Prehistoric North America Research Articles

Regional ochre procurement in the prehistoric American Bottom

Ochre has been used for a variety of cultural items worldwide including its use as pigments, polishing tools, medicines, and formal lithic tools such as axes and plummets. Though ochre use in prehistoric North America was commonplace, geochemical analyses of archaeological assemblages typically have focused upon ceramics and stone tools, with ochre treated as a secondary artifact. In the American Bottom, recent limited studies have investigated ochre usage in Late Archaic (3000 – 1000 BCE) and Middle Woodland (150 BCE – 400CE) contexts with inconclusive results. However, the authors suggested that archaeological ochres found in East Central Missouri may have originated within the Meramec River Valley. In this current study, data from previous archaeological and source ochre analyses are combined with similarly dated artifacts from the Verkamp Rockshelter in the Meramec River Valley and additional archaeological samples from five sites in the region. To establish a regional assessment, neutron activation analysis (NAA) and multivariate statistical analysis was utilized to examine geochemical relationships across the region. Results identified distinct compositional differences between archaeological samples from the St. Louis region versus samples collected at Verkamp Rockshelter. Beyond this, no other correlations could be found between chemistry and collection locale. When compared to the available geological source samples from the area, the archaeological samples from the St. Louis region remain distinct, while Meramec River Valley deposits are somewhat compositionally similar to artifacts from Verkamp Rockshelter. This suggests differential acquisition between the two areas.

Major Miners: Ancient pollution reveals large-scale mining in prehistoric North America.

Major Miners: Ancient pollution reveals large-scale mining in prehistoric North America.

The \u2018Copper Age\u2019\u2014A History of the Concept

The idea that there was a Copper Age between the Neolithic and Bronze Age was inspired by the discovery of the use of native copper in prehistoric North America. Its currency in European prehistory owes much to the 1861 observations by William Wilde that copper tools preceded the use of bronze in Ireland, though Wilde did not postulate a Copper Age per se. Acceptance of the existence of a Copper Age was a long process, not least as it seemed to contradict the premises of the Three Age System and was conflated with arguments for the local development of copper metallurgy, but the 1876 and 1880 international prehistoric archaeology congresses were key moments in its recognition. By the mid 1880s its validity was widely accepted in Europe. In contemporary dating schemes, the definition of the Copper Age varies according to regional and national traditions. This paper touches on the debate concerning the use of technological stages as chronological periods and examines the history of alternative conceptualisations of the early periods of metallurgy in Europe, including those that posit socio-economic phases of development.

Microwear Analysis of Hopewell Bladelets from Two Sites Associated with the Stubbs Earthworks, Southwest Ohio

Abstract Hopewell bladelets represent one of a handful of standardized blade industries in prehistoric North America. In the past 25 years, archaeologists produced a great deal of published research on Hopewell bladelets. Yet much remains to be explained about this lithic tradition. This project presents the results of functional analysis of bladelets from two sites near the Stubbs Earthworks along the Little Miami River in southwest Ohio. Results indicate that bladelet use at these sites largely focused on bone/antler processing. This is in contrast to the generalized function of many of the artifacts in Ohio bladelet assemblages and provides researchers with another piece of the puzzle in examining the variation in bladelet function between sites and across regions.

Microwear Analysis of Hopewell Bladelets from Two Sites Associated with the Stubbs Earthworks, Southwest Ohio

Hopewell bladelets represent one of a handful of standardized blade industries in prehistoric North America. In the past 25 years, archaeologists produced a great deal of published research on Hope...

An empirical evaluation of copper procurement and distribution: elemental analysis of Scioto Valley Hopewell copper

In prehistoric North America, artifacts of copper occupy a position of prominence in the Hopewell societies of Ohio’s Scioto Valley. These artifacts also represent the social contacts and long-distance interactions that brought copper to the Scioto Valley. Yet, our understanding of Hopewell copper acquisition, and the movement of copper artifacts within the social networks of the Scioto Valley and beyond, has been limited due to the limited availability of geochemical data concerning provenance and variability. We begin to develop the foundation for understanding these important social issues by analyzing the elemental variability of Hopewell copper through the use of laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. We analyze 24 samples from four known copper source regions and 52 samples from 6 prominent sites in the Scioto Valley. Results suggest that a majority of the artifacts are consistent with sources in the Great Lakes, with a plurality classified as Isle Royale. However, 21% of Scioto Hopewell copper artifacts were most consistent with southern Appalachian sources. High elemental variability argues against simple models of copper acquisition and suggests that different social groups had access to a variety of copper sources through varying social networks. Native copper regardless of source seems to have been channeled along similar social and symbolic pathways. Our results suggest that instead of being derived from the struggle to access a specific source, value is derived from the social relationships represented by the copper and the connotation of exotic connection embodied in both style and material.

Holocene book review: From the Pleistocene to the Holocene: Human Organization and Cultural Transformations in Prehistoric North America

Holocene book review: From the Pleistocene to the Holocene: Human Organization and Cultural Transformations in Prehistoric North America

Wealth, Status, Ritual, and Marine Shell at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico

The center of Casas Grandes (or Paquime) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, long has been famous for the large quantities of imported and exotic materials found there. It contains the largest cache of marine shell ever found at an inland site in prehistoric North America or Mesoamerica. Several explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, including amassing of personal wealth, stockpiling for mercantile exchange, and accumulation for use in a prestige goods context. The present paper argues that extant data do not conclusively support any of these explanations, and it offers a new interpretation of the community’s vast shell hoards. They are seen within the materialist perspective as "animate objects," forming a vast repository of supernatural power that was a central part of the community’s ritual system. This argument is extended to other features of Casas Grandes, including its reservoirs, water shrine, and bird burials.

Wealth, Status, Ritual, and Marine Shell at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico

The center of Casas Grandes (or Paquime) in northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, long has been famous for the large quantities of imported and exotic materials found there. It contains the largest cache of marine shell ever found at an inland site in prehistoric North America or Mesoamerica. Several explanations have been offered for this phenomenon, including amassing of personal wealth, stockpiling for mercantile exchange, and accumulation for use in a prestige goods context. The present paper argues that extant data do not conclusively support any of these explanations, and it offers a new interpretation of the community’s vast shell hoards. They are seen within the materialist perspective as animate objects, forming a vast repository of supernatural power that was a central part of the community’s ritual system. This argument is extended to other features of Casas Grandes, including its reservoirs, water shrine, and bird burials.

Ankylosaurus

Ankylosaurus Jordan Wiklund (bio) When I was a boy, I treasured one book far more than others. It was an innocuous little thing, a staple-bound glossy rectangular softcover, its corners peeled, its cover creased. I don’t remember the title, and I don’t remember the author, but the book was an A-to-Z illustrated rhyming of the dinosaurs. I remember the cover was orange, and the poems were all sing-song, Seussian stanzas and couplets. I loved it—I read it every day. I’ve long since forgotten which dinosaurs were paired with which letters or how the stanzas differed from one another: D was for Diplodocus, I want to say, but it could very well have been Dilophosaurus. The one thing I do remember, however, is my favorite couplet: Clankity clankity clankity clank,Ankylosaurus was built like a tank! Sometimes I recite the first line—clankity clankity clankity clank—while walking to the light rail station outside St. Paul, stretching through the stiffness of the morning on my way to the platform, blinking myself awake, repeating that clunky mantra in time with the reverberant harmonics of the train upon the fretboard of the track as it clatters toward Minneapolis. I also recite it every time someone says Ankylosaurus, which is rare. He’s an easy one to remember, Ankylosaurus. Extinction merely refers to his being or not-being on the planet, but he’s alive and well in the Cretacean foothills of my mind. He’s the armored lizard—from his triangular head to his scaly toes, Ankylosaurus is shielded by fused plates of bone, separated only by smaller plates of bone, pebbling his body in armadillic ridges of unyielding [End Page 133] strength. His armor tapers to a two-fisted club at the end of his tail, like a knobby organic dumbbell—a shin-splinter, a skull-crusher, that tail. Four squat horns frame the sides of his head—two jowly cones sweep down and back from behind his beak, two sweep up from the top of his skull—and parallel rows of small, raised nubs and spikes comb his flank and polka-dot the plates of his armor, jutting up and out like miniature mesas upon the hardpan of his back all the way down to the peninsular bludgeon of his tail. He walks on all fours, low to the ground, shuffling, snuffling, snarfing for plants. Imagine the rooster tail dervishes of dust he chuffs into the protean, jungled troposphere of prehistoric North America. Imagine him roaming as the sunlight dapples his muddied body, camouflaging his progress in the brush. And imagine his fear as the cacophonous bellow of a blood-raged tyrannosaur breaks his peace—the snarl and chomp from the rex, the hiss and recoil from the ankylosaur, followed bythe whuff of his tail swinging free for the rex’s shins. Ankylosaurus had few natural predators and a rather efficient defensive mechanism. He was a tectonic wonder of evolution. I loved Ankylosaurus and thought about him often. I thought about him because I, unlike he, did not have an impenetrable suit of armor upon my back, nor a built-in, thought-activated bone-crusher at my disposal. I grew up skinny—narrow-chested, short-of-shoulder, with arms like uncooked strands of my great-grandma Vi’s spaghetti. From first grade until I graduated from high school, I walked about a mile to and from school every morning with my brother, Jared, and our friends, all year long. In elementary school and even (I’m a little embarrassed to admit) into middle school, I often repeated clankity clankity clankity clank, head down, eyes to the ground, hearing but not really listening to what anyone else was saying. I wasn’t concerned about physical harassment, but I possessed a vague, unspoken sense of the fleeting nature of our walk, these friends, this school, that time, those years. I didn’t know the word transient, but it might have described what I was feeling and what I saw. Sometimes I became melancholy, so I repeated the mantra because it made me happy. It was simple, and I reminded myself that Ankylosaurus probably didn’t...

Odontometric determination of sex at Mound 72, Cahokia

The mortuary context of Mound 72 at the Cahokia site is one of the most unusual ever described in prehistoric North America. Previous skeletal analyses suggested that four large mass graves within the mound contained only female skeletons. However, these findings were complicated by extremely poor bone preservation that limited the number of skeletal observations that could be made. Furthermore, most skeletons were aged in the 15-25 year range, a time when sexually dimorphic bony traits may still be developing. In this study, dental remains were used to examine sex in the four presumably all-female mass graves in Mound 72. Additional sources of information, including the original field/laboratory notes and new sexing data based on modern standards, were gathered to fully evaluate the dental estimates. Initially, discriminant function analysis was performed on odontometrics using the original Mound 72 sex assignment. Inconsistent results indicated that some of the skeletons may have been misclassified in the original analyses. To overcome this issue, discriminant function equations were generated using a large pooled skeletal sample from two sites in close temporal and geographic proximity to Cahokia. Application of the equations to Mound 72 revealed that each of the four mass burial groups contained individuals classified as male. These assignments were checked against the skeletal remains and the original field/laboratory notes. Discussion centers on how the results affect previous archaeological interpretations as well as the methodological considerations associated with this study.

Theory Testing in Prehistoric North America: Fruits of One of the World's Great Archeological Natural Laboratories

This paper has several interconnected goals. First and most generally, we will review the project represented by the papers in this dedicated issue and the SAA Symposium (2012) on Social Complexity and the Bow. This project centers on the ever-stronger and broader theory testing now becoming feasible in archeology and anthropology, in this case exploiting the unique natural laboratory represented by what we refer to as the North American Neolithic transitions. Second, we will strive to synopsize the papers in this issue as opportunities to falsify two general theories of the cause of increases in social complexity associated with the North American Neolithic: warfare and social coercion theories.(1) We argue that, though much work remains to be done, the current evidence supports one of the central predictions of both these theories, that the local arrival of elite bow technology was a central driver of local transitions to increased social complexity. This conclusion, if ultimately verified, has profound implications for the possibility of general theories of history. Third, we will argue that several important details of this evidence falsify warfare theory and support (fail to falsify) social coercion theory (the authors' favored perspective). Moreover, several potential falsifications of social coercion theory are amenable to alternative interpretations, leading to new falsifiable predictions. Finally, we discuss how interactions with our colleagues in this project produced new insights into several details of the predictions of social coercion theory, improving our interpretative capacity.

Introduction: Social Complexity and the Bow in the Prehistoric North American Record

This Special Issue of Evolutionary Anthropology grew out of a symposium at the 2012 Society for American Archaeology (SAA) meeting in Memphis, Tennessee (April 18–22). The goal of the symposium was to explore what we will argue is one of the most important and promising opportunities in the global archeological enterprise. In late prehistoric North America, the initial rise of cultures of strikingly enhanced complexity and the local introduction of a novel weapon technology, the bow, apparently correlate intimately in a diverse set of independent cases across the continent, as originally pointed out by Blitz. If this empirical relationship ultimately proves robust, it gives us an unprecedented opportunity to evaluate hypotheses for the causal processes producing social complexity and, by extension, to assess the possibility of a universal theory of history. The rise of comparably complex cultures was much more recent in North America than it was elsewhere and the resulting fresher archeological record is relatively well explored. These and other features make prehistoric North America a unique empirical environment. Together, the symposium and this issue have brought together outstanding investigators with both empirical and theoretical expertise. The strong cross‐feeding and extended interactions between these investigators have given us all the opportunity to advance the promising exploration of what we call the North American Neolithic transitions. Our goal in this paper is to contextualize this issue.

The Eye of God: Tranquility and Tradition . . . Mata Ortiz Pottery in Harmony with the Ancients

The Eye of God:Tranquility and Tradition . . . Mata Ortiz Pottery in Harmony with the Ancients Phil Stover (bio) "Papa" Julián Hernández knows everyone in town. Drive anywhere in Casas Grandes with him, and your conversation will be punctuated with the beep of the horn, the wave of a hand and a hearty "¿Cómo está? Having started twenty-three schools in twenty years, Julián Hernández has students everywhere. He is an outgoing, big man with an even bigger smile. If the Grinch's heart was two sizes too small, Julián's seems two sizes too big. He is passionate about his family, his school, the young people of his community, and . . . his pottery. Julián's family has lived near Casas Grandes for more than two hundred years. The pueblo of Casas Grandes is the stuff of a Mexican tour guide's fantasy. The small village of 5,000 people has it all: Saturday-night weddings with everyone dressed to the hilt, a delightful plaza in the center of town where locals take their evening strolls, a historic Catholic church with twin bell towers, and beautifully shy señoritas. It also has Mennonite farmers and Mormon fruit growers. George Romney, a governor and one-time American presidential candidate, was born and educated near here. Tradition and tranquility are the community's highest values. Casas Grandes has it all . . . and more. Casas Grandes is the site of the ruins of Paquimé, the largest ancient city of northern Mexico. Inhabited between ad 900 and 1450, Paquimé is an archaeologist's delight and an anthropologist's dilemma. No one knows exactly who the inhabitants of this great city were, where they came from, or where they went. With their macaws, ball fields and metalwork, they may have represented the northernmost reach of Meso-american culture. With their knowledge of desert hydrology, cisterns, [End Page 159] and architectural styles, they may have been the southernmost extension of the Great Chichimeca, connected to the better-known Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon, and Mimbres cultures. Maybe they were a little of both. One thing is known for sure: a pottery tradition developed at Paquimé that represents one of the highest forms of the art in prehistoric North America. Julián loves to talk about Paquimé and the old ones of Casas Grandes, not because they are a culture, but because they are his culture. Although we cannot directly connect any modern-day Mexican group back to that culture, it is clear that after two hundred years of family and geographical ties to Casas Grandes, Julián endorses the culture as his own, a tie that is clearly seen in the iconography of his pottery. He worked with Mexican archaeologists at the Paquimé dig in the sixties. He is proud that he helped map more than a thousand archaeological sites all over northwest Chihuahua. While appreciative of what it has meant to the community, Julián is a bit less enthusiastic about endorsing what has often been called "The Miracle of Mata Ortiz." The community of Mata Ortiz is the other world-famous neighbor of the pueblo of Casas Grandes. The village of Mata Ortiz doesn't have a tourist attraction; it is one. More than four hundred of the town's residents are potters. Their skills and income vary widely. Their pottery is handmade and hand-painted, and sometimes fired outdoors, for the most part in ways that would make the old ones at Paquimé proud. For years the economic survival of the town was in doubt; now, satellite dishes and new pickups dot the landscape. The best potters of Mata Ortiz have received worldwide acclaim. Their heritage is at the same time the great pottery tradition of Casas Grandes and the murky world of those who dug prehistoric pots to sell, then made pots to look old when the old ones were no longer readily available. This darker side of the Mata Ortiz force seems as ancient today as the ruins themselves. Even Julián himself says, "My older relatives dug pots and then made pots to sell as old ones. They didn't think they were doing anything bad. They were...

Differential visibility of treponemal disease in pre‐Columbian stratified societies: Does rank matter?

Treponemal disease is known to be associated with the compromised community health of permanent village settlement. This association explains its high visibility in the village-based, arguably chiefdom level, agriculturalist societies of late prehistoric (AD 1300-1600) North America. Within chiefdom-level societies, health differences have often been demonstrated between mortuary-defined "elite" and "nonelite" individuals. This theoretically should predict status-based differences in treponemal disease visibility. The prediction is tested in a five-site osteological sample (N = 650) from the Dallas phase (AD 1300-1550), a simple mortuary-defined two-tiered presumptive chiefdom level maize agriculturalist socioeconomic context from lower east Tennessee. The Dallas phase results affirm a general pre-Colombian North American pattern of no sex differences and display comparable adult to subadult frequencies. The study also reveals that given a sufficient sample size, "elites" do indeed exhibit a significantly lower frequency of tertiary stage treponemal disease. This can be attributed to better baseline health, which has been previously demonstrated in this sample. It may also be affected by the mortuary inclusion of achieved status individuals whose good health may have facilitated sociopolitical advancement. Another pattern that emerged is an apparent young adult age bias in disease visibility. This suggests that tertiary treponemal disease morbidity may either directly or synergistically factor in early adult age at death. Future research will address the veracity of this association.

Crude demographic proxy reveals nothing about Paleoindian population

Buchanan et al. (1) produced a population proxy for prehistoric North America from summed 14C probability distributions, a recently popular approach in archaeology (e.g., ref. 2). The nearly featureless curve from ≈15.0–9.0 calibrated ka BP showed gradual demographic increase but no evidence for a human population bottleneck at 12.9 ± 0.1 calibrated ka BP attributable to an extraterrestrial impact (3) or any effect of abrupt climate reversals at the beginning and end of the Younger Dryas, the extinction of 35 mammalian genera, or cultural transitions from Clovis to Folsom and later diversification of Paleoindian adaptations. In fact, the nondescript summed-probability distribution is a corrupt demographic proxy. Their smooth curve is due to a low-precision 14C database (52% of dates have measurement errors greater than ±100 14Cyr, 25% > ±200 14Cyr), which spreads metaphorical “population” over several calibrated centuries, filling gaps and dampening variability. Further, a priori archaeological information in a Bayesian framework (4) that could constrain these dates (e.g., stratigraphic relationships, diagnostic artifacts) are disregarded, and therefore Clovis dates contribute to Folsom population and vice versa. Furthermore, CalPal (5) applies a smoothing algorithm to the summed-probability distribution which levels out several sharp peaks in the true distribution. The result is an insensitive, low-fidelity population proxy incapable of detecting demographic change. Testing predictions of prehistoric population change requires high-precision 14C dates, understood in their stratigraphic and cultural contexts, critically evaluated within an explicit Bayesian model. The authors (1) brought none of these to bear on the problem.

Cleft palate: a case study of disability and survival in prehistoric North America

AbstractThis study presents an analysis of an adult male that demonstrates diagnostic markers of cleft palate. The burial is associated with the Grider Site, Late Woodland context (AD 500 to 1000), located in Pike County, Indiana, USA. The analysis draws on clinical and palaeopathology literature to consider other possible conditions responsible for the skeletal anomalies. Cleft palate occurs in about one in 1000 live births, and is one of the most common defects of the face. Despite the high frequency of cleft palate, few cases are reported from the archaeological record. It is possible that, in the past, few infants survived extreme forms of cleft palate, and such cases are not present to be recorded. Or, it is possible that the lesion simply goes undocumented. This analysis outlines the markers of cleft palate in this individual and demonstrates that a prehistoric culture could overcome the health issues experienced by an infant with the condition (full communication between the oral and nasal cavities) and survive to adulthood. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Direct detection of maize in pottery residues via compound specific stable carbon isotope analysis

Discovering what was cooked in a pot by identifying lipids trapped in the potsherds has been a highly successful method developed in recent years. Here the authors identify a compound which shows the pots had been used to process maize – probably the most important foodstuff in later prehistoric North America. The uptake of maize is confirmed as coincident with the Mississippian fluorescence.

Brief communication: Haplogroup X confirmed in prehistoric North America.

Haplogroup X represents approximately 3% of all modern Native North American mitochondrial lineages. Using RFLP and hypervariable segment I (HVSI) sequence analyses, we identified a prehistoric individual radiocarbon dated to 1,340 +/- 40 years BP that is a member of haplogroup X, found near the Columbia River in Vantage, Washington. The presence of haplogroup X in prehistoric North America, along with recent findings of haplogroup X in southern Siberians, confirms the hypothesis that haplogroup X is a founding lineage.

The death of Smokey Bear: The ecodisaster myth and forest management practices in prehistoric North America

Through time primeval Europe was transformed into a landscape where managed woodlands ( forestis ) became repositories for resources and wild woods ( silva ) were seen as being occupied by wild men, the savages. The importation into the New World of these attitudes resulted in verdant North America being classified as 'wilderness'. It was generally assumed that the worlds of the past were essentially unaltered by hunter-gatherer activities. By the twentieth century, forest management practices in North America, supported by the myth of the primeval past, encouraged old growth forests through fire suppression. The fallacy of the unmanaged forest of prehistory is now being challenged. In its place are put forward models of forests as managed sustainers of a wide range of resources. In such models, fire is an essential management tool, not an ecodisaster.