Through a commingled, fragmentary assemblage of skeletal remains (MNI = 9) recovered from a 1999 salvage excavation, this article explores the lives and deaths of individuals interred at the Brentwood Poor Farm, Brentwood, New Hampshire (1841–1868). This work demonstrates that bioarchaeological analyses of smaller samples can provide nuanced accounts of marginalization and institutionalization even

Archaeologists in North America and elsewhere are increasingly examining long-term Indigenous presence across multiple colonial systems, despite lingering conceptual and methodological challenges. We examine this issue in California, where archaeologists and others have traditionally overlooked Native persistence in the years between the official closing of the region's Franciscan missions in the 1830s

Circular shell rings along the South Atlantic coast of the United States are vestiges of the earliest sedentary villages in North America, dating to 4500–3000 BP. However, little is known about when Indigenous communities began constructing these shell-ring villages. This article presents data from the Hokfv-Mocvse Shell Ring on Ossabaw Island, Georgia. Although shell rings are often associated with

The Fremont provide an important case study to examine the resilience of ancient farmers to climatic downturns, because they lived at the far northern margin of intensive maize agriculture in the American West, where the constraints on maize production are made abundantly clear. Using a tree-ring and simulation-based reconstruction of average annual precipitation and maize growing degree days, along

Although land loss is among the most profound impacts that settler colonialism had for Indigenous societies across North America, archaeologists rarely study one of the principal colonial mechanisms of land dispossession: allotment. This process forever altered the course of North American history, breaking up collectively held Indigenous lands into lots “owned” by individuals and families while further

We examine provenance data collected from three types of geological resources recovered at Goat Spring Pueblo in central New Mexico. Our goal is to move beyond simply documenting patterns in compositional data; rather, we develop a narrative that explores how people's knowledge and preferences resulted in culturally and materially determined choices as revealed in those patterns. Our analyses provide

This article introduces a model that harnesses praxis as a powerful tool for critique, knowledge, and action within the realm of public archaeology. The adopted framework focuses on persistence as a middle-range methodology that bridges the material past to activist and collaborative-based projects. Recent research at Mission La Purísima Concepción in Lompoc, California, shows the effectiveness of

Among Líĺwat people of the Interior Plateau of British Columbia, an oral tradition relays how early ancestors used to ascend Qẃelqẃelústen, or Mount Meager. The account maintains that those climbers could see the ocean, which is not the case today, because the mountain is surrounded by many other high peaks, and the Strait of Georgia is several mountain ridges to the west. However, the mountain is

Multiple studies have demonstrated that European colonization of the Americas led to the death of nearly all North American dog mitochondrial lineages and replacement with European ones sometime between AD 1492 and the present day. Historical records indicate that colonists imported dogs from Europe to North America, where they became objects of interest and exchange as early as the seventeenth century

The Wichita and Affiliated Tribes have a long history of occupation in what is now known as Oklahoma. This includes evidence of habitations along Camp Creek and Sugar Creek near Anadarko in Caddo County. Here Wichita peoples camped, built grass houses and arbors, and held social gatherings leading up to and following the passing of the General Allotment Act in 1887. After allotment, communal camp and

From the Archaic period onward, Indigenous populations across the Eastern Woodlands cultivated a suite of crops known to archaeologists as the Eastern Agricultural Complex. However, aside from squash (Cucurbita pepo) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus), little evidence exists for the cultivation of these plants in the northeastern Algonquian homeland. Botanical analysis from the Manna site (36Pi4), located

In 2013, 36 Ancestors of African descent were identified in an unmarked eighteenth-century burial ground during construction in Charleston, South Carolina. The site, later referred to as the Anson Street African Burial Ground, was buried beneath the growing city and forgotten in the centuries that followed. The ethical treatment of these ancestral remains was of paramount importance to our community

In the Salish Sea region, labret adornment with lip plugs signify particular identities, and they are interpreted as emblematic of both membership in horizontal relationships and achieved status for traditional cultures associated with labret wearing on the Northwest Coast (NWC) of North America. Labrets are part of a shared symbolic language in the region, one that we argue facilitated access to beneficial

This article presents a systematic literature review of publications from 2014 to 2021 using “archaeological site” and “climate change” as keywords, in addition to several terms representing forms of stakeholder engagement. Articles were thematically coded to explore trends at the intersection of climate change, archaeology, and local and Traditional stakeholders. Results show that nearly half of the

At the turn of the twentieth century, American logging companies backed by the US colonial regime initiated extensive extraction in Bikol, Philippines. Industrial infrastructure and the involvement of a newly assembled Bikolano workforce left a profound imprint on the region's landscape. This article discusses a collaborative archaeological project that used archival materials, place-name analysis

The pressure knapping technique develops circa 25,000 cal BP in Northeast Asia and excels at producing highly standardized microblades. Microblade pressure knapping spreads throughout most of Northeast Asia up to the Russian Arctic, and Alaska, in areas where the human presence was unknown. Swan Point CZ4b is the earliest uncontested evidence of human occupation of Alaska, at around 14,000 cal BP.

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

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

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

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

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

The transition to maize agriculture frames important cultural shifts in the Eastern Woodlands. However, the tempo and mode of this transition are unclear, particularly when analytical techniques are not standard across the region. In this article, we present evidence of directly dated maize macrobotanical fragments from the Turpin site in southwest Ohio that date between cal AD 552–649 and 684–994

When the colonists who made up the Virginia Company of London established James Fort on the banks of the James River in 1607, they brought with them sheets of scrap copper. Based in large part on the experience of the earlier Roanoke Colony, the English knew that copper was a highly prized material among Native peoples of the Chesapeake, and they brought it with them as a trade item. Artifacts made

This article presents radiocarbon dates on 29 perishable objects deposited in shrine caves in the Jornada and Mimbres Mogollon regions of far west Texas and southern New Mexico. The dated objects include tablita fragments, effigies, prayer sticks, hafted projectile point foreshafts, and flat curved sticks. Analysis of the dates reveals three significant trends: a particular set of Indigenous ritual

Developments in radiocarbon dating and analysis provide new opportunities to develop high-resolution chronologies to explore changes through time. We explore the temporality of what has been called the Poverty Point culture of the lower Mississippi Valley circa 4200 to 3200 cal BP, especially the chronology of the type site, Poverty Point. Because of its complicated material culture elaboration without

Current evidence suggests that Indigenous farmers in the North American Southwest began canal irrigation in the second millennium BC, marking an important change in food production technology. Early canal systems are preserved in alluvial floodplains of the US-Mexico Borderlands region, tend to be deeply buried, and can appear as natural fluvial features. Here I discuss some of the challenges in identifying

Archaeology and cultural evolution theory both predict that environmental variation and population size drive the likelihood of inventions (via individual learning) and their conversion to population-wide innovations (via social uptake). We use the case study of the adoption of the bow and arrow in the Great Basin to infer how patterns of cultural variation, invention, and innovation affect investment

Many anthropologists have now adopted a relational view of the culture concept. Much research has shown that, far from being bounded or self-replicating, cultures emerge through interactions between social Others. These findings are particularly important to research on borderlands and peripheries, where communities routinely encounter wide-ranging social and political diversity. We present ceramic

We developed a new approach to identify vulnerabilities to water insecurity across entire archaeological culture areas by combining a paleohydrological model of the sensitivites of hydrological systems to droughts with least-cost analyses of the costs to acquire domestic water. Using a custom Python script integrated into ArcGIS Pro software, we calculated the pairwise one-way cost in time for walking

Feathers addresses the dual challenges of inferring original vessel counts from sherds and inference to use life from reconstructed vessels. His solution assumes the validity of sherd assemblages as units of observation that considerable research invalidates and overlooks methods that estimate original vessels from sherds. Feathers also doubts that use life can be inferred for reconstructed vessels

This article investigates Indigenous persistence within Mission Santa Clara de Asís in central California through the analysis of animal food remains. The Spanish colonial mission system within Alta California had a profound social and ecological impact on Indigenous peoples, altering traditional subsistence strategies and foodway patterns. Past research has highlighted the continued use of precolonial

Shott (2022, American Antiquity 87:794–815) argues that making inferences from ceramic data requires first inferring use lives of vessels—something that is difficult to do. This comment argues that the problem of differential use life becomes more tractable if the assemblage, rather than the vessel, is the unit of analysis. Aside from empirical reasons, theoretical considerations also favor the assemblage

In eastern North America, Indigenous peoples domesticated several crops that are now extinct. We present experimental data that alters our understanding of the domestication of one of these—goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri). Ancient domesticated goosefoot has been recognized on the basis of seed morphology, especially a decrease in the thickness of the seed coat (testa). Nondomesticated goosefoot

Archaeologists working in eastern North America typically refer to precontact and early postcontact Native American maize-based agriculture as shifting or swidden. Based on a comparison with European agriculture, it is generally posited that the lack of plows, draft animals, and animal manure fertilization resulted in the rapid depletion of soil nitrogen. This required Indigenous farmers to move their

Applying a coastal-geoarchaeological approach, we synthesize stratigraphic, sedimentological, mollusk-zooarchaeological, and radiometric datasets from recent excavations and sediment coring at Harbor Key (8MA15)—a shell-terraformed Native mound complex within Tampa Bay, on the central peninsular Gulf Coast of Florida. We significantly revise the chronological understanding of the site and place it

A long-term project to map and catalog all precontact Native American burial mounds in Iowa provides information about the number, location, form, survivorship, and rate of loss of mounds. This analysis reveals previously undocumented mound manifestations, including a large cluster of 200 linear mounds along the central Des Moines River valley. Historical records reveal that at least 7,762 mounds were

Social, political, and economic institutions covary with one another in heterogenous ways across space and time. Social Network Analysis (SNA) offers a set of analytical tools and conceptual frameworks that have allowed for formal comparisons of interactions, affiliations, and relationships in reconstructing historical trajectories of institutional change. Although archaeologists have made full use

During the Early Agricultural period (2100 BC–AD 50), preceramic farmers in the Sonoran Desert invested considerable labor in canal-irrigated field systems while remaining very residentially mobile. The degree to which they exercised formal systems of land tenure, or organized their communities above the household level, remains contested. This article discusses the spatial and social organization

This article addresses past and present bioarchaeological practices and human remains management in Quebec; it focuses on the challenges of creating a bioarchaeological database during a two-phase project initiated in 2018–2019 by the Kahnawake Mohawk Council. Its goal was to help Indigenous communities engaged in repatriation and rematriation procedures. Key information regarding human remains’ current

The Late Holocene Dry Period (LHDP) was a one-plus millennial megadrought (3100–1800 cal BP) that delivered challenges and windfalls to Indigenous communities of the central Great Basin (United States). New pollen and sedimentation rate studies, combined with existing tree-ring data, submerged stump ages, and lake-level evidence, demonstrate that the LHDP was the driest Great Basin climate within the

The symbiotic relationship between people and the genus Agave spans millennia and a vast geographical area encompassing Mexico, the southwestern United States, and the Texas borderlands. In the early 1950s, Richard MacNeish's investigations in Tamaulipas yielded evidence of past agave use in the mountains of northeastern Mexico. Excavations in the Ocampo Caves revealed 9,000 years of sporadic occupations

Perishable artifacts are invaluable tools for reconstructing past lifeways of hunter-gatherers, and when preserved in arid settings, they can inform on dynamic interactions between communities and the environment. Many such materials were recovered from early archaeological surveys in Utah and Nevada but were largely excluded from contemporary analyses because of small sample sizes, their fragmentary

Studies in the sociopolitics of archaeology have shown patterns of inequality in publishing. Because this inequality affects the richness of perspectives on the past, the extent of unevenness requires continual documentation. This article explores gendered and institutionally based patterns of authorship in prominent archaeology journals, archaeology papers in general science journals, and Sapiens

For at least three million years, knapping stone has been practiced by hominin societies large and small, past and present. Thus, understanding knapping, knappers, and knapping cultures is fundamental to anthropological research around the world. Although there is a general sense that stone knapping is inherently dangerous and can lead to injury, little is formally, specifically, or systematically

This article investigates the rise of social complexity of Cahokia's multiethnic city through a robust stylistic grammar analysis of early Caddo fine ware vessels at Cahokia's East St. Louis Precinct. We explore ceramic production and distribution to shed light on whether Caddo-like fine wares were produced by Caddo potters who lived and crafted at Cahokia, were produced by local Cahokia potters who

Ohio Hopewell is an archaeological concept that is known worldwide but that suffers from “a disarray of radiocarbon results” (Lynott 2015:60). Here, we establish a comprehensive dataset of 425 14C dates from Ohio Hopewell sites and apply formal chronometric hygiene criteria to all dates. We then iteratively assess the temporal placement and span of the six most important Ohio Hopewell sites—the Hopewell

Two types of features at the Late Archaic period Poverty Point site in Louisiana—large timber post circles and repetitively used activity surfaces later covered by mounding—are examined as spaces that were the products of historical event sequences involving their construction, their entwined but differing ritual uses, and their final deconstruction or removal. This approach is a particularizing, historicizing

Military garrisons in North America were provisioned with a diet based primarily on domesticates. A relationship between colonial diets and nationality has been an assumed truism, encouraging the belief that colonial diets were static and predetermined by European norms and leading to devaluation of colonists’ adaptability and agency. We challenge that perspective using zooarchaeological data on soldiers’

Modified teeth and jaws have long been recognized as important ceremonial objects during the Middle Woodland period of eastern North America. Direct evidence for the manufacture of the objects is exceedingly rare because they are typically recovered from mortuary contexts or ceremonial caches. Here, we present multiple lines of evidence pointing to the manufacture of modified teeth and jaws at the

The ubiquity and durability of lithic artifacts inform archaeologists about important dimensions of human behavioral variability. Despite their importance, lithic artifacts can be problematic to study because lithic analysts differ widely in their theoretical approaches and the data they collect. The extent to which differences in lithic data relate to prehistoric behavioral variability or differences

At the Painted Coulee site (24JT86), pictographs depicting both atlatl and bow technology are present. We utilized plasma oxidation followed by accelerator mass spectrometry to directly radiocarbon date the organic material in two paint samples. A red painting of an anthropomorph with a shield and a possible atlatl in conflict with a fleeing person holding a bow was dated to 1790 ± 50 RCYBP (cal AD

In 1584, Baltasar de Obregón described the people he met in the Casas Grandes Valley (CGV), Northwest Chihuahua, Mexico. He juxtaposed these “rustic” people with the sophistication of the ancient builders of Paquimé who had lived in the CGV. Seventy years later, the Spanish missionaries called the people in the CGV “Suma” and enlisted them to build Mission San Antonio de Padua de Casas Grandes. Scholars

Anthropological research has long theorized that emergent food-producing economies catalyzed high levels of inequality in human societies, as evident in the earliest use of jewelry made from gold, copper, and other precious minerals among early agricultural populations. Although the US Southwest appears to have been an exception, we report the discovery of two Basketmaker II period necklaces constructed

Radiocarbon dates on marine shell and other materials of marine origin appear significantly older than contemporaneous samples of terrestrial/atmospheric origin. Misunderstandings regarding the mechanisms that give rise to this “marine reservoir effect” (MRE), the terminology used to define it, and the mathematics used to describe it cause many coastal archaeologists to distrust or misinterpret marine

Recent investigations of Morton Village, a Mississippian and Oneota community formed following Oneota migration into the central Illinois River valley around AD 1300, focus on evaluating the social context for the remarkable violence evidenced at the adjacent Norris Farms 36 cemetery. Here, we use the concepts of thirdspace and hybridity to examine three areas of village life: creation of the physical

Drills and projectile points from a site often share a similar shaped base, and it is typically assumed that these drills are reworked hafted points. Measurements of triangular-shaped drills and triangular arrow points from an Iroquoian site indicate that, on average, these drills had narrower bases and were thicker than points. Additionally, most preserved point foreshafts from the western United

Plants and animals play a vital role in the human experience, from providing basic sustenance to creating unique social practices that may govern familial, political, or religious experiences; reconstitute identities; or forge social relationships. In this article, we present analyses on the ethnobotanical and zoological remains recently recovered from the Spring Lake Tract, Cahokia, a neighborhood

In the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico, people and turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) have had a reciprocal relationship for millennia; turkeys supplied feathers, meat, and other resources, whereas people provided food, shelter, and care. To investigate how turkeys fit within subsistence, economic production, sociopolitical organization, and religious and ritual practice in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern

Great kivas served as important ritual spaces and played significant roles in community integration throughout the Pithouse period (AD 550–1000) occupation of the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico. This article uses data from excavations at the Harris site, a large pithouse village located in the Mimbres Valley, to explore the role of great kivas and an associated plaza in community

Over the past 20 years, collaboration has become an essential aspect of archaeological practice in North America. In paying increased attention to the voices of descendant and local communities, archaeologists have become aware of the persistent injustices these often marginalized groups face. Building on growing calls for a responsive and engaged cultural heritage praxis, this forum article brings