American Antiquity最新文献

The Paleolithic period encompasses the oldest material in the archaeological record and spans some three million years. Because of its antiquity, competition for the earliest evidence of behaviors or phenomena can be intense. Paleolithic archaeology has therefore been seen as having a competitive atmosphere that was often hostile to female practitioners. In addition, female archaeologists who choose to undertake the role of field director—one of the most visible and influential roles in Paleolithic archaeology—face significant hurdles such as sexism and impediments related to motherhood. In this article, we investigate whether the perception of male bias in Paleolithic archaeology is valid. To do this, we assessed the gender demographics of Paleolithic archaeologists in tenure-track positions in North American institutions, publication rates by gender for articles on the Paleolithic, and the gender of archaeologists identified as “experts” in human evolution documentaries aired on PBS from 1994 to 2023. We found that gender demographics in Paleolithic archaeology follow that of the larger field of archaeology, with a stark imbalance at the rank of full professor but increasing gender parity at the lower ranks. Men outpublish women in all five journals we studied, but there is a positive trend over time. In contrast, the percentage of women “experts” featured in documentaries on human evolution never rose above 23%, with very little change over time.

The potential of coastal regimes for supporting permanent human settlement is tempered by the vulnerability of fixed infrastructure to changes in sea levels. First-millennium AD civic-ceremonial centers on the northern Gulf coast of Florida involved the construction of permanent infrastructure in support of regional gatherings that challenged sustainable settlement in the context of regressive sea. Although rising sea was the more common challenge over millennia of coastal dwelling, marine regression from periods of cooling climate slowly diminished near-shore habitat for fish and shellfish and eventually stranded settlements from tidal water. The challenge was especially acute for a community that built a tidal fish trap for summer solstice feasts, whose utility depended on the reliability of tides to flood the trap. High-resolution lidar data from the Richards Island fish trap enable accurate modeling of the effectiveness of the trap under current and lowered sea levels. The use-life history of the Richards Island fish trap illustrates the limits to intensification of coastal economies inherent to nonportable infrastructure whose utility is tide dependent—in particular, when demands on production are out of sync with optimal tidal conditions.

A long-standing classification problem in archaeology is determining the type of weapon delivery system used by people in the past. This is usually done by comparing archaeological points to known dart and arrow points from the ethnographic and archaeological record. There are no simple criteria to discriminate between these two states and the challenge is to identify a subset of traits and their interactions to solve this problem. Here we introduce a Bayesian technique of classifying dart and arrow. Using machine-learning feature selection, we first find the optimal set of variables for classification. We then use a Generalized Additive Model to model the interaction of these variables in a Bayesian logistic framework to capture the nonlinear decision boundary between darts and arrows and assign probabilities of a point belonging to either state. To counteract the imbalance of having more arrows than darts, we adjust the typical decision cutoff using an iterative approach that balances sensitivity and specificity. We increase the sample of known arrow and dart points with 102 previously published specimens from the West. The code for our model is available and easily accessible through an online application. We apply our model to published dart-versus-arrow classifications to demonstrate its utility.

A recent fluorescence of geophysical and archaeological research in Catholic cemeteries illustrates the benefits and challenges of community-engaged projects. Focusing on four ongoing case studies in coastal Virginia and Maryland (the Chesapeake region)—St. Mary’s Basilica (Norfolk, Virginia); Brent Cemetery (Stafford County, Virginia); Sacred Heart Church (Prince George’s County, Maryland); and St. Nicholas Cemetery (St. Mary’s County, Maryland)—this article explores a variety of archaeological strategies in the context of community engagement. These approaches are shaped by the physical characteristics of cemetery sites, the Catholic diocesan or church communities that oversee them, and the African American descendant communities affected by them. The built environment of cemeteries highlights the way that racism and segregation have shaped both the landscape and public memory of Catholic cemeteries in the Chesapeake region.

When evaluating competing hypotheses in archaeology, researchers frequently invoke the principle of parsimony, which states that simpler hypotheses should be preferred. However, the criteria for measuring simplicity and the rationale for labeling a hypothesis as most parsimonious often remain unclear. More broadly, the epistemic merit of parsimony and its relevance to archaeological reasoning are generally assumed but rarely clarified. This article explores how archaeologists use parsimony in ethnographic analogy and formal model selection. In the first context, it is usually uncertain how simplicity should be measured or why increased simplicity raises the plausibility of an ethnographic analogy. We contend that discussions of ethnographic analogy are better characterized under inference to the best explanation, where parsimony is only one heuristic among others. In the second context, simplicity is assessed by the relative complexity, rather than the quantity, of postulates in a model. This approach to parsimony, which does track plausibility under certain conditions, helps prevent false positives in archaeological interpretation. However, it also heightens the risk of rejecting alternative, complex causes. We argue that parsimony can aid in evaluating the relative likelihood of competing models and, more importantly, serve as a guide to clarify the complex histories of archaeological phenomena.

In this article, we seek to engage concretely with feminist and antiracist dialogues by exploring experiences of Latina archaeologists living and working in the United States, a group whose contributions, experiences, and challenges in the field have remained undertheorized to date. In this qualitative analysis of nine semi-structured interviews conducted in 2023 with Latina archaeologists, we consider historical structural factors that have suppressed representation of Latinas in archaeology; through their stories, we explore barriers and experiences that uniquely affect this group within the discipline, including familismo (familialism), cultural taxation, disenfranchisement, and harassment. Although much work remains to be done to move archaeology toward restorative justice, our goal by centering the experiences of Latinas is to add to conversations that have already emerged in archaeology and anthropology about the extractivist colonial legacies of our discipline and the various impacts of sexism, gender-based violence, white supremacy, and other hegemonic practices. We conclude with suggestions for how the archaeological discipline can change for the better and become more inclusive and equitable, not only for Latinx scholars but also for those from other historically marginalized groups.

The erosion of coastal archaeological sites is a worldwide heritage crisis. However, regional variability in the archaeological record and the natural environment necessitates localized consideration of the erosion of archaeological sites to facilitate informed research prioritization decisions about coastal cultural resources. In this article, we present and compare the results of recent coastal survey programs from southern Nova Scotia and far northeastern Maine to earlier ones to ascertain the extent of erosion since the mid-twentieth century. We then situate regional erosion in culture-historical terms via a case study from archaeological sites at Sipp Bay, Maine, from which materials were collected and tested in the early to mid-twentieth century. We compare the results of that work to our recent excavations. Finally, we model future sea-level rise scenarios to estimate future site destruction and compare these models between regions. Together, these data illustrate patterns in site preservation for geoarchaeological examination, provide insight into erosion-driven biases in the extant archaeological record, and offer information to guide research prioritization.

This forum engages an emerging discourse around historical reckoning, truth, and reconciliation, asking how these frameworks inform American archaeology and its future. A growing number of archaeologists are now demanding systemic disciplinary transformations that directly address how white supremacy and settler colonialism enact Indigenous dispossession and erasure as well as anti-Blackness, gender discrimination, and ableism. This forum, featuring 10 archaeologists—including a mixture of junior- and senior-level scholars—is organized into thematic dialogues that highlight their different perspectives and experiences within North American cultural heritage management. First, the dialogue interrogates American archaeology’s embeddedness in ethnocentrism and racism. It then looks at different forms of collaboration that actualize anti-colonial critiques and corrections. Next, it compares collaborative methods with broader calls for “un-disciplining” through incorporating non-Western expertise, sensibilities, needs, and interests. In response to systemic forms of racism, colonialism, and neoliberalism within archaeology, the authors discuss how individuals and institutions can work for and with Indigenous and descendant communities to achieve “reclamation,” defined as the assertion of community control over their significant places, ancestors, belongings, and historical narratives. The article concludes with a consideration of how archaeology can be used by communities to ensure their collective futures.

This study advocates for shifting archaeological praxes to ones that include ecological heritage—biotic features of a landscape that hold cultural, educational, and historical significance. Historically, archaeologists have tended to overlook ecological heritage, such as “living sites,” emphasizing built heritage and manufactured tools and features over ecosystems shaped and stewarded by people. We bring together archaeological, ecological, and archival data, combined with the memories of Sts’ailes Elders and knowledge holders, to document the long-term history of one anthropogenic landscape in Sts’ailes territory of southwestern British Columbia. Our data show that people shaped and enhanced local vegetation processes over time, resulting in forest garden ecosystems that continue to grow both within and outside of other archaeological evidence of past lives lived. By tracing the historical ecology of a single locale over three millennia, we consider the extent to which ecological heritage such as forest gardens can be documented, analyzed, reimagined, and revitalized in community contexts as continuously living and used sites.

Drinking culture. What happens in the field. It was just a joke. Don’t rock the boat. Archaeology staggers under the weight of its many “gray zones,” contexts of disciplinary culture where boundaries, relationships, ethical responsibilities, and expectations of behavior are rendered “blurry.” Gray zones rely on an ethos of silence and tacit cooperation rooted in structures of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism. In the gray zone, subtle and overt forms of abuse become coded as normal, inevitable, impossible, or the unfortunate cost of entry to the discipline. Drawing on narrative survey responses and interviews collected by the Working Group on Equity and Diversity in Canadian Archaeology in 2019 and 2020, we examine the concept of the gray zone in three intersecting contexts: the field, archaeology’s drinking culture, and relationships. The work of making archaeology more equitable relies on our ability to confront gray zones directly and collectively. We offer several practical recommendations while recognizing that bureaucratic solutions alone will not be sufficient. Change will require a shift in archaeological culture—a collective project that pulls gray zones into the open and prioritizes principles of care.