American Antiquity最新文献

Paleoethnobotanical remains from basketry and cordage from the Paisley Caves offer an opportunity to explore how people engaged with plant communities over time. Fiber identification of textiles, together with radiocarbon dating, contributes new information about landscape use within the Summer Lake Basin. Expanded marshlands during the terminal Pleistocene / Early Holocene created suitable plant communities ideal for fiber technology, specifically wetland monocots and herbaceous dicots—including dogbane and stinging nettle—by 11,000 years ago. This technology is key to subsistence activities and craft production throughout the Holocene. Despite climatic events during the Middle Holocene, in which people transitioned from caves to sites centered on lakeshores and wetlands, the suite of fiber plants and their technological application remains constant. During the Late Holocene, bast fiber material diversified with the addition of flax and milkweed. The presence of flax in particular, a high-elevation plant, may reflect the increased use of upland root collection areas as populations increased. This research provides long-term data on culturally significant native plants used in the manufacture of fiber-based textiles over the last 14,000 years.

The morphological characteristics of starch granules preserved on ancient ground stone tools can reveal which plant species were processed and consumed and even infer tool function. Bedrock metates are commonly associated with the processing of localized seasonal resources, providing potential evidence for past human lifeways, including foods collected and processed, social gatherings, settlement patterns, land investment, and territorial behavior. In contrast to ground stone artifacts preserved in a buried context that have been studied extensively, limited starch research has been conducted on the potential for environmental contamination of open-air bedrock mortars and metates exposed to natural erosional elements. This project examines the residue samples of bedrock metates from three archaeological sites in southern Oregon in the United States to compare the starch yields of extraneous material cleaned from the grinding surface to those extracted from interstitial matrices deeper within the bedrock. Significantly greater number of starch granules were recovered from deep within the cracks and crevices than from the surface. Our study suggests that environmental contamination can be managed if separate surface and control samples are collected and analyzed in conjunction with the interstitial samples. Examining the potential for environmental contamination on exposed grinding surfaces is crucial for confidence in starch granule results and improving our understanding of human dietary behavior.

This article describes a bison rib bone foreshaft from the Blackwater Draw site, New Mexico. The object was recovered by James Hester in 1963, during the excavation of locality 4, and it was subsequently cataloged as a modified bone tool but not recognized as a hafting element. It is currently held in the Blackwater Draw Museum collections. This analysis provides a detailed description of the artifact's features and establishes its provenience from a Folsom context. A survey of known Paleoindigenous hafting implements and a discussion of theoretical Folsom foreshaft designs serve to reinforce the classification of the tool as a component of the Folsom weapon delivery system. The tool was likely broken during use and later recycled as a pressure flaker or as a polishing instrument. With the help of 3D imagery, a reconstructed model was printed and fitted with large and small Folsom points to test ideas borrowed from the theoretical literature on Folsom foreshaft design.

This article explores Indigenous perspectives on archaeology in Canada and the United States and the role of archaeologists in engaging with Indigenous communities. As part of our study, we interviewed Indigenous community members about their experiences in archaeology and their thoughts on the discipline. We analyzed each interview thematically to identify patterns of meaning across the dataset and to develop common themes in the interview transcripts. Based on the results of our analysis, we identified six themes in the data: (1) Euro-colonialism damaged and interrupted Indigenous history, and archaeology offers Indigenous community members an opportunity to reconnect with their past; (2) archaeological practices restrict access of Indigenous community members to archaeological information and archaeological materials; (3) cultural resource management (CRM) is outpacing the capacity of Indigenous communities to engage meaningfully with archaeologists; (4) the codification of archaeology through standards, guidelines, and technical report writing limits the goals of the discipline; (5) archaeological methods are inconsistent and based on individual, or company-wide, funding and decision-making; and (6) archaeological software offers a new opportunity for Indigenous communities and archaeologists to collaborate on projects.

As regional chronologies become better defined, we are better able to track large-scale population movements and related cultural change. A dataset of 156 radiocarbon dates from the Middle Cumberland Region (MCR), evaluated with 199 more dates from the Ridge and Valley portions of northern Georgia and East Tennessee, enable modeling of population movements from the Central Mississippi Valley into the MCR, as well as subsequent movements and effects in the Ridge and Valley between AD 1200 and 1450. The dissolution of Cahokia is of particular interest, because the MCR falls geographically between the American Bottom and the Ridge and Valley province. This large-scale chronological perspective places key events in this part of the Southeast and Midwest into a unified historical framework that increases our understanding of the timing of cultural events. A related goal is to sort out possible external events and influences that may have affected this large region. This study makes apparent the relationships between cultural events and natural events, such as the drought sequences reported for the Central Mississippi Valley and beyond.