Exam 2 Notes

Week 8: Arctic and Subarctic Part 2

Paleo-Arctic Summary

• Several sites in Alaska with dates between 14-13,000 cal BP

• The spread of mesic shrub tundra across Beringia at 15-14,000 cal BP rendered the region habitable for humans

• Broad diet hunting large and small post-glacial mammals (similar to the economy seen in Siberia but with more emphasis on waterfowl

• Coming in to the Holocene, Nenana seems to disappear

• But Denali becomes many things–the Northern microblade tradition lasts until ca. 5000 years ago

• People spread with the melting ice

Archaic Cultures

• Differ from west to east

  • Ocean Bay, Kodiak, Aleutian (west coast)

  • Northern Archaic (interior)

  • Shield (eastern interior to coast)

  • Maritime Archaic (east coast)

• Lack of securely dated sites

  • Some lack microblades, but complexes as whole seem to have them for a long time

• Increasing density (complexity?)

West Coast Archaic Cultures

• Ocean Bay (Kodiak Island)

• By 5000 B.P., coastal sites switch from ephemeral to large with middens

• By 3500 B.P.,

  • Complex society! Ties to northwest coast

  • Ranked status: differential treatment of the dead

  • Salmon dependent

• Most of what we know is thanks to archaeologists being hired to help mitigate damage from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989

• What was going on there 7-3,500 years ago:

  • Ground slate tools

  • Flaked leaf and stem points

  • Bone harpoon heads

  • Sea-mammal hunting

• Takli Phase (4,500-3,500 years ago)

  • Oil lamps

  • Semi-permanent sunken structures

• Kachemic Stage (3,500-1,000 years ago)

  • More ground slate

  • Ulu appears

    • Woman’s knife

  • Oil lamps

  • Toggling harpoons

    • Whale hunters were some of the most important people in the society

      • High risk, high reward

  • Labrets

    • Used for marking status

Aleutian Traditions

• Separate from 5000 BP onward

• Definite contact with Japan

• Stemmed points and knives

• Very late groundstone (500 BP) ulus

• Large coastal middens, probably semipermanent

• No ground slate

• Ancestral to modern Aleuts

Northern Archaic

• Onion Portage Site

• Large leaf-shaped bifaces

• Notches points & lots of scrapers

• Some microblades

• Stone net sinkers (fishing)

• ‘Ends’ ca. 1200 BP with bow and arrow

• Primary focus on terrestrial game (caribou & bison)

• Palisades complex (6,000-4,500 years ago)

• Portage complex (4,500-4,100 years ago)

Shield Archaic

• Northern Plains people (Agate Basin) moving north

• Ca. 8,000 until maybe historic

• Algonquian ancestors

• Hinters and fishers

• Small dispersed bands

• Boreal forest people

• No soil, BAD preservation of sites

Perishable Artifact Refresher

• Include bone, wood, ivory, plant matter, fur, and skins, or anything organic that decays

• What contexts are they found in?

  • Anaerobic environments

  • Dry caves and rockshleters

  • Submerged sites, wet sites, and peat bogs

  • Contact with metal (pseudomorphs)

  • Carbonized

  • Frozen contexts (ice parches, glaciers, ice caves, alpine settings)

  • Indirect evidence: impressions, pseudomorphs, interpretations of art

Laurentian/Maritime Archaic

• Fishers and deep sea hunters

  • Ramah chert

  • Toggle harpoons

• Some elaborate burials

• Paleoeskimo push out ca. 3,500 BP in the north

• Newfoundlands colonists gone by 3,000 BP

Paleo-Eskimo aka “Arctic Small Tool Tradition” aka Denbigh

• No modern descendants (DNA)

  • Arrived in Alaska ca. 4,500 years ago

    • New migration wave from Siberia

    • Spread across continent

  • First Arctic bow and arrow?

  • Microblades and burins

  • Caribou hunters & salmon fishing initially, more maritime later

  • Spawned multiple other later traditions

Eastern ASTT

• Independence Phase (~4.5-3.7k)

  • Earliest far-north Greenland

• Pre-Dorset Culture (3,700-2,000)

  • Aka Saqqaq

  • Burins and scrapers to work bone and ivory

  • Small recurve bows, but becoming less common

  • Harpoon for sea-hunting as land mammals decrease

  • Maybe had hunting dogs?

Dorset “Late Paleoeskimo”

• Origins near Hudson Bay ca. 2,500 years ago

• More elaborate

  • No bow and arrow

  • Soapstone lamps

  • Kayak-like boats

  • Non-dog sleds

    • No dog harnesses or bones…did they even have dogs?

  • Snow knives

  • Longhouses

• Replaced by Thule (?) by 1,200-500 years ago

• Famous for their art

  • Masks

  • Polar bear carvings

    • Potentially hunting training aides or warnings

Norton Tradition (3000-1200 BP)

• Western Arctic

  • Choris

  • Norton

  • Ipiutak

• Pottery! Learned from Asia?

• Permanent villages, that are not permanently occupied

  • Summer vs. Winter homes

Thule

• Inuit ancestors–continuous with historic period, developed from Norton

• From Bering Sea / Alaska ca. 1,000 BP

• In the true Arctic

• Umiaks and kayaks

• Whale hunting, toggle harpoons

• True dog sleds

• Pit houses/igloos

• Old Bering Sea & Okvik (2200-1250 yr BP)

  • NE Asia and Aleutians

• Birnik (2200-1250 yr BP)

  • NE Asian and AK coast

  • Toggling harpoon

• Thule (1050-400/200 yr BP)

  • Pan-arctic spread

  • Copper and iron

• Absolutely had contact with the Norse

  • Artifacts found in L’Anse aux Meadow

Thule/Dorset Debate

What Happened to the Dorset People?

• Outcompeted by the Thule?

  • Large-scale communal hunting and whaling, more division of labor?

  • Killed? Integrated?

  • Seeking materials?

• Climate change?

  • Warming, Thule from South

• Norse disease?

Norse

• First migration from the east (ca. 1000-500 BP)

• Killed Dorset with disease? SPECULATION

• Died out due to inflexibility?

• Pirates? Plague? LIA climate?

Other Late Cultures

• Central Subarctic Woodland Culture (2100 BP to contact)

  • Wild rice gathering

• Laurel Culture (2100 BP to contact)

  • Continuation of Shield Archaic, but with 1st subarctic pottery

Woodland-esque – connected to southern groups

• Blackduck (1450 BP to contact)

  • Ceramic tradition

  • Ancestral Ojibwe

• Selkirk (1050 BP to contact)

  • Ceramic tradition

  • Ancestral Cree

• Taltheilei (2600 BP to contact)

  • Hunter/gatherer

  • Ancestral Dene

General Trends

• People become increasingly maritime and more focused on coasts

• People become increasingly focused on migrating mammals inland

• Population densities always low

• Interconnectedness of groups?

• Replacement?

Week 9: Laws and Ethics

Modern Archaeologists

• Cultural resource management

• Federal and state agencies

  • BLM

  • Forest Service

  • Park Service

  • Departments of Transportation

  • Historic preservation offices

• Museums

• Colleges and universities

Global: UNESCO

• The General Conference of UNESCO adopted on nov 16 1972 “the Recommendation concerning the Protection at National Level, of the Cultural and Natural Heritage”

• UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage was adopted in 2001

• NOT adopted by the United States, but about 50 other countries

Federal Laws

• Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)

• Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act

• Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA)

• Abandoned Shipwreck Act

• Sunken Military Craft Act (2004)

  • All U.S. Military craft belongs to the federal government FOREVER

  • Along with foreign craft in United States area

• NAGPRA

• National Register of Historic Places

Early Anthropology

• People as specimens

• Collected artifacts by begging, borrowing, or outright stealing

• Collected humans and skeletons in much the same way

NAGPRA

• Requires museum inventories of remains

• Requires listing of contents and release of list

• Return of remains, sacred objects, and grave goods

• Requires consultation

• Directly a result of this early anthropology

Mitigation

• “The action of reducing the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something”

• Applies to public lands

3 Phase Approach (overseen by SHPO, THPO, or Federal Preservation offices)

• Assessing sites for National Register eligibility

  • Phase 1: Site location (surveys, historical research)

    • Survey

    • Assessment

    • Sites are considered not significant, or are avoided, or mitigation process starts

  • Phase 2: Site assessment (coring, mapping, test excavation)

    • Site delineation horizontally and vertically

    • Assessment of components

    • Sites are considered not significant, are avoided, or move into “data recovery”

  • Phase 3: Mitigation (which can be date recovery – large block excavation

    • Site cannot be avoided, so important information is recovered (ca. 5% of site area)

    • Large excavations, lots of lab analysis, reports and presentations

    • Destruction can happen afterwards

NRHP Criteria for Evaluation

• The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering, and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that possess integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and:

  • A. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history

  • B. That are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past

  • C. That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction

  • D. That have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history

Ethics

Excavation = destruction…Who owns the past?

Things to Consider

• Mound 72 at Cahokia

• Laws

  • Federal, permits, safety, human remains

    • Human remains considerations are different in the United States than in Europe

• Who owns the past?

  • Sites, artifacts, data, knowledge

  • Landowners, native descendants, the government, archaeologists, museums, universities

• Who makes decisions about…

  • When to dig, where to dig, how to dig, what to curate and keep in storage, what catalog information is needed, who gets to do destructive analysis, what to display in an exhibit, what can be photographed, and how it is displayed

What is consulting (NAGPRA)?

• The letter of the law is to tell the tribes you are doing something and give them a deadline by which they have to respond

  • This is the bare minimum

• Not an easy question

  • Ethical guidelines do exist

    • SAA, AAA, AAS, AIA, SHA

Ethical Principles…SAA

• Principle No. 1: Stewardship

  • The archaeological record, that is, in situ archaeological material and sites, archaeological collections, records and reports, is irreplaceable

  • It is the responsibility of all archaeologists to work for the long-term conservation and protection of

• Principle No. 2: Accountability

  • Responsible archaeological research, including all levels of professional activity

• Principle No. 3: Commercialization

  • The commercialization of archaeological objects – their use as commodities to be exploited for personal enjoyment or profit – results in the destruction of archaeological sites and of contextual information that is essential to understanding the archaeological record

  • Archaeologists should therefore carefully weigh the benefits to scholarship of a project against the costs of potentially

• Principle No. 4: Public Education and Outreach

  • Archaeologists should reach out to, and participate in cooperative efforts with others interested in the archaeoligcal record with the aim of improvig the preservation, protection, and interpretation of the record

  • In particular, archaeologists should undertake to:

    • 1. Enlist public support for the stewardship of the archaeological record;

    • 2. Explain and promote the use of archaeological methods and techniques in understanding human behavior and culture; and

    • 3. Communicate archaeological interpretations of the past

    • Many publics exist for archaeology including students and teachers; Native Americans and other ethnic, religious, and cultural groups who find in the archaeological record important aspects of their cultural heritage; lawmakers and government officials; reports, journalists, and others involved

• Principle No. 5: Intellectual Property

  • Intellectual property, as contained in the knowledge and documents created through the study of archaeological resources, is part of the archaeological record

  • As such it should be treated in accord with the principles of stewardship as a matter of personal possession

Week 9: Mounds

Early Mounds (6500 BP oldest)

• Constructions in stages

• Deliberate shapes

• Rarely burials, not house platforms

• Florida – shell mounds and rings

• Watson Brake site

Late Archaic (6000–3/4000 cal BP)

Poverty Point Tradition (3.7–2.5k)

• Early earthworks and mounds

  • Initial mounds – burials in existing middens

• Elaborate mortuary behavior

  • Trade beads, pendants, plummets

  • Transition to woodlands

• Lots of artifacts from all over the Southeast that ends up at poverty point

  • Large trade center

  • Lots of questions of which we do not have the answers to

Week 11: Millenium of Late Woodlands/Mississippians

Area

• Often not separated

  • Plains to west

  • Eastern woodlands to east

  • Northeast and southeast differentiated

• Climate vs. river and travel?

• Resources vs. historical interactions

Environment

• Glaciers

• Loess

  • Fine-grain sediment that has blown away from glaciers that has piled up

• Woodlands and farmlands

• Abundant rainfall

Research Questions

• Farming

• Complexity

• Interactions of ethnic groups

• Emergence of group identity

  • Symbolism

  • Gender roles

• Collapse

• Warfare

• Trade

Difficulties

• Farming

  • Private land

  • Site destruction

• Site visibility

• Looting

• Climate

Woodland Period (3,000–950 BP)

• Widespread pottery

• Complex tribal clan-based societies

• Horticulture: marsh elder and goosefoot

• Bow and arrow technology

• Permanent settlements

• Cemeteries become burial mounds/effigy mounds

  • Hopewell

  • Adena

Early (3–2.2k BP) and Middle (2.2–1.45k BP) Woodlands

• Lithics and points – stemmed arrow points

  • Exotic raw materials

  • Heat treated chert

• Groundstone

• Hopewell Exchange network trade goods:

  • Gorgets

  • Beads

  • Pipes

  • Stone, shell, ceramic and copper

Subsistence and Settlement

• Archaic-style with pottery

  • Continued foraging and horticulture, latter increasing in Middle

  • Smoking complex - Middle

• Mounds!

  • Large burial mounds and earthworks

  • Group/clan identity

  • Vacant Center Model - no obvious city centers or middens by mounds, dispersed hamlets use mounds as ceremonial complexes

Ceremonial Complexes

• Adena Mound-Building (2.5-2k BP)

  • Huge w/ ditch and embankments

  • Multiple burials (wood lined, cremated, bundle)

  • Adena points, blades, pottery grave goods

  • Carved stone tablets

  • These kinds of things were NOT found in Adena villages, because there isn’t Adena villages!

    • Begs the question: What were they doing in their everyday life?

• Illinois and Ohio Hopewell Burial Mounds

  • Clustered along rivers

  • Elaborate trade networks

  • Small settled communities

  • “Interaction sphere”

Late Woodland (1450–850 BP)

• Breakdown of Hopewell trade networks

• Invention/adoption of bow and arrow

• Few mounds

  • Intrusive mound culture

• Tribes

• Year-round residence

• Fairly common warfare

• Non-uniform, regional variation

Central Mississippi Valley

• Baytown Period (1650–1250 BP)

• Plum Bayou Period (1250–950 BP)

  • Incipient Mississippian culture

  • Large towns begin

  • Mound centers

  • Toltec – 18 mounds

    • Platform mounds

    • Burial mounds

    • Copper and exotic materials return – trade!

Mississippian (1000 BP – 850 BP)

• Full time maize/bean/squash agriculture

• Large residential mounds – admin and religious centers of large districts

• Resumption of trade networks

• Chiefdoms – Chief manages land, management, surplus, and trade

• Time periods

  • Early: 950–750 BP

  • Middle: 750–550 BP

  • Late: 550–400 BP

    • 1400-1550 AD

Mississippian Society

Material Culture: High Craftsmanship

• Wide variety of pottery

• Ceremonial and trade items

  • Gorgets

  • Beads

  • Stone palettes

  • Figureines, copper plates

• Fabrics

• Discoidals – used in ball game Chunkey

  • Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

Fort Ancient (950–700 BP)

• Woodland-style continuation during Mississippian times

• Nucleated villages with small plazas and communal buildings

• Maize and local agriculture, smaller scale

• Stone box graves

Caddo (1150–250 BP)

• Local Mississippian expansion in East Texas and Arkansas

• Corn, beans, squash, and other crops

• Continuation of woodland period Fourche Maline and Mossy Grove cultures

• Beehive-shaped grass houses

Calusa (1000–350 BP)

• Permanenet villages – huge shell mound architecture

• Marine reliance

• No maize, or arable land for other farming

• Complex chiefdom

Endings?

• Factional violence

• Drought

• Loss of spiritual power?

Week 11: Great Plains

Topics

• Paleoindian mammoth kill sites

• Archaic continuation of Paleoindian mobility

• Communal hunting

• Woodland period local cultivation

• Village traditions – migration, horticulture, and complexity

• Medicine wheels?

• Late period migrations

• Warfare

Environment

• Eastern plains

  • Wetter, tall grass

  • Isolated forests in rivers/valleys

  • Loess fields, kettle ponds, pluvial lakes

• Western plains

  • Dry rain-shadow of rockies

  • Short grass

Difficulties

• Surface sites

• Often little stratigraphy, little dating

• Site visibility (loess, sandhills)

• Large tracts of private land, low population density

• Little evidence of settled, complex groups in most places (sites are comparatively low visibility)

Pleistocene Environment

• Glaciation and post-glacial environments

  • Loess

• Variable weather/climate

• Little rainfall

• Few trees

• Glacial Lake Agassiz

Pre Clovis?

• Loess sites with broken bones

• La Sena – ca. 17,000 years ago

• No stone tools, but how did the bones break?

Wally’s Beach, Alberta

• 13,300 cal BP

• 8 horse and 1 camel hunted and butchered

• Core tools, chopper, biface, flakes

Lindsey Mammoth, MT

• Single disarticulated mammoth – 14,250 cal BP

• No stone tools, 8 sandstone blocks

• Bone breakage, stacking, clear cut marks

Gault Site, TX – Area 15

• Michael Collins: 16-20,000 cal BP

• Recent publication of possible materials beneath Clovis layers with diagnostic points

• Possible stemmed, lanceolate, and fishtail-like points

Clovis and Late Paleo

• Clovis (13k) – most classic, dated Clovis assemblages in Plains

  • E.g., Gault, TX, Blackwater Draw, NM, Jake Bluff, OK, Domebo, OK, Lange-Ferguson, SD, LaPrele, WY, etc.

• Folsom (12k) - and other late paleo lanceolate (Goshen, Plainview, Agate Basin) also primarily on the Plains (makes sense for highly mobile, big-game hunters)

Archaic Period (ca. 8500–2500 BP)

• Paleo big-game hunting continues

• Small changes from Paleo…

  • Adoption of atlatl

  • Some grinding stones

  • Burnt rock middens/earth ovens

  • Pithouses

• Early archaic: 8.5k–5k cal BP

• Middle archaic: 5–3.5k cal BP

• Late archaic: 3.5-2.5/1.5k cal BP

Subsistence: Delicious Bison

• Highly mobile: Pack dogs!

• Kills in late summer/fall

• Meat, hides, bone for tools

• Small kills earlier…by end, mass kills with grease processing

• Arroyo traps, corrals, and bluffs

  • Often repeated use

  • Head smashed in site

Not Just Bison

• Earth ovens and various plants

Structures

• Pithouses

  • Circular w/ central pole

  • Winter

• Tipis

  • More mobile, hard to date!

Early-Middle Archaic (8500–3500 cal BP)

• Early: Altithermal warm/dry period

  • Abandonment of western Plains?

  • Possible use of mountains

  • Mustang Springs: wells!

• Middle: Foragers return

Late Archaic (3.5–2.5/1.5k)

• Corner tang knives

• Tipi rings

• Bigger earth vens

• Medicine wheels

  • …and pottery?

Nebo Hill Phase (4500–2600 BP)

• Lanceolate points

• Hoes, gouges, manos, etc.

• Fiber tempered and untempered pottery

• Very broad based diet…not good evidence of cultigens

Woodland Period (2500–1150 BP)

• No agriculture

  • Horticulture on rivers in east

• Burial mounds on the rivers

• Adoption of bow and arrow?

• Stone tempered cermaics

  • Rare away from river valleys

• Hopewell (E. Woodlands) and SW influence

Subsistence

• Horticulture!

  • Gardening river valleys

  • Pre-maize: local cultivars

    • Marsh elder

    • Wild barley

    • Squash

    • Maygrass

    • Sunflower

    • Tobacco

• Pottery!

  • Food storage

  • Cooking

  • Sedentism is required for pottery, so a lot of them didn’t bother

Away From the Rivers…

• Better bison hunters, no crops

• Besant (2000–1100 BP)

• Avonlea (1500–950 BP)

• So many scrapers

• Late prehistoric tradition (1500 BP–contact)

Plains Village (1150–Historic)

• Earthlodges & villages

• More dedicated to horticulture

  • Maize/beans/squash added

  • Still hunting/foraging

• Hoes, awls, scrapers, ground stone

• Cord impressed pottery

• Warfare (Crow Creek)

Central Plains (950–500 BP)

• How did maize/beans arrive?

  • Migrants from the East?

  • OR, more likely, inter-marriage and trade

Middle Missouri (1050–400 BP)

• Fortified villages with ditches/palisades

• Mostly sedentary

• Defending against central Plains migrants?

Coalescent Tradition (650 BP – Historic)

• Blend of central plains and middle Missouri – migrants and conflict

• Early fortified villages w/ circular houses

• Later unfortified square houses

• Crow Creek…Oneota?

Southern Plains (1150 BP – Historic)

• Southwest influence

• Pueblos

• SW style pottery

Protohistoric

• HORSES! and secondary domestication

  • Big deal for the natives, completely change the tribes

• Greatly increased mobility

  • Long distance trade

  • Raiding/warfare

  • Bison hunts

  • Slavery?

  • Horses = wealth

• Increasing complexity?

Timeline

1541: Coronado Expedition

1680: Pueblo Revolt – Native SW acquired 1000s, of Spanish horses, sold them to the Plains

Historic Period Timeline

• Plagues from 1600s–1800s, some groups over 95% fatality

• 1820s–1860s: Plains states gain statehood

• 1830s: Sam Houston promoted Native American negotiation, peace, trade…post-Houston Indian removal and slaughter

• U.S. pioneers slaughter bison herds – ~100 bison left by 1900 AD

Resistance and Defense

• The “Indian Wars”

  • Gold and fur trappers

• Treaties and “treaties”

• Reservations, ghost dances, and Wounded Knee

Week 12: The Plateau

Topics

• Migrations/depopulation/repopulation?

• Native rights

• Site looting (which is correlated with above, but not the same)

• Major environmental changes and reactions (linked to first topic)

• Site management/reservoir surveys

• Tephrochronology

Geography

• Cascades to the west, Plains/Rockies to the east

• Great Basin deserts to the South, Fraser River to north

• Snake River Plain

  • Some include this in Great Basin instead of Plateau

Uplift-Plateau Environment

• Arid high-plains/steppe

• Mountains

• Volcanic activity

• Columbia River and major drainages

  • Channeled Scablands

• Palouse loess formations

Late Pleistocene: Missoula Floods (15,000-13,000 cal BP)

• Geologists J Harlen Bretz first described Washington’s Channeled Scablands as being caused by massive, catastrophic floods at the end of the Pleistocene

  • Ice dam in Montana formed huge glacial lake

  • Multiple episodes of dam melting/lifting, floods, then dam reformation

  • Formed a variety of macro-alluvial features, including huge canyons in days, which went against Catastrophism

    • But, were people here?

Cooper’s Ferry

• Southeastern edge of Plateau

• Occupations up to 16,000 cal BP

• Extensive Western Stemmed tradition assemblage akin to Great Basin

• Pits?

• WST association makes sense?

  • Artifacts are NOT Clovis

  • Some say it is evidence of early routes to the Americas

    • Similar artifacts in Japan

Richey-Roberts, a.k.a. East Wenatchee Site

• Clovis cache – exceptionally large Clovis points

• Date unclear

• Only Clovis on the Plateau, everything else is WST

  • Scientists think this is a special site, but aren’t quite sure why

• WST may be pre-Clovis diagnostic

• 15–16,000 cal BP migrations along coast spread inland south of ice sheets

• Clovis was either derived from stemmed, or part of later migration

“Early Period” Archaeology Post-Clovis (12,000–8,000 cal BP)

• ‘Paleoarchaic’ tradition?

• WST traditions continues at several sites along Columbia & Snake rivers and tributaries

  • Lind Coulee (11,000 cal BP)

  • Sentinel Gap (11,900 cal BP)

  • Marmes Rockshelter (up to 11,200 cal BP)

• Some microblade usage in the North

• Overall high mobility, use of bifacial tools, scrapers, gravers, bola stones

  • Rare, but increasing over time ground stone and expedient tools

  • Early shelters (9,500) by rivers and lakes and Canyon-side rockshelters suggest long duration near rivers for fishing very early

• Windust → Cascade Tradition → Bitterroot

Kennewick Man

• Skeleton washed into reservoir in Washington

• 8,900–9,000 cal BP

• Cascade point embedded in bones

• CONTROVERSY

  • Early NAGPRA case – archaeologists claim skeleton is “European”

  • Jim Chatters and others fight court case against Native groups

  • Don’t share data, hostile about it

  • Eventually, he is given to Native groups

Middle Period (8,000–4,000 BP)

• Forages more than collectors mostly prior to 5300 BP

• Increasing plant use

• Western Idaho Burial Complex

• Pit houses suggest some collector strategy by 5300 BP

  • Oldest: ~7000 BP

  • Pit of variable depth, large wooden or sod roof structure with entrance through chimney/tunnel

  • Good for cold, good for storage, but less mobile

  • Sweat lodges

Early Middle Period (8,000-5300)

• Northern: Nesikep Forages (deer and elk)

  • Microblades

  • Later replaced by Lochmore (Salishians)

    • Salmon fishers/coastal

    • Linguistic evidence

• Southern: Root use, earth ovens

  • Expedient tools

  • Hopper mortars

  • Burned rock middens (camas and other roots)

Mt. Mazama Eruption

• 7700 cal BP

• Formed Crater Lake

• Major marker horizon

• How did it effect Plateau foragers?

• Cryptotephras

Western Idaho Burial Tradition (6,000–4,000 cal BP)

• Human burials (flexed) are place in unmarked cemeteries with a preference for high sandy knolls along river terraces

• Natural interment features have not been culturally modified, and no tombs or chambers of any type are known to exist

• Pipes, turkey tail points, ochre, mortar bases, and other grave goods

Late Middle Period (5,300–4,000 cal BP)

• Seasonal collectors along rivers and forest/steppe margins – ecotones

  • Ecotone: Region of transition between two biological communities

• Changes in settlement

• Pithouses

  • Many shapes, many types (regional/cultural differences? functional?)

  • Long term settlement (seasonal in some areas)

  • Evidence of social ranking

  • Looting and disturbances common in present

• Very generalized subsistence – maximum diversity in this period

• Trade (shell and obsidian, some food)

• 4500–4000 BP population crash?

Late Period (4,000–250 BP)

• Ethnographic roots

• Following brief abadonment of storage/sedentism, it’s back during this period!

• Collectors in many places (storage and salmon)

• Intensive huge pithouse villages

  • Complexity

• Bow and arrow appears (though is not immediately adopted anywhere)

• Harpoons

Early Late Period (4,000–2,500 BP)

• Collector strategy/more storage technology

• Widespread use of pithouse increases

• Salmon and shellfish use increases as climate cools/wets

  • Shellfish are not sustainable and healthy enough to feed one person, however generational villages (children and seniors) can harvest shellfish to supplement diet and turn a profit nutritionally for the whole village

• Exotics (trade?) less common at this time

Middle Late Period (2,500–1,500/1,000 cal BP)

• Large pithouse villages become common (100+)

• Evidence for social inequality

• Conflict became more common

• “Interaction spheres” result from inequality

  • Politics & elites through trading

• Dentalium

Hoko River Site (2,500–1,600 cal BP)

• Originally excavated with spray hoses

  • ‘Hydraulic’ excavation

• Ancestral site of the Makah people

• Lots of perishable artifacts found

Refresher: What constitutes “perishable” artifacts?

• Organic materials susceptible to decomposition

• Textiles: Fabrics, cloth, tapestries, clothing, baskets

• Basketry: Parching trays, winnowing trays, seed beaters, carrying baskets, burden baskets, water baskets, cooking baskets, hats

• Cordage: Netting (antelope, rabbit, birds, fish, insects), lacing, snares, clothing, (rabbit skin robes, laces), jewelry, random rope and binding

• Others: Moccasins, sandals, arrow foreshaft, bows, looms

How are perishables useful?

• Directly datable using AMS

• May be decorative: Made of many parts and time consuming to make

• Personal: Used all of the time in every part of life

• Represent the majority of material culture!

• Continuity: Between past and present technology

Late Pacific Period (1500 BP – Contact [ca. 1750 AD])

• Dead no longer buried in middens

• Increased warfare

• Whale hunting – prestige based!

• Ancestors of modern groups

• More warfare and population crash during MCA/LIA

  • Bow and arrow

• Less preservation, but…

Wet Sites

Ozette Site (~500 BP)

• “America’s Pompeii”

  • Buried log houses and all of their contents almost instantaneously

• Ethnoarchaeology: “Direct historical approach”

  • Makah were involved immediately and throughout the entire process

  • Norma Pendleton, Makah

  • Ed Carriere, Suquamish

• Public archaeology

• 90% perishable!

  • More than 55,000 artifacts were found total

Subsistence Strategies

• Foraging/Collecting: Wild plant and animal food is gathered rather than cultivated or herded (includes hunting, gathering, fishing and scavenging)

• Horticulture: Plants are brought together in gardens, usually also with some free-range animals

• Agriculture: Humans cultivate and domestic plants based on specialization in one or a few crops. Permanent, uses plows, work animals, fertilizer, etc. to heavily modify landscape

• Pastoralism: People specialize in raising one or a few animals

• Industrialism: Based on the extraction of a broad range of resources and the sharp expansion of productive capabilities using complex technology

…but are these Old-World biased?

Complexity Without Farming?

• “Salmon ranchers”

• Shellfish beds – “Mariculture”

• Cultivated some crops

  • Wapato, camus, other roots

• Altered and cultivated forest, meadow, wetland, and coastal areas for food production (controlled fire, transplantation, etc)

• Variability of availability led to extensive resource management which required managers and distribution networks

Potlatches and Social Complexity

• Give away to gain power

• Ethnic ties/family ties

• Ceremonial gift-giving

• Slavery was common

• Some slaves can be “freed”

Historic Contact – 1700s

• Early explorers lead to fur trade

• 1840s – post-gold rush logging industry

• 1850s – first reservations in British Columbia

  • Potlatches were banned in reservations

• Late 1800s–early 1900s – “Triangle of Fire” Forts in Washington

Beeswax Wreck

• Spanish Galleon, left Manilla in 1693

  • Carrying beeswax and porcelain

• Recorded in 1813 by fur trader

• Used by local Clatsop tribe

Week 13: California

Topics

• Paleoindian

  • Is it really?

• Archaic

  • Regional diversity

  • Complexity begins?

• Pacific

  • Regional diversity/origins of modern groups

• Early contact!

  • Spanish colonialism and missions

Environment

Three Major Zones:

• Coast

  • Rocky cliffs, bays, and lagoons

  • Northern coastal – Redwood forest

  • Southern coastal – Coast range

• Central Valley

  • Lush marshes, grasslands, oak woodlands

  • Chaparral foothills

• Sierra Nevada Range

  • Alpine meadows

  • Pine forests

Pleistocene California

• Less landform change than everywhere else we have discussed so far, but…

  • Truncated middens

  • Loss or land space (less than elsewhere – steep shelf)

  • Areas that were wet became dry and vice versa

• Earthquakes…!

First Californians: 130,000 years ago?!

Cerutti Mastodon Site

• Fractured mastodon bone

• Huge cobble tools?

• Probably not…

  • Faulting area

  • Natural processes

  • No modern humans

Early People: Paleocoastal Model?

• Not Clovis at same time as Clovis

• Channel Islands sites

• Santa Rosa Island

  • Arlington Springs Man (13,000 cal BP)

    • Human remains (femurs)

  • Pygmy mammoths!

• CA-SRI-512

  • Channel Island barbed points, crescents

  • Dated to around 12,000 to 11,350 (calendar) yr BP

  • Found in situ

  • More than 5000 bone fragments

  • Lithics made of local island chert

    • One piece of obsidian debris

      • From eastern California

    • Also found on 3 other Santa Rosa sites, nowhere else

    • Hunting fowl, sea mammals

• Coastal migration/Adaptation?

Archaic (ca. 10000–4000 BP)

• Long trends, not clear ending or beginning

• Regional patterns

  • General focus on foraging

    • Much use of hard seeds that need grinding

    • Mortars, pestles, millingstones are diagnostics

    • Coast and inland marshes and inlets

• Sites on high ground? Or preservation?

• San Diegutio complex: lat paleo/paleoarchaic complex in s. californaia (~10k BP)

• Millingstone Horizon: overarching term for much of Archaic period

La Jolla Complex (8500–2500 BP)

• Southern Coastal California people

• Many sites drowned/eroded

  • Settled on lagoons and estuaries

• Manos/metates and “discoidals”

• Informal stone tools

• Flexed burials

• MUCH shellfish use – large middens

• Some (rare) fish and sea mammals

• Littoral use

• Found on Channel Islands too!

  • But slightly different and maybe pithouses

• Pauma Complex – inland sites with no middens

• “Extreme cultural conservation or continuity has often been considered to have been one of the most notable characteristics of this period”

Borax Late Tradition (ca. 10000–2500 BP)

• Borax Lake points

  • Oldest considered to be a variant of Clovis?

• Ovoid flake tools

• “Charmstones” – fishing? Ritual?

• Residentially mobile foragers

  • Seasonal round

  • Local plant and animal resources

• Linked to Yukian and Hokan historic language groups (long continuity)

Pacific Period (Post-Archaic)

• Complex foragers (collectors)

• Limited (if any) agriculture

• Later chiefdom with permanent & seasonal villages

  • Large population densities (some 1000+)

• Large and stable-ish trade networks

• Date for complexity varies! ~4000–2,500?

Coastal People: Middle Period (4000–1000 BP)

• Southern end, focus on acorns

• Central inland hunting

• In general, fishing increased

• Shellfish still important

• Exotic trade (shell [beads], steatite, obsidian)

Coastal Late Period (ca. 1000 BP – Historic)

• Origins of Chumash Chiefdoms

• Trade (especially beads)

• Sea mammal hunting

• Tomols begin ~1300 BP

• Arrowheads + shell inlaid steatite

• Complexity

Southern Coastal – Late Period

• Coasts and inland

• Cuyamaca and San Luis Rey

• Brownware ceramics

  • Bowls, trays, pipes, rattles, effigies, etc.

• Side-notched arrowheads

• Ollas

• Acorns

• Cremation

• SW contact? Numic spread?

Week 13: Southwest

Topics

• Human adaptation to extreme aridity and variability

• Suspicious Pre-Clovis sites

• Clovis?

• Basketmaker (Archaic)

• Plains influence

• Pueblo culture!

  • Rise and fall of Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi)

  • Origins of agriculture

  • Origins and development of complexity

  • Post-Pueblo population movement

Relative vs. Absolute Date

• Absolute dates – calendar

• Relative dates – dates expressed relative to one another

Stratigraphy

• From geology

• Law of superposition

  • Older things are underneath

Association

• Artifacts in association were buried together

• Can then be used to cross correlate sites

Techniques for Absolute

• Historical records

  • Historical Chronologies and Calendars

    • “King lists”

      • China, Near East, Egypt, Mesoamerica

    • Historical texts/calendars

      • Last 5000ish years at most

    • Caution…

      • Terminus post quem

      • Time range: Varies

      • Need accurate records of years

      • Archaeology still needs to be linked to chronology

• Annual cycles

  • Lake Varves

    • Based on regular seasonal fluctuations

    • Winter/summer sediment differences (freeze/thaw)

    • Rarely used for sites, but used to calibrate radiocarbon ages

  • Dendrochronology

    • Annaul growth ring of trees correlated through time

    • Time range 0–15,000 (in N Europe, ca. 11,500 elsewhere)

    • Directly dates wood at sites, calibrates radiocarbon ages too

    • Problems: need annual tree growth, right tree species for direct dating of site; old wood problem

• Radioactive decay

  • Half-life

    • Machines burn sample and measure isotope percentages…

    • Breakdown of radioactive isotope to stable isotope is predictable (ish)

    • Date includes standard deviation (3500 ± 50 BP)

    • ¹⁴C = 5,730 years

      • So, if something had 100 atoms in life, after 5,730 years, it would have ~ 50, and after 11,460 years it would have ~ 25, and so on

  • Time range

    • Ca. 50,000 BP – 1950

    • Most important

    • Datable materials – organics

  • Limitations

    • Calibration problems

    • Need organics

    • Only 50,000 BP

  • Calibration is needed

    • Relative percentages of carbon isotopes are not constant

    • Done by annual cycle dating

  • What to date?

    • Anything that was once living or contains carbon

• Charged particles

  • OSL, IRSL, TL

  • Time range

    • Ca. 0–100,000 BP

  • Datable materials

    • Quartz sand grains

  • OSL – Sunlight exposure, burial

  • TL – Burning, burial

  • Can be used with no organics!

  • Limitations

    • Huge standard deviations

    • Expensive

    • Controversial

  • Paleomagnetism

    • Works on the principle that magnetic north varies through time, and iron particles are always aligned to north

    • However, if you build a fire pit, and the ground beneath the fire turns to clay, the iron particles will stay aligned to what north was at the time of the fire's creation, providing a record of the Earth's magnetic field at that specific moment

• DNA

Ways of Writing Ages

• 0 BP = 1950 AD

  • This is because radiocarbon dating was invented in 1950 AD

• CE = AD

• BCE = BC

• Calendars give years (that need calibration)

Environment

Very arid!

Basin and Range

• G.B.-like, elevation-variable

• Deserts

• Mesas

Colorado Plateau

• G.B. style pinon/juniper, sagebrush steppe

Southern Rockies

• High elevation

• Spruce and fir forests

Sparse resources, rivers, and weather variability

• Maize, beans, and squash were very important

Pleistocene Southwest

Pre-Clovis footprints?

• White Sands, NM

• Ancient footprints in mud by Pleistocene Lake Otero

• Dates 21-23,000 cal BP

• Issues

  • No artifacts

  • Geochronology?

    • Ruppia seed reservoir effect?

    • BUT correlates with U series dates

    • Sounds stratigraphy

  • Are they human footprints?

    • 2019 study shows human and sloth footprints – no toes

    • Sloth prints LOOK human

    • Excavation of prints not explained, no photos!

    • Human “interpretation” of sloth prints?

Pre-Clovis: Pendejo Cave?

• ~50–75 kya cal BP

• Not really a site…

  • Only a few bones

Paleoindian: Clovis and Later

• Concentrated in Plains to the east, but some Clovis in SW:

  • Lehner and Murray springs

    • Clovis mammoth kill sites

  • El fin de Mundo site

    • Gomphothere kill site

• Other lanceolate-pint complexes to the west

  • Non-Clovis lanceolate?

  • San Dieguito/Ventana (Paleoarchaic?)

Southwestern Early and Middle Archaic (8000-3500 cal BP)

• Possibly similar to G.B. but very understudied!

  • Highly mobile, low-population foragers, ephemeral sites

• Dart point traditions

  • Pinto (California and G.B.) – 8,000–1,400

  • Oshara – 7,450–1,550

  • Cochise – 9,450–2,150

  • Chihuahua – 7,950–1,700

Other major changes similar to Archaic in CA and Great Basin

• Ground stone

  • Seed processing

• Broad spectrum diet

  • Small game, increasing big game after Altithermal hot/dry ends

  • Many plants – storage pits

• Shallow pit houses by 5100

• Southern foragers constrained to river valleys

Southwestern Late Archaic (3500–1750 cal BP)

• Cooler/wetter climate

• Growing populations

• Early Agricultural Period – possible incipient agriculture as part of forager diets? Earliest maize & squash 3.5–4 kya

  • Earliest beans and other cultivars – 2.5–2.2 kya

• Late Cochise culture!

• Irrigation

• Terraced village – Cerro Junanaquena

• La Playa site, Sonora, MX

  • Hundreds of burials

  • Dozens of pit houses

  • Flood-plain farming

• Social complexity

• How did farming get here?

  • Migration of Uto-Aztecan?

  • Trade to existing foragers?

• What form did it take?

  • Sedentary villages w/ irrigation vs. more “horticulture” style planted fields, returned to by foragers in later season

Farmers and Villagers (1750–Contact)

• Four major sub-regions

  • Anasazi (Ancestral Pueblo)

  • Mogollon

  • Hohokam

  • Patayan

• Agriculture – Corn, beans, and squash from Mesoamerica

  • Chapalote popcorn

  • Beans and legumes (i.e. seva beans, jack beans)

  • Cushaw and other squash

  • Cotton

  • Yucca

  • Amaranth

  • Little barley grass

  • Domesticated animals

    • Turkey

    • Parrots

      • Probably for feathers

• Hamlets and villages

• Irrigation

Why switch to farming? The theories:

• Readiness?

  • Once planting figured out, foragers switched automatically

    • I.e. when Mesoamericans breed dry-adapted crops

  • BUT late Archaic farming/foraging was mixed so this theory isn’t entirely true

• Population growth?

  • Food-crises force agriculture adoption

  • Foragers resist – HUGE time/energy investment in establishing and maintaining agricultural systems, which may lead to hesitation in transitioning from foraging to farming practices

• Immigration?

  • Immigrants from Mesoamerica brought farming

  • BUT 1000+ years of partial-farming – breeding period?

  • Inter-marriage?

• Risk reduction?

  • Initially another food source added to forager lifestyle – plant and leave

  • Increasing reliance

Farming – Pros and Cons

PROS:

• Large amounts of food, supporting huge populations

• Generally more predictable

CONS:

• Much more time investment

• Dense populations breed disease

• Malnutritions (esp. monocropping)

• Inequality and extreme poverty

• Institutionalized violence and warfare

• Ecological destruction

• The bigger they come…

Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi)

Basketmaker II: 1950–1450 BP (0–500 CE)

• Sedentism before farming in Anasazi area

  • Shallow pit houses w/ middens

  • Outside storage

  • Spearheads (not arrowheads)

  • Excellent baskets (no ceramics)

  • Corn in some places

• Poorly understood – often beneath later sites

Basketmaker III: 1450–1250 BP (500–700 CE)

• Small villages – deep pithouses & slab houses

• Slab-lines surface structures (storage)

  • Early Jacals

• Pottery – coil and scrape

• Arrowheads (not spearheads)

• Corn and Beans

• Increasing sedentism, signs of increased fortifications and violence (skeletal trauma)

Pueblo I: 1250–1050 BP (700–900 CE)

• Unit pueblos

• Large villages

  • Kivas

  • Great kivas

    • Square apartment-like structures and large communal pit-structures

• Red pottery

• Cotton farming and weaving

• Drought caused Puebloans to flee to Chaco area to start forming large cities

Pueblo II: 1050–850 BP – The Chaco Phenomenon (900–1100 CE)

• Not enough trash for a lot of people to be living there full time

  • Lots of rooms are empty and impossible to get in and out of

• Clearly not straight-up functionalism

  • Probably related to the Gods, as many of the structures appear to have been designed for ceremonial purposes rather than everyday living

Pueblo III: 850–650 BP (1100-1300 CE)

• Major drought (50 years) and violence caused Chaco power center to shift North by 1130 AD, settled places like Mesa Verde

  • Fortified cliff-structures

• Others fled south (in Hopi and Zuni oral tradition

Pueblo IV (650 BP/1300 CE to Contact) and Late Prehistoric Collapse

• Pan-southwest upheaval

• Existing groups fall apart and move around

  • Aggregate i.e. Rio Grande vallet

• Drought – “Great Abandonment” (Fremont too)

• New groups (Navajo, Apache, Ute) arrive

• Starvation

  • More foraging

  • Violence

  • Cannibalism?

• Conventional regional patterns don’t work!

Pueblo: Where Did They Go?

• 1300 CE – Contact (Pueblo IV) is one of the upheaval and movement of populations, abandonment of Mesa Verde

• Pueblo descendants remain in northern and southern Southwest

  • Hopi, Zuni, etc.

The Mogollon

• Pre-Mogollon – Basketmaker II and III (0–600 CE)

• Georgetown Phase

• San Francisco Phase

• Three Circle Phase

• Tularosa Phase

Subsistence

• Initial farmers were highly mobile

  • Maize, beans, squash

• Climate allowed for 1 crop a year

• Foraging (especially Jornado Mogollon)

  • Wild plants, including agave

  • Large and small game

• Autonomous, small communities

Pottery

• Variety of forms

  • Black on white

  • Brownwares

  • Redwares

• Mimbres

Settlement

• Pithouses at first, later some multi-room cobblestone houses

• Square great kivas

• Small villages, few greathouses

• Limited irrigation/dams

  • Many dispersed into Chaco/Pueblo

The Hohokam