We review the history of Bayesian chronological modeling in archaeology and demonstrate that there has been a surge over the past several years in American archaeological applications. Most of these applications have been performed by archaeologists who are self-taught in this method because formal training opportunities in Bayesian chronological modeling are infrequently provided. We define and address misconceptions about Bayesian chronological modeling that we have encountered in conversations with colleagues and in anonymous reviews, some of which have been expressed in the published literature. Objectivity and scientific rigor is inherent in the Bayesian chronological modeling process. Each stage of this process is described in detail, and we present examples of this process in practice. Our concluding discussion focuses on the potential that Bayesian chronological modeling has for enhancing understandings of important topics.

Engagement in sustained encounters with colonial actors had long-lasting demographic, social, and political consequences for Native American inhabitants of Southeastern North America during the colonial period (AD 1670–1783). Less clear is whether Native peoples who did not regularly trade with colonists also felt the destabilization experienced by more closely affiliated groups. This article explores Native lifeways in the seventeenth-century Eno River valley of the North Carolina Piedmont, a context for which archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence have produced divergent narratives. While extant archaeological findings suggest that daily life from 1650 to 1680 continued virtually unchanged from the preceding Late Woodland period, ethnohistoric accounts indicate that this area was victimized by Native slavers who abducted countless women and children. Seeking to reconcile these narratives, I conducted a diachronic analysis of botanical remains and architecture. Archaeobotanical data reveal that Jenrette site (AD 1650–1680) occupants adopted foodways that differed significantly from those of their Late Woodland predecessors, while architectural evidence indicates a brief village occupation. I argue that Eno River valley inhabitants introduced risk-averse subsistence practices that would have aided in coping with the threat and consequences of slave raiding and that these practices occurred within a social climate of fear and uncertainty that is documented ethnohistorically.

Hopewell bladelets may be the most common diagnostic artifact of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere. As such, they are often recognized as a Middle Woodland “index fossil” and a key materialized indication of Hopewell ceremonialism. However, few formal analyses of their occurrence across space and time exist. Drawing on published reports, as well as an extensive review of the unpublished gray literature, I present a Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon-dated, bladelet-bearing features from across Ohio. The Bayesian model provides insight into previously unrecognized temporal variation in this element of Hopewell material culture. Results indicate that bladelets are present from around the BC/AD switch to nearly AD 500 in certain portions of the state. Analysis by major drainages indicates that bladelets occur earliest in southern and central Ohio before subsequently spreading north to the Lake Erie region. Understanding the spatial and temporal variation in artifact classes such as Hopewell bladelets is essential to explaining prehistoric cultural processes.

This article investigates the daily practices and social processes of indigenous identity negotiation in the Santa Barbara Channel region through an analysis of soapstone ollas, bowls, and comales. After assessing the source of the raw material and using a typological classification based upon form and function, I discuss the ways in which soapstone cooking wares were used diachronically and across the colonial landscape. These finds show a reorganization of the soapstone industry inside the mission space: soapstone was acquired from new sources, an emphasis was placed on the production of bowls and comales, and more soapstone vessels show evidence of remodification. However, the continued use of traditional soapstone ollas in historically occupied Chumash villages outside the mission indicates persistent practices that linked indigenous peoples to a deep ancestral past. I argue that these changes and continuities illuminate a range of identities that existed between the cultural spaces previously described as “native” and “Spanish.” This study illustrates that indigenous peoples negotiated, redeployed, and expressed their identities in new ways that allowed them to adapt and persist under colonialism.

In the final centuries prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the southwest United States and northwest Mexico underwent two major sociodemographic changes: (1) many people coalesced into large villages, and (2) most of the villages were depopulated within two centuries. Basic epidemiological models indicate that village coalescence could have triggered epidemic diseases that caused the observed demographic decline. The models also link this decline to a global phenomenon, the Neolithic Demographic Transition.

The analysis of more than 1,300 flotation samples from thousands of excavated cultural features dating to the San Pedro phase (1220–730 BC) at the Las Capas site in southern Arizona provides evidence of long-term continuity and change in plant cultivation and collection practices in response to environmental disturbances during the Late Archaic period (2100 BC–AD 50). Although preceramic foodways in the region are widely considered to have been stable for roughly 2,500 years following the introduction of maize prior to 2100 BC, analyses of macrobotanical data reveal that moderate-intensity flood events during the Middle San Pedro phase (930–800 BC) preceded the greatest richness and diversity of harvested plants, while reliance on maize was reduced. In contrast, in periods with little environmental disturbance maize was more dominant, with less diversity in other cultivated and foraged plants. Novel cultivation, processing, and foraging practices were initiated in response to disturbance but persisted after floodplain conditions stabilized. It is argued that the reciprocal relationship between disturbance and botanical diversity is integral for understanding the long-term resilience of Late Archaic foodways and that this relationship is best modeled using ecological theories termed the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis and the Intermediate Productivity Hypothesis.

Bayesian chronological modeling is used to investigate the chronology for a large-scale human depopulation event during the Mississippian period (AD 1000–1600) known as the Vacant Quarter phenomenon. The Middle Cumberland region (MCR) of Tennessee is within the Vacant Quarter area, and six villages from the final phase of Mississippian activity in the MCR have been subjected to radiocarbon dating. Complete radiocarbon datasets from these sites are presented within an interpretative Bayesian statistical framework. The results provide a unique history of each settlement and demonstrate that Mississippian occupations at each site likely terminated in the mid- to late fifteenth and possibly early sixteenth centuries AD, which is 50 to 100 years later than the most recent estimate for the timing of the Vacant Quarter. Mississippian abandonment in the MCR was relatively quick, likely occurring over less than a century. The exact reasons for abandonment are not entirely clear but appear to be linked to climate change. A radiocarbon simulation experiment indicates that future robust radiocarbon dating with well-selected samples could greatly improve the chronological precision for this late Mississippian activity. More broadly, this example demonstrates that model building with radiocarbon simulations can be used to address regional-scale chronological issues within the American Southeast and beyond.

We present a revised chronology for the Kolomoki site (9ER1) in Georgia, occupied primarily during the Middle and Late Woodland periods (ca. 200 BC to AD 1050). The considerable extent of the site has been noted for more than a century but came into sharper focus with the archaeological investigations by Sears (1956) and Pluckhahn (2003). The site includes at least nine mounds, a large central plaza, and a discontinuous habitation area nearly a kilometer in diameter. Previous interpretations assumed gradual and incremental changes in the community plan. We present a greatly revised chronology, based on new investigations in some of the lesser-known portions of the site and a doubling of the number of absolute dates. Bayesian modeling of these and previous dates reveals that, far from the gradualist assumption of previous work, the community at Kolomoki was dynamically transformed several times in its history, reaching its greatest spatial extent and formal complexity in two relatively short-lived phases. In these intervals, the village incorporated permanent residents and visitors into a single community in which daily face-to-face interactions were minimized even as communal identity was celebrated.

There is no recorded maize (Zea mays spp. mays) from sites predating circa cal AD 800 in the northern Lake Michigan or Lake Superior basins of the western Great Lakes, despite the presence of maize microbotanicals including phytoliths and starches in Michigan, New York, and Quebec as early as 400 cal BC. To evaluate the potential for an earlier maize presence in the northern Lake Michigan basin, samples of carbonized food residues adhering to 16 ceramic vessels were obtained from the Winter site (20DE17) located on the Garden Peninsula in the northern Lake Michigan basin. Each sample was split and sent to two analysts. Both analysts identified low incidences of maize starch and phytoliths in multiple samples, with overlapping identifications on several. Three direct accelerator mass spectrometry dates on the carbonized residues reveal maize incorporated into the residues as early as the second century cal BC, 800 years before any regional macrobotanical evidence. Although the method of dispersal cannot be determined, these results support the proposition that initial northern dispersal of maize in the region may have been nearly 800 years earlier than macrobotanical evidence would suggest and is consistent with the timing of its introduction to the lower Great Lakes area.

The originally published version of this article (Sinensky and Farahani, 2018) did not include one of the online supplemental files, Supplemental Text 1. R markdown document. This file has now been added to the online supplemental material for this article.

The originally published version of this article (Miller, 2018) listed the incorrect article type. The correct article type for this article is “Article.”

The originally published version of this article (Hamilton and Krus, 2017) listed the incorrect article type. The correct article type for this article is “Forum.”