Journal of Anthropological Archaeology最新文献

In the Andes, successive waves of Inka and Spanish imperialism reshaped local ecologies and transformed agricultural practices between the 14th and 17th centuries. As the Inka (ca. 1450–1532CE) consolidated control over the region they co-opted existing resources, directed the development of new farmland, and imposed new labor obligations on Andean people. In turn, Spanish colonizers (1533-1824CE) introduced foreign flora and fauna, created new tributary regimes, and reorganized agricultural production around forcibly resettled communities and Spanish-owned haciendas (agrarian estates). In this paper, we explore how agricultural workers managed this extended period of upheaval through analysis of botanical data from recent excavations at the site of Simapuqio-Muyupata, in Peru’s Cusco region. We track how agriculturalists living at the site altered patterns of plant use—and, by extension agricultural practice—across the period of Inka and Spanish Colonial governance. These farmers remained reliant on a similar suite of cultivated plants under both political regimes, but shifted practices of land management to conserve labor when confronted with the structural conditions of servitude to Spanish landlords. By altering agricultural practices, these agriculturalists re-shaped the agroecological context in which they lived and worked to ensure survival in the face of political upheaval.

We review archaeological research from the Late Maritime Woodland period (1300–550 cal BP) on the Maritime Peninsula and argue that there is substantial evidence for sociocultural and economic hunter-fisher-gatherer complexity prior to the arrival of Europeans. This is relevant because the region was the stage for some of the earliest contacts between Indigenous and European peoples in the Americas, and aspects of sociocultural complexity among the Wabanaki have sometimes been attributed to European contact, a conception which requires exploration. More broadly, we argue that hunter-fisher-gatherer complexity may be conceived of as a suite of practices that hunter-fisher-gatherers deploy in specific contexts to deal with historical or environmental contingencies, and which may have had long histories as seasonal and/or heterarchical practices that are difficult to resolve archaeologically. We suggest that this perspective helps to reframe recent debate around the development of hunter-fisher-gatherer complexity as one that is focused on contingent historical process.

The past is silent, or mostly so, yet sound can open a window to this same past. Early Spanish colonial ethnohistoric sources from the Andes are littered with references to indigenous dancing and music as an accompaniment to ritual and feasts. Recent archaeological research in the upper Ica Drainage on the late Prehispanic (CE 1000–1532) site of Viejo Sangayaico has revealed an open-air platform potentially prepared as a type of sprung or ‘sounding’ dancefloor which produces a deep percussion-like sound when stepped upon. I interpret this feature as a sounding platform for stomp dancing. The larger site’s association to veneration of Andean lightning and thunder deity suggests that dancing at this location might have been in part attuned to this supernatural entity. Wider ethnohistoric evidence provide a potential parallel into understanding what type of activities were practiced on this platform and site.

Archaeologists in the Carpathian Basin are increasingly focused on social variability across the Bronze Age landscape. However, when it comes to mortuary variability, the difference in body treatments (cremation and inhumation) between populations impairs our ability to carry out regional comparisons and appreciate the range of community social organizations. In this paper, we compare mortuary assemblages from three Bronze Age culture areas on the Great Hungarian Plain. In our coarse quantitative framework, we characterize the intensity of funerary distinction as a proxy for complexity and identify structural variation across mortuary programs. We identify both horizontal and vertical differences in funerary assemblages and note horizontal differences that do not necessarily materialize vertically. The results also show that societies can represent varying values across the different measures, underlying the necessity of working with analytical frameworks which approach the question of complexity in a non-linear manner. We believe that the method offered here can be a useful addition to the toolkit of mortuary archaeologists who work in areas and/or time periods with various body treatment practices.

Early villages are often assumed to be economically and politically autonomous and equivalent to an archaeological socio-spatial unit that represents a maximum scale of cohesive residential communities. But the boundaries of some communities extended far beyond such sites of early population aggregation. In the coastal plain of the American Southeast, early village communities of the Middle and Late Woodland period (ca. 100 to 1000 CE) were located at civic-ceremonial centers that hosted periodic large-scale events, including feasting and mound building. These places regularly integrated mobile populations and permanent residents, arguably creating translocal communities that were both spatially expansive and densely integrated. We employ social network analysis as a way of identifying the spatial extent, composition, and structure of these translocal communities. We compare relational connections via a database of shared makers’ marks on Swift Creek Complicated Stamped pottery with categorical identities revealed in temporally constrained pottery type frequencies. We find that most early villages in this region were far from autonomous and instead were characterized by frequent relational connections and shared categorical identities spanning hundreds of kilometers, with civic-ceremonial centers serving as central nodes of interaction within and between spatially dispersed communities.

A precisely dated, high-resolution palynological profile shows that around 5680 BCE a community that grew crops and raised livestock settled on the northern periphery of the area later covered by the LBK colonisations. This indicates that pioneer farmers reached this region around 300 years earlier than estimated by recognised models of the Neolithisation process. These findings point to the need for a revision of the Neolithisation model, not only regarding dating but also in terms of reassessing the role played by demographic pressure. The authors believe that the impact of the latter is widely overestimated, because the migration could also be caused by conflicts resulting from ethnic diversity and competition for prestige and access to the most valuable lands. Cooperation with hunter-gatherer communities could have been an additional factor that may have been particularly significant during the period of pioneering colonisation. The paper discusses the role of palynology in contemporary research on Neolithisation.

Red chert attributed to a small number of outcrops within the Munsungun Lake formation, northern Maine is nearly ubiquitous in late Pleistocene Fluted-Point-Period (FPP) archaeological sites throughout northeastern North America, including at sites hundreds of kilometers from this source. Red Munsungun chert also appears more frequently in FPP sites than any other material type in the region. The frequency of use and the distances over which this material was transported during the FPP differ qualitatively and quantitatively from other raw materials regularly found in FPP sites in the region. These differences in use, transport, and discard are not explained by technological considerations --such as texture or nodule size-- alone. One possible explanation for the unique treatment of this material during the FPP is color. Knappable brightly colored stone (including red) is uncommon in the Northeast which may have resulted in a specific preference for red Munsungun chert by stoneworkers during the FPP. The widespread transport and exchange of this material would also help maintain social relationships and information exchange between widely scattered bands, while the act of repeatedly returning to a specific location would have helped socialize a recently settled landscape.

This paper presents the first systematic study of pre-Columbian imported stone celts recovered from the limestone islands of the Lucayan archipelago, comprising The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands of the northern Caribbean/West Atlantic. The majority derive from antiquarian collections and early archaeological investigations, prior to the destruction of many sites due to guano mining and development; only a handful have been recovered during archaeological investigations since the 1960s. The corpus includes 224 celts, of which 162 are complete and provide the measurements for a comparison with width/length ratios of celts from the proximate source islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. While the Lucayan archipelago shows a slightly higher proportion of wider celts, consistent with more reworking, overall the corpus suggests that exchange networks were sufficient to meet demand. This conclusion is supported by the absence of any clear diminution in size with distance from sources. The majority of stone celts (71.9 %) have been identified as various forms of “jade,” supplemented with a range of other materials. Despite the higher value often attributed to jade cross-culturally, we find no clear evidence for its differential treatment, though the archipelago’s northern islands do have a lower proportion of jade versus non-jade celts.