Glacial kettles as archives of early human settlement along the Northern Rocky Mountain Front

The Northern Rocky Mountain Front (hereafter Northern Front) is a prominent geographic feature in archaeological models of human dispersal in the terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene of North America. Testing those models has been arduous because of local geomorphological factors that tend to obliterate or otherwise limit access to archaeological finds of relevant age. In this paper, we present well-stratified archaeological and environmental records dating back to 14,000–13,000 cal yr BP from the site of Billy Big Spring (Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Montana), located on a glacial kettle, a type of landform that has been largely ignored by regional archaeological research to date. Findings from Billy Big Spring show the continuous use of the Northern Front foothills throughout the major climatic and environmental disturbances of the Early Holocene, and possibly the terminal Pleistocene as well. As such, Billy Big Spring contributes to refining several archaeological models of early settlement of the Northern Front, particularly those that posit differential use of foothills versus plains settings during the midst of the Holocene Thermal Maximum. The record at Billy Big Spring also suggests that kettles, regardless of physiographic setting, provide a yet unsuspected and unsampled potential for preserving high-quality and easily accessible early archaeological and paleoenvironmental records.

Excavating fashion film: a media archaeological perspective

In the emerging ‘video-first world’ of the last decade, global fashion brands have made the moving image an integral component of their digital marketing strategies. As a result, both the industry and popular perceptions of fashion film have been increasingly colonized by the notions of branding and promotion. Recent scholarship on fashion film too has put the fashion brand at the centre of analysis. This article argues against any such premature fixing of fashion film’s identity. Instead, it proposes shifting the existing perspective by reframing fashion film as not only a product of the fashion industry and associated media but also one of the cinema industry and culture. Drawing on media archaeological models of ‘excavation’ and ‘parallax historiography’, the article examines contemporary digital fashion film in parallel with fashion film of the early 20th century – a juxtaposition that helps to recapture the phenomenon’s remarkable diversity and open possibility in both periods.

Enduring Meaning

This chapter provides a deeper discussion of the theories of meaning and communication that were employed by the experts involved in developing plans for nuclear waste repository marker systems. These linguistic, semiotic, and psychological models were more important to planners than archaeological models for the material form. These models emphasized the intentions of people creating messages with the intention of having them be understood by receivers. The models used are contrasted with the kind of semiotic approaches, especially those rooted in the work of pragmatic philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, that contemporary archaeologists employ, in which rather than having preformed meanings conveyed by a vehicle, meanings are constantly emerging in practice.

The Future of Nuclear Waste

How can sites of waste disposal be marked to prevent contamination in the future? The United States government addressed this challenge in planning for nuclear waste repositories. Consulting with experts in imagining future scenarios, in language and communication, and in anthropology, the Department of Energy sought to develop plans that would satisfy demands from the Environmental Protection Agency for a marker system that would be effective long into the future. Expert consultants proposed two very different designs: one based on archaeological sites recognized as cultural heritage monuments; the other proposing that certain forms invoke universal feelings. The Department of Energy opted for a design based on archaeological ruins, cited as proof human-made markers could last and communicate warnings for thousands of years. This book explores the common-sense assumptions the experts made about their archaeological models and shows how they are contradicted by what archaeologists understand about these places and things. The book alternates between discussions of archaeological marker designs and reflections on the alternative proposal based on archetypes intended to arouse universal responses. Recognizing these archetype designs as similar in scale and form to Land Art projects, it compares the way government experts proposed that their designs would work with views of modern artists and critics. Drawing on views of indigenous people who disproportionately are asked to accommodate such projects, the book explores concessions within the project that only oral transmission is likely to ensure that such sites remain identifiable long into the future.

Serpent Mound

This chapter explores the second major element of the marker design, which called for a massive earthen berm, supported by citing mounds of the US Midwest, including Monk’s Mound at Cahokia and the Great Serpent Mound. It explores how the engineering knowledge needed to construct these mounds is underestimated by the markers’ experts, and how the archaeological sites treated as simple actually have complex histories of development, including repair and changes. It relates the dismissive treatment of this indigenous technology to earlier commentaries that questioned the creation of earthworks by Native Americans. It explores the concept of common sense and the kinds of expert opinion that were represented in the history of developing proposals for markers, and the special role given to meaning in identifying appropriate archaeological models to use. It is followed by an interlude considering Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty as a model for a monumental earthwork subject to entropy.

Revealing the past through modelling? Reflections on connectivity, habitation and persistence in the Dutch Delta during the 1st millennium AD

This paper focuses on unravelling the 1st millennium AD in the present-day Netherlands and the applicability of modelling when studying the past. By presenting the results of several studies analysing changes (or persistence) in connectivity and habitation patterns, the significance of these findings for (spatial) modelling is derived. The transition between the Roman and early-medieval periods is particularly interesting in this respect as it is characterised by severe pan-European political, socio-economic and demographic changes. Additionally, recent studies in geosciences increasingly point to marked climatic and landscape changes, such as river avulsions and floods, occurring at the same time. The extent to which these environmental and cultural dynamics were entwined and mutually influential is generally unknown, especially on larger-scale levels. Lowlands, such as the Netherlands, are especially suited to study these complex interactions since boundary conditions, i.e. the set of conditions required for maintaining the existing equilibrium in a region, in such areas are particularly sensitive to change. In this paper the combined results of several recently developed landscape-archaeological models are presented. These models spatially analyse natural and cultural dynamics in five manifestations: route networks, long-distance transport, settlement patterns, palaeodemographics and land-use systems. Combined, these manifestations provide information on connectivity, persistence and habitation, key concepts for the cultural landscape as a whole. Results show that only by integrating these modelling outcomes is it possible to reconstruct boundary conditions and high-resolution spatio-temporal frameworks for cultural-landscape change. Equally, these models invite reflection on their applicability and, as such, point to the need for new theoretical framing and the development of more multi-proxy, evidence-based and transdisciplinary research approaches in archaeology. The evident interrelationship between cultural and natural-landscape dynamics necessitates a more integrated and transparent research attitude, covering multiple scales and studying the cultural landscape as a whole. Only then can models reflect historical reality as closely as possible.

Spatial Structure among the Geometric Earthworks of western Amazonia (Acre, Brazil)

Fieldwork and desk-based research in the western Amazon basin has led to an explosive growth in the state of knowledge surrounding the pre-Columbian archaeology of this region. Previously thought to be a sparsely occupied environment, archaeologists have recorded hundreds of geometric earthworks between the Purús and Acre rivers in recent years, spurring renewed interest in understanding the distribution, age, and function of these structures. A challenge has been to identify possible relationships between sites and to place them in their broader landscape setting. The precise spatial scale, relative importance of different factors, and strength of any relationships that contributed to shaping their distributions remain an open question. This paper develops and applies an explicitly spatial framework to address this problem, drawing on a rich body of recent research in Acre state (Brazil) and advanced point process modelling. The analytical approach, which is fully documented and reproducible with the accompanying code, infers the factors affecting earthwork distribution at multiple spatial scales. This enables the first robust predictions of territorial integration in the region, which is discussed context of extant archaeological models. The findings support the interpretation that non-stratified societies occupied likely Acre during the late pre-Columbian period.

Simulating prehistoric population dynamics and adaptive behavioral responses to the environment in Long House Valley and Black Mesa, Arizona

This project contributes to our understanding of human adaptability to environmental stress and climate change in Long House Valley and Black Mesa, Arizona from AD 800-1350. This was accomplished through the development of a series of agentbased archaeological models. The first stage, Disaggregation, created a model that simulated individual persons within the Long House Valley landscape, a departure from the household-level models common in archaeological modeling. The second stage, Demography, applied empirically derived fertility and mortality rates to these human populations to provide insight into the effects of such rates on population patterns. The final stage expanded the modeled environment to include Black Mesa and allowed for the migration of individuals and households between the two areas in response to varying environmental and demographic pressures throughout the study period. The results of this project indicate that the introduction of biological and ethnographic realism to a model can produce unexpected results, including those that deviate from the population patterns observed archaeologically. Despite these unexpected interactions, the results support the importance of variations in agricultural productivity in driving human migrations in the region. Future archaeological models should consider further exploration small-scale, local population movements and the effects of dynamically changing fertility and mortality rates.

Book Review: "Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis in archaeological computational modeling" edited by Marieka Briuwer Burg, Hans Peeters, William A. Lovis

This volume is collection of papers emerging from a forum at the 2014 SAA meetings. The papers are motivated by the question of how we can measure and interpret uncertainty in quantitative archaeological models, specifically by using sensitivity analysis. The types of models discussed in this volume include geo-referenced models of past environments to infer hunter-gather land use, and agent-based models of cultural transmission processes. They explore various sources of uncertainty, and implement sensitivity analysis by assessing how the output of the models varies according to changes in the inputs. The motivation for this collection is the editors' observations that archaeologists lack a discipline-based protocol for testing models.