A High Resolution Chronology for Steward’s Promontory Culture Collections, Promontory Point, Utah

Despite the rich array of perishables Julian Steward (1937) recovered during his 1930s excavations, the Promontory Cave assemblages were dated in relative terms with just a handful of radiocarbon assays until recently. Yet Promontory Caves 1 and 2 are the type sites from which the Promontory Culture was defined, and these assemblages have a critical bearing on our conception of three significant issues in western North American prehistory: the terminal Fremont transition, Numic expansion, and the potential presence of migrating ancestral Apachean populations. To better fix the age of the Promontory Phase, we have undertaken an additional 45 AMS determinations for Promontory perishables. Because of a research focus concerning Promontory footwear, most age estimates come from moccasins, but we have also dated gaming pieces, a bow, an arrow, netting, basketry, matting, and cordage. With the exception of a winnowing basket fragment and some ceramic residue dates, all Promontory Phase assays are tightly focused in an interval running from 662 to 826 radiocarbon years before present (a calibrated 2s range spanning A.D. 1166–1391). Bayesian analyses of the Cave 1 and 2 Promontory Phase perishables suggest that this late period occupation comprised one or two human generations, centering on the interval running from ca. A.D. 1250–1290.

Historical Contingencies, Issues of Scale, and Flightless Hypotheses: A Response to Hildebrandt et al.

Hildebrandt et al. offer this rather vitriolic challenge to our conclusions on the Diablo Canyon fauna in order to recast the data in favor of their view that major diachronic trends in western North American prehistory are the product of an increase in men's prestige hunting over time. Here we respond, first by discussing our view of the relationship between historical contingencies and behavioral ecological models, second by showing that the patterns they find in a regional faunal dataset result only from inappropriate aggregation of bone counts, third by questioning the potential prestige value of highly vulnerable species, and finally by making the case that standard behavioral ecological models, punctuated by historical contingencies, provide more parsimonious, albeit less fanciful, explanations for patterning in the western North American faunal record. We conclude by suggesting that when practitioners attempt to explain away empirical variability in order to support a favored hypothesis, it might be time to acknowledge that the hypothesis has failed to take flight.

Dart and Arrow Points on the Columbia Plateau of Western North America

The timing of the bow and arrow's introduction, spread, and replacement of the atlatl is an important research question in North American prehistory. Although regional archaeologists have not focused on the issue, it is generally thought that the bow and arrow were introduced on the Columbia Plateau ca. 2,300 years ago and completely replaced the atlatl by 1000 B.P. We apply two sets of discriminate functions and four threshold values to three large projectile point samples from the Columbia Plateau and a control sample from the Western Great Basin. Our results indicate that the atlatl was used on the Plateau by ca. 10,800 B.P. While the bow and arrow may have been present by 8500 B.P., they were ubiquitous in the region by 4400 B.P. Atlatl use appears to have increased for a while after 3000 B.P. At the same time, metric differences between dart and arrow points strengthened. Darts became rare after 1500 B.P. but seem to have been in use in small numbers at least until contact.

Man the Showoff? Or the Ascendance of a Just-so-Story: A Comment on Recent Applications of Costly Signaling Theory in American Archaeology

In several recent, and highly provocative papers, McGuire and Hildebrandt (Hildebrandt and McGuire 2002, 2003; McGuire and Hildebrandt 2005) have helped introduce costly signaling theory into American archaeology. While their efforts are commendable, we feel that their reinterpretations of western North American prehistory overstate the likely influence of costly signaling on the archaeological record. Only by overlooking a considerable body of ethnographic literature that indicates a more limited role for signaling are they able to characterize Great Basin and California hunters as motivated more by the pursuit of prestige than provisioning. We offer three specific challenges to their models: (1) while McGuire and Hildebrandt treat the issue as decided, the relationships among foraging, provisioning, prestige, and fitness is still actively contested among researchers; (2) while ethnographic studies suggest that some types of hunting and low-return, high-risk activities may indeed represent attempts by males to signal costly behavior, these activities contribute very little to the faunal and other residues that accumulate in the archaeological record; and (3) the theoretical underpinnings of costly signaling explicitly preclude the type of runaway positive feedback loops that Hildebrandt and McGuire implicate as the driving force behind an apparent cultural collapse in the Great Basin at the end of the Middle Archaic.

Diffusionism Reconsidered: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Polynesian Contact with Southern California

While the prevailing theoretical orthodoxy of North American archaeology overwhelmingly discourages consideration of transoceanic cultural diffusion, linguistic and archaeological evidence appear to indicate at least one instance of direct cultural contact between Polynesia and southern California during the prehistoric era. Three words used to refer to boats - including the distinctive sewn-plank canoe used by Chumashan and Gabrielino speakers of the southern California coast - are odd by the phonotactic and morphological standards of their languages and appear to correlate with Proto-Central Eastern Polynesian terms associated with woodworking and canoe construction. Chumashan and Gabrielino speakers seem to have borrowed this complex of words along with the sewn-plank construction technique itself sometime between ca. A.D. 400 and 800, at which time there is also evidence for punctuated adaptive change (e.g., increased exploitation of pelagic fish) and appearance of a Polynesian style two-piece bone fishhook in the Santa Barbara Channel. These developments were coeval with a period of major exploratory seafaring by the Polynesians that resulted in the discovery and settlement of Hawaii - the nearest Polynesian outpost to southern California. Archaeological and ethnographic information from the Pacific indicates that the Polynesians had the capabilities of navigation, boat construction, and sailing, as well as the cultural incentives to complete a one-way passage from Hawaii to the mainland of southern California. These findings suggest that diffusion and other forms of historical contingency still need to be considered in constructions of North American prehistory.