First Peoples in a New World

Over 15,000 years ago, a band of hunter-gatherers became the first people to set foot in the Americas. They soon found themselves in a world rich in plants and animals, but also a world still shivering itself out of the coldest depths of the Ice Age. The movement of those first Americans was one of the greatest journeys undertaken by ancient peoples. In this book, David Meltzer explores the world of Ice Age Americans, highlighting genetic, archaeological, and geological evidence that has revolutionized our understanding of their origins, antiquity, and adaptation to climate and environmental change. This fully updated edition integrates the most recent scientific discoveries, including the ancient genome revolution and human evolutionary and population history. Written for a broad audience, the book can serve as the primary text in courses on North American Archaeology, Ice Age Environments, and Human evolution and prehistory.

Materials and Methods

To determine the origin of archaeological spindle graphs, and to track the frequency of use of each of several types of graph used to diagram culture change, a sample of North American archaeological literature was examined. Numerous series of monographs and volumes of journals in both the archaeological and the paleontological literature were inspected. If a graph of biological (paleontological) or cultural (archaeological) change was included in a publication, that piece of literature was recorded along with the type of graph included. To record such data, a classification of graph types was developed based on categories of statistical graphs (e.g., bar graph, line graph, pie graph, time range, spatio-temporal rectangle). More than 900 pieces of literature on North American archaeology published between ~1880 and ~1960 were inspected, and more than 450 pieces of literature on paleontology were inspected. Because different graph types are constructed under different guidelines, they require an understanding of graph grammar—the rules for constructing, deciphering, and interpreting graphs.

Graphing Culture Change in North American Archaeology

Documentation, analysis, and explanation of culture change have long been goals of archaeology. The earliest archaeological spindle graphs appeared in the 1880s and 1890s, but had no influence on subsequent archaeologists. Line graphs showing change in frequencies of specimens in each of several artifact types were used in the 1910s and 1920s. Seriograms or straight-sided spindles diagraming interpretations of culture change were published in the 1930s, but were seldom subsequently mimicked. Spindle graphs of centered and stacked columns of bars, each column representing a distinct artifact type, each bar the empirically documented relative frequency of specimens in an assemblage, were developed in the 1940s, became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and are often used to illustrate culture change in textbooks published during the twentieth century. Graphs facilitate visual thinking, different graph types suggest different ontologies and theories of change, and particular techniques of parsing temporally continuous morphological variation of artifacts into types influence graph form. Line graphs, bar graphs, spindle diagrams, and phylogenetic trees of artifacts and cultures indicate archaeologists often mixed elements of Darwinian variational evolutionary change with elements of Midas-touch-like transformational change. Today there is minimal discussion of graph theory or graph grammar in both introductory archaeology textbooks and advanced texts, and elements of the two theories of evolution are often mixed. Culture has changed, and despite archaeology’s unique access to the totality of humankind’s cultural past, there is minimal discussion on graph theory, construction, and decipherment in the archaeological literature.

Late Pleistocene South American megafaunal extinctions associated with rise of Fishtail points and human population

In the 1970s, Paul Martin proposed that big game hunters armed with fluted projectile points colonized the Americas and drove the extinction of megafauna. Around fifty years later, the central role of humans in the extinctions is still strongly debated in North American archaeology, but little considered in South America. Here we analyze the temporal dynamic and spatial distribution of South American megafauna and fluted (Fishtail) projectile points to evaluate the role of humans in Pleistocene extinctions. We observe a strong relationship between the temporal density and spatial distribution of megafaunal species stratigraphically associated with humans and Fishtail projectile points, as well as with the fluctuations in human demography. On this basis we propose that the direct effect of human predation was the main factor driving the megafaunal decline, with other secondary, but necessary, co-occurring factors for the collapse of the megafaunal community.

Canadians and the Founding of the Society for American Archaeology (1934–1940s)

In December of 1934 the Society for American Archaeology was officially constituted. In 1935, in an effort to grow the membership, professional archaeologists were asked to propose members who they endorsed to become affiliated with the SAA. The two professional archaeologists in Canada at that time, Diamond Jenness and William J. Wintemberg of the Dominion Museum, Ottawa, proposed names of individuals across Canada who were collectors, museum curators, and historians. A small number suggested for membership joined, but most did not. This was an interesting period in North American archaeology as professionals worked in committees to establish cultural and temporal frameworks of the archaeological past, establish excavation guidelines, and lobby against the sale of antiquities. Some Canadian avocationals who joined were positively impacted by their association with American archaeologists and their legacies continue through to today. The bottom line is that there were very few professional archaeologists in Canada following Wintemberg’s death in 1941, and that lack coupled with WWII, meant that Canadians looking for professional support and guidance looked to the south of the border. The Society for American Archaeology was important for the growth and development of Canadian archaeology during this time.

Refined Radiocarbon Chronologies for Northern Iroquoian Site Sequences: Implications for Coalescence, Conflict, and the Reception of European Goods

This article presents results to date of the Dating Iroquoia project. Our objective is to develop high-precision radiocarbon chronologies for northeastern North American archaeology. Here, we employ Bayesian chronological modeling of 184 AMS radiocarbon dates derived from 42 Northern Iroquoian village sites in five regional sequences in order to construct new date estimates. The resulting revised chronology demands a rethinking of key assumptions about cultural process in the region regarding the directionality and timing of processes of coalescence and conflict and the introduction of European trade goods. The results suggest that internal conflict may have preceded confederacy formation among the Haudenosaunee but not the Wendat, as has been previously assumed. External conflict, previously thought to have begun in the early seventeenth century, began more than a century earlier. New data also indicate that the timing and distribution of European materials were more variable between communities than acknowledged by the logic underlying traditional trade-good chronologies. This enhanced chronological resolution permits the development and application of archaeological theories that center the lived experiences and relational histories of Iroquoian communities, as opposed to the generalized thinking that has dominated past explanatory frameworks.

Contact-Era Chronology Building in Iroquoia: Age Estimates for Arendarhonon Sites and Implications for Identifying Champlain's Cahiagué

Radiocarbon dating is rarely used in historical or contact-era North American archaeology because of idiosyncrasies of the calibration curve that result in ambiguous calendar dates for this period. We explore the potential and requirements for radiocarbon dating and Bayesian analysis to create a time frame for early contact-era sites in northeast North America independent of the assumptions and approximations involved in temporal constructs based on trade goods and other archaeological correlates. To illustrate, we use Bayesian chronological modeling to analyze radiocarbon dates on short-lived samples and a post from four Huron-Wendat Arendarhonon sites (Benson, Sopher, Ball, and Warminster) to establish an independent chronology. We find that Warminster was likely occupied in 1615–1616, and so is the most likely candidate for the site of Cahiagué visited by Samuel de Champlain in 1615–1616, versus the other main suggested alternative, Ball, which dates earlier, as do the Sopher and Benson sites. In fact, the Benson site seems likely to date ~50 years earlier than currently thought. We present the methods employed to arrive at these new, independent age estimates and argue that absolute redating of historic-era sites is necessary to accurately assess existing interpretations based on relative dating and associated regional narratives.

Who Dominates the Discourses of the Past? Gender, Occupational Affiliation, and Multivocality in North American Archaeology Publishing

Equity and the dissemination of knowledge remain major challenges in science. Peer-reviewed journal publications are generally the most cited, yet certain groups dominate in archaeology. Such uniformity of voice profoundly limits not only who conveys the past but also what parts of the material record are narrated and/or go untold. This study examines multiple participation metrics in archaeology and explores the intersections of gender and occupational affiliation in peer-reviewed (high time cost) and non-peer-reviewed (reduced time cost) journals. We find that although women and compliance archaeologists remain poorly represented in regional and national peer-reviewed journals, they are much more active in unrefereed publications. We review feminist and theoretical explanations for inequities in science and argue that (1) the persistent underrepresentation of women and of compliance professionals in archaeological publishing are structurally linked processes and (2) such trends can be best understood in light of the existing structure of American archaeology and the cost-benefit realities of publishing for people in various sectors of the discipline. We suggest that nonrefereed venues offer a pathway to multivocality and help to address epistemic injustices, and we discuss methods for widening the current narrow demographic of men and academics who persist in dominating discourses.

Paleoindian Settlement in the Southeastern United States

The authors cite two large research open-access databases developed in recent years, popularly known by their acronyms PIDBA (Paleoindian Database of the Americas) and DINAA (Digital Index of North American Archaeology), for aiding in their study of early human settlements in Southeastern North America. With nearly half a million sites indexed so far, many with complex data records listing hundreds of attributes, DINAA has several orders of magnitude more information than PIDBA. PIDBA, however, encompasses image and attribute data on ca. 30,000 Paleoindian artifacts. Information recorded in both PIDBA and DINAA documents not only the number and distribution of Paleoindian artifacts and components found and recorded to date but also the possible proxy measures of human demography and settlement range, which can be compared with figures from later periods or from different states or regions.

A Lineage of Listening

Outside the mainstream of North American archaeology and academic anthropology, a few of Franz Boas’s students listened humbly to Indian people in their communities, instead of sitting in hotel rooms querying selected men from a schedule of topics. Frank Speck (1881-1950) was one of these; his student Claude E. Schaeffer mentored Tom Kehoe to listen to Blackfoot people as guides and teachers for archaeology in their homeland. I learned from Tom when I married him and we collaborated in archaeology.