with specific places. We combine practice theory with the concept of social memory to show that these residents used their community landscape to both maintain and transform community identity over multiple generations. To strengthen our argument, we use a dual temporal approach, considering our data both by “looking back” and “looking forward” in time relative to the residents living on the landscape. Ultimately, we argue that residents of the Lion Mountain Community lived and died within a community landscape of their making. This community landscape, which was maintained and transformed through collective memory, included significant landmarks and entailed participation in specific networks, helping to reinforce community identity over time.

This article highlights the utility of vibracore technology to sample deep shell midden deposits on the Central Pacific Coast of British Columbia, Canada. Analysis of six core samples and 21 radiocarbon dates revealed that the archaeological deposits extended to a depth of 544 cm below surface and that occupation began approximately 6,000 years ago, continuing into the sixteenth century AD. Zooarchaeological identification of fine screened (2 mm) sediments shows that fish constitute 99.8% of identified vertebrate fauna, with a focus on herring (Clupea pallasii), salmon (Oncorhynchus sp.), rockfish (Sebastes sp.), and greenling (Hexagrammos sp.), followed by a variety of other fish taxa utilized throughout the occupation of this site. Despite a much smaller examined volume relative to conventional excavation, vibracoring was effective in recovering deep, stratigraphically intact, and adequate samples of zooarchaeological fisheries data as well as a considerable number of stone, bone, and shell artifacts (an estimated 550 artifacts per cubic meter of cultural sediments). These results show a persistent and sustainable ancient fishery through six millennia until the contact period. The field and laboratory methods described are especially conducive to sampling large and deep shell midden deposits repetitively.

From 2014 to 2020, we compiled radiocarbon ages from the lower 48 states, creating a database of more than 100,000 archaeological, geological, and paleontological ages that will be freely available to researchers through the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database. Here, we discuss the process used to compile ages, general characteristics of the database, and lessons learned from this exercise in “big data” compilation.

The case study is a familiar yet generally taken-for-granted element of archaeological theory. Typically, it is viewed as a kind of “proof of concept,” an essential way to demonstrate the value of a particular theoretical approach, if not theory in general. In this article, we examine the case study as it has been used in archaeology, exploring its different manifestations and situating them within a wider discussion of the role of cases and examples within the humanities and social sciences. Offering our own “example”—a rereading of Bonnichsen's Millie's Camp experiment from the 1970s—we argue for a different role of the case study in relation to archaeological theory.

Identifying and explaining the end of long-lived practices is a major challenge for anthropological archaeology. We present a high-precision uranium series dating (230Th/U) chronology of an undocumented aspect of Hawaiian religion: the use of corals as offerings in gardens. Our results from the upland gardens of Kealakekua (Kona District, Hawai`i Island) document the onset of religious offerings at the same time as farming in the area at around AD 1400, with no samples dating to after around AD 1635. There are similar conspicuous endings to coral offerings in temple sites on the small, isolated island of Nihoa and in the uplands of Maui. On Nihoa, the lack of coral offerings after AD 1606 can be reasonably linked to the abandonment of permanent settlement on the island. In upland Maui temple sites, as is the case in the upland gardens of Kealakekua, the end of coral offerings around AD 1600–1700 suggests a disruption to a long-lived ritual tradition at a time when other metrics point to the rise of state authority over religion.

The role of plant foods during the fluted-point period (FPP) of North America is contested. Central to this debate is whether the scarcity of FPP macrobotanical materials stems from poor preservation of archaeological features and the macrobotanical remains they might contain or from the limited use of plants during the FPP. Employing summed probability distributions of radiocarbon date frequencies in northeastern North America, we find that FPP hearths are as common as expected, given the small number of well-dated FPP sites in the region. A second comparison shows that northeastern FPP hearths contain macrobotanical remains at a higher frequency than hearths from a region with better preservation and where small seeds formed a part of the diet. The macrobotanical materials so far recovered from FPP hearths in the Northeast show that plant foods contributed to diets during the FPP but that the plant diet breadth was relatively narrow, consistent with a specialized caribou hunting lifeway.