Although many researchers have studied prehistoric European artthere has been virtually no attention paid to the broad prehistory of art as a specialized form of material culture: virtually all studies focus narrowly on single bodies of art. This paper presents a new approach to analyzing prehistoric art: quantitative deep time study. It analyzes a database of 211 art traditions from across Europe and from 40,000 B.C. to 0 AD.to identify changes in the amountnatureand use of prehistoric art. The results reveal clear long-term trends. The amount of art made increased sharply with the origins of sedentary farming and continued to rise throughout prehistory. New forms of art arise in conjunction with new ways of life: “period genres “ are closely tied into patterns of social change. There are also long-term shifts in aesthetics and the uses of art (such as a gradual shift from arts of ritual and concealment to arts of surface and display). These resultsthough preliminaryshow that a deep-time approach familiar from topics such as climate change is applicable to art; the resulting social history can illuminate both art and its social context.

Many archaeological researchers studying colonialism are critiquing theories of cultural change (e.g., hybridity, creolization) in favor of interpretive models that emphasize cultural persistence and continuity. Ethnogenesis, the emergence of new cultural identities, has been put forward as a consensus model: what is “new“—the “genesis“ in ethnogenesis—is increasingly interpreted as an authentic remaking of communal identities to foster persistence and survival. This somewhat utopic emphasis on continuity in ethnogenesis theory broadens the concept of ethnogenesis to the point that its value as a theory of identity transformation is being lost. Overall, the archaeological emphasis on ethnogenesis as a tactic of resistance among subaltern communities has led to a general neglect of how ethnic identity practices are deployed in the exercise of power. The increasing use of bioarchaeological evidence in ethnogenesis research also raises pressing ethical and epistemological issues about the relationship between the body and identity. A more focused and restricted application of ethnogenesis theory is necessary to identify and investigate those situations in which colonialism and its consequences resulted in ruptures and structural transformations of identity practices.

The multicomponent Dry Creek site, located in the Nenana Valley, central Alaska, is arguably one of the most important archaeological sites in Beringia. Original work in the 1970s identified two separate cultural layers, called Components 1 and 2, thought to date to the terminal Pleistocene and suggesting that the site was visited by Upper Paleolithic huntergatherers between about 13,000 and 12,000 calendar years before present (cal B.P.). The oldest of these became the typeassemblage for the Nenana complex. Recently, some have questioned the geoarchaeological integrity of the site's early deposits, suggesting that the separated cultural layers resulted from natural postdepositional disturbances. In 2011, we revisited Dry Creek to independently assess the site's age and formation. Here we present our findings and reaffirm original interpretations of clear separation of two terminal Pleistocene cultural occupations. For the first time, we report direct radiocarbon dates on cultural features associated with both occupation zones, one dating to 13,485-13,305 and the other to 11,060-10,590 cal B.P.

Indigenous negotiations of European colonialism in North America are more complex than models of domination and resistance reveal. Indigenous people—acting according to their own historically and culturally specific ways of knowing and being in the world—developed strategies for remaking their identities, material choices, and social configurations to survive one or multiple phases of colonization. Archaeologists are making strides in documenting the contingencies and consequences of these strategies, yet their focus is often skewed toward sites of contact and colonialism (e.g., missions and forts). This article examines places of refuge for native people navigating colonial programs in the San Francisco Bay area of California. I use a resistance-memory-refuge framework to reevaluate resistance to Spanish missions, including the possible reoccupation of landscapes by fugitive orfurloughed Indians. Commemorative trips to shellmounds and other refuges support the concept of an indigenous hinterland, or landscapes that, in time, provided contexts for continuity and adjustment among Indian communities making social, material, and economic choices in the wake ofmissionization. By viewing colonialism from the outside in, this reoriented approach can potentially enhance connections between archaeological and Native American communities.

Native American communities occupying the western Great Plains during the postcontact period exemplify the highly contingent relationships between artifactual data and cultural processes. Here, cultural evolutionary theory and quantitative analyses are used to approach this challenge. Two sets of artif actual products were examined: parfleche attributes and moccasin decorative features, both products of female craftswomen.A model of “isolation by distance “ drawn from population genetics is used as a baseline expectation. This model predicts that, all else being equal, between-group geographic relationships will correlate with intergroup patterns of artif actual variation. Linguistic affinity and known patterns of intertribe alliance and hostility were also examined. The analyses reveal the operation of differing degrees of social transmission and differing patterns of selective bias in each artif actual case. In the case of parfleches, their potential to act as visible signals led to a patterned distribution reflecting intertribe alliance and hostility. The analyses reiterate the necessity of a cultural evolutionary approach to material culture, not only because this method facilitates the requisite flexibility toward particular historical trajectories of artifactual lineages, but also because evolutionary principles provide a range of theoretical models and practical tools of analysis, which facilitate an empirical and quantitatively analytical approach to this problem.

The proveniences (locations) of artifacts have long been critically important to archaeological interpretation. Although of major importance to site formation studies, positional attributes of artifacts (e.g., orientation, dip, which side is up) are seldom mentioned. When discovered in 1927, the in situ association of a Folsom projectile point with two ribs of a Pleistocene form of bison was interpreted as indicative of the contemporaneity of the three items, and thus was taken as evidence for the Pleistocene age of humans in North America. The locational and positional attributes of the two ribs and the point relative to one another suggest it is improbable that the point was deposited simultaneously with the two ribs as a result of it being embedded in the animal's flank, which is not to say the three items are not depositionally and temporally associated. Previously unmentioned positional attributes of the items making up the original Folsom association exemplify the importance of such attributes. New understanding of the original association underscores that actualistic research is required to identify the kinds of positional attributes important to questions regarding site formation and site structure.

Red abalone middens on Santa Cruz Island, California, are conspicuous because they contain the shells of red abalone, a large marine gastropod, even though mussel shells are the most abundant by weight. Recently obtained radiocarbon dates push back the time interval of the island's red abalone middens to ca. 6200 cal B.C., with the bulk of them dating between 5000 and 3300 cal B.C. Faunal remains from two sites indicate that subsistence on marine resources intensified at the onset of the time interval of the middens. In addition, beginning ca. 3900 cal B.C. the island settlement system became more complex and subsistence on marine resources, particularly with respect to marine mammals such as dolphins, once again became more intensive. Proposed explanations for the subsistence and settlement shift concern the development of possibly more complex watercraft and the adoption of the mortar and pestle for processing plant foods. The expanded time interval during which red abalone middens occur has revealed that cooler sea-surface temperature is only a partial explanation for their occurrence.

This paper compares unnotched triangular arrow point refits (conjoined fragments) with whole points from the Eaton site in New York. The differences between the two samples are significant, suggesting that point typologies based on whole points may be misleading. Refits tended to have greater length to width ratios and lower thickness to length ratios, rendering them less durable. While lack of durability is generally considered to be a negative characteristic of stone points, fragmentation of a projectile in an enemy or hunting prey creates a large internal wound cavity, which is desirable. Also desirable is a point base that makes a cut wide enough to prevent drag on the arrow shaft, but narrow enough to have a good chance of passing through the ribs of the target.

The debate regarding the underlying motivations for large game hunting in western North America has ensued in American Antiquity for over a decade. Empirical support for the original argument for costly signaling hunting by Hildebrandt and McGuire partly derived from a regional synthesis of faunal data from southeastern California that demonstrated a spike in artiodactyl hunting during the Middle Archaic. This spike is primarily driven by the faunal assemblage from a single, highelevation site located in the White Mountains of southeastern California. It was suspected that this anomaly was a reflection of analytical differences in taxonomic identifications among faunal analysts. Contrary to expectations, it was discovered that taxonomic identifications were conservative. Instead, the previously reported number of identified specimens for artiodactyls was calculated in a manner inconsistent with other analyses in the region. When corrected, the regional data show a pattern of faunal exploitation that is consistent with expectations derived from optimal foraging theory.

The interpretations of the Wallace site offered by Huffman and Earley are invalid. The site is not Upper Republican in affiliation, the structural remains in it do not support the interpretations made, and the proposed correspondences to Pawnee cosmology are based on unjustified assumptions.

The co-existence of Apishapa and Upper Republican-derived sites in the Pinyon Canyon area provides new support for our identification of the Wallace and Hobson settlements as Upper Republican.