Despite the central role that kinship plays in key anthropological arguments, recent archaeological efforts to detect kinship have been notably scarce. Here, age and sex distributions and dental morphology traits that reflect genetic affinity are used to argue that specific kin groups were buried in formal, spatially discrete cemeteries in the ancestral Zuni settlement of Hawikku. The inferred kin groups are then used to investigate Hawikku political structure. Results show that community leaders, identified on the basis of mortuary treatments and grave offerings, were selected from a small number of kin groups, suggesting an ascriptive element to leadership selection.

Archaeologists frequently assume the cultural transition from Archaic to Woodland (ca. 3000–2500 cal B.P.) in the Mississippi River basin is a gradual process. In the lower Mississippi Valley, however, there is an abrupt gap in the archaeological sequence at this time and pronounced differences between Late Archaic and Early Woodland archaeological remains. Elsewhere in the basin, this transition is marked by an occupation hiatus or decline and is accompanied by significant changes in settlement and material culture organization. In most parts of the floodplain of the Mississippi River and its tributaries there are few sites dating to this interval suggesting the river bottom was abandoned for several hundred years as a location for sustained habitation. High-resolution climate data demonstrates an episode of rapid global climate change involving significant alterations in temperature and precipitation in the period ca. 3000–2600 cal B.P. The proximate cause of this global climate occurrence is change in galactic cosmic ray intensity and solar irradiation possibly amplified by variations in the earth"s geomagnetic field. Global climate changes led to greatly increased flood frequencies and magnitudes in the Mississippi River watershed during the shift from Late Archaic to Early Woodland. In northeast Louisiana, increased flooding led to major fluvial reorganization that caused settlement abandonment and is associated with the demise of Poverty Point culture. Climate change and associated flooding is implicated as one cause of major cultural reorganization at the end of the Archaic throughout much of eastern North America.

Forty years ago, Knut Fladmark (1979) argued that the Pacific Coast offered a viable alternative to the ice-free corridor model for the initial peopling of the Americas—one of the first to support a “coastal migration theory” that remained marginal for decades. Today, the pre-Clovis occupation at the Monte Verde site is widely accepted, several other pre-Clovis sites are well documented, investigations of terminal Pleistocene subaerial and submerged Pacific Coast landscapes have increased, and multiple lines of evidence are helping decode the nature of early human dispersals into the Americas. Misconceptions remain, however, about the state of knowledge, productivity, and deglaciation chronology of Pleistocene coastlines and possible technological connections around the Pacific Rim. We review current evidence for several significant clusters of early Pacific Coast archaeological sites in North and South America that include sites as old or older than Clovis. We argue that stemmed points, foliate points, and crescents (lunates) found around the Pacific Rim may corroborate genomic studies that support an early Pacific Coast dispersal route into the Americas. Still, much remains to be learned about the Pleistocene colonization of the Americas, and multiple working hypotheses are warranted.

This paper explores the relationship between gender identity and patterns of authorship in peer-reviewed journals as a lens for examining gendered knowledge production and the current status and visibility of men and women in American archaeology. Drawing on feminist theory and the feminist critique of science, I examine how gender imbalance and a lack of diversity continue to affect the work that archaeologists produce. The evaluation of publishing trends serves as a means to investigate knowledge valuation/validation in archaeology and lends insight into the control over archaeological narratives. Analysis of publicacion rates from 1990–2013 in a number of prestigious archaeology research journals (including American Antiquity) as well as smaller-scale regional journals reveals that strong gender differences persist in one of the major ways that data are disseminated to the American archaeological community. I suggest that these patterns are likely a result of authorial behavior, rather than editorial or reviewer bias, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for practitioners to pursue research on gender equity in the discipline.

Archaeologically documented population aggregates are used to estimate the population of eastern North America around A.D. 1500 and by extension the entire continent north of heavily populated Mesoamerica. Occupied areas plotted from archaeological and historical information were increased by buffer areas with widths determined by average nearest neighbor distances. Population sizes assigned to these areas were based on three compilations of historic sources, each handled in various ways. Local densities were calculated and then used to interpolate density surfaces for a ca. 3.1 million km2 area. The surfaces were further modified by assessments of data quality and overall occupation intensity to provide upper and lower bounds for each estimate. The procedure, designed to produce a range that was overly wide, resulted in an eastern population between .5 and 2.6 million and a continental total, north of Mesoamerica, of 1.2 to 6.1 million. These figures fall in the lower third of current authoritative estimates for the continent as a whole, which range from 2.4 to 18 million.

Gravel quarrying operations in 1962 at the well-known Clovis site north of Portales in eastern New Mexico uncovered important new evidence of Early Man. In February, a total of 17 punched blades was found after being mechanically exhumed and, on the basis of inferential evidence, these blades are assigned to the Llano complex that dates back some 11,000 to 13,000 years. The term “Clovis blade” is proposed for this new artifact type, which is discussed in detail. These implements, and the recent discovery of several blade-tools associated with the remains of four mammoths now being excavated by the El Llano Archaeological Society, lead to the postulation of a blade industry for the Llano complex; and evidence which indicates the persistence of the punched-blade technique up through Agate Basin times is presented.

On the basis of technology, distribution, and apparent similarities to Upper Paleolithic blade cultures of the Old World, the classic Paleo-Indian cultures characterized by fluted points are believed to represent a unique, late Pleistocene migration that is temporally, culturally, and spatially distinct from the extremely early cultures of the Pacific coastal regions.

The history of coring and augering at archaeological sites is traced to two periods in the twentieth century. In the first period, Period I (1935-1955), the technique was used primarily to correlate archaeological deposits with river sediments for dating purposes. Rarely were the deposits containing artifacts cored or augered; rather the stratigraphic relationship of cultural to non-cultural deposits was sought. Most of this work was done in the Lower Mississippi River Delta where geologists had calculated absolute dates for river deposits. This period seems to have ended with the availability of radiometric dating and was followed by Period II (1964-present). After 1964 there is a renewed interest in coring and augering, mostly following a shift in archaeological research interests from culture history toward ecological questions. This shift coincides with the availability of a new device: a mechanical corer. During Period II, coring is utilized in many different projects, including reconstructing the environment surrounding sites, collection of samples from subsurface deposits, and locating buried archaeological sites. Following the discussion of the history of coring and augering, a description of equipment, techniques, and data potential is presented.

Analyses of the capacity and rates of different acorn storage techniques employed by the Western Mono of California’s Sierra Nevada during the very late Holacene indicate hunter-gatherers store food in at least three main modes: central-place storage, dispersed caching, and dispersed bulk caching. The advantage of caching modes over central-place ones is that they entail faster storage rates and thus the chance to maximize storage capacity when seasonality and scheduling conflicts limit storing opportunities. They also result in predictable stores of acorn separate from winter population aggregations but oftentimes near seasonally occupied camps. Central-place storage thus appears most directly related to coping with single-year seasonal variability in environmental productivity and sedentary overwintering strategies; caching, and especially bulk caching, with multi-year environmental unpredictability, overwintering and seasonal residential moves. Storage thus appears to generally develop as a response to seasonality and unpredictable environmental productivity, but its various forms are conditioned mainly by how they articulate with different mobility types. Complex Mono storage behaviors, however, were associated with regionally low population densities and relatively uncomplicated social structures nonetheless characterized by chiefs who maintained their positions by throwing feasts of stored acorn. The connections between storage, population density, and sociocultural complexity thus appear less direct and predicated on specific sociopolitical circumstance. Recognizing different modes of hunter-gatherer storage is consequently critical to assessing the roles ecology, mobility, group size, and social distinctions play in the development of disparate storage behaviors.

Citizen science, as a process of volunteer participation through crowdsourcing, facilitates the creation of mass data sets needed to address subtle and large-scale patterns in complex phenomena. Citizen science efforts in other field disciplines such as biology, geography, and astronomy indicate how new web-based interfaces can enhance and expand upon archaeologists’ existing platforms of volunteer engagement such as field schools, community archaeology, site stewardship, and professional–avocational partnerships. Archaeological research can benefit from the citizen science paradigm in four ways: fieldwork that makes use of widely available technologies such as mobile applications for photography and data upload; searches of large satellite image collections for site identification and monitoring; crowdfunding; and crowdsourced computer entry of heritage data.

The Inka empire was supported by goods and services provided by both generalized and specialized labor. To gain insight into how goods were produced and distributed in the imperial economy, 173 sherds from Cuzco, Lake Titicaca, the upper Mantaro Valley, and Tarma were analyzed (INAA) for materials composition. Results show that production and consumption of Inka ceramics were focused within regions, although two plates probably made in Cuzco were among the Titicaca and Mantaro samples. Inka ceramics from the upper Mantaro were made from at least two sources of raw materials, both distinct from those used in local Wanka ceramics. Evidence suggests that the Inka provincial capital (Hatun Xauxa) and two Wanka towns obtained most of their Inka pots from either one or the other source. These results imply that the state controlled production of its ceramics regionally, starting at the source of the raw materials, and distributed the products of separate sources selectively.

Archaeology has an opportunity to offer major contributions to our understanding of the long-term interactions of humans and the environment. To do so, we must elucidate dynamic socioecological processes that generally operate at regional scales. However, the archaeological record is sparse, discontinuous, and static. Recent advances in computational modeling provide the potential for creating experimental laboratories where dynamic processes can be simulated and their results compared against the archaeological record. Coupling computational modeling with the empirical record in this way can increase the rigor of our explanations while making more transparent the concepts on which they are based. We offer an example of such an experimental laboratory to study the long-term effects of varying landuse practices by subsistence farmers on landscapes, and compare the results with the Levantine Neolithic archaeological record. Different combinations of intensive and shifting cultivation, ovicaprid grazing, and settlement size are modeled for the Wadi Ziqlab drainage of northern Jordan. The results offer insight into conditions under which previously successful (and sustainable) landuse practices can pass an imperceptible threshold and lead to undesirable landscape consequences. This may also help explain long-term social, economic, and settlement changes in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia.

Analysis of bone collagen extracted from human skeletal remains from archaeological sites dating from the Archaic period through Euro-American settlement provides evidence for the introduction of maize into regional subsistence patterns. Stable carbon isotope ratios of samples from both the eastern Ozarks and the Mississippi River alluvial valley indicate that human populations living prior to ca. A.D. 1000 consumed little or no C4 plant material. In populations dating after ca. A.D. 1000, stable carbon isotope ratios indicate that maize represented a significant part of the human diet throughout the region. The change in dietary patterns coincides with a shift in settlement patterns from dispersed hamlets and small villages to civic-ceremonial centers with associated villages, hamlets, and farmsteads. This isotopic evidence indicates that Emergent Mississippian diets did not include substantial quantities of maize or other C4 plant material.

The value of marine resources and coastal environments to hunter-gatherers has long been debated, with the archaeological record frequently invoked as the ultimate test for various arguments. Optimal-foraging principles suggest that the temporal priority of the exploitation of one resource over another indicates its value with respect to subsistence efficiency, a crucial variable in overall reproductive success. If coastal habitats are highly valuable, their exploitation should be seen early in the archaeological record; if not, a time lag should be evident between the initial exploitation of terrestrial and coastal environments. A review of the archaeology of early marine-resource use in prehistoric California reveals complex patterning that does not exclusively support one position or the other. Certain of these data accommodate the traditional model of an adaptive transition between specialized hunting of terrestrial big game during the Paleoindian period and diversification, including marine-resource exploitation, during the Archaic period. Others, however, suggest that shellfish were part of the diet of the initial colonists of western North America, indicating the value of this resource to mobility-restricted members of hunting and gathering groups.

Excavations at the Clovis site near Portales, New Mexico, in 1962 and 1963 produced much new information on the Llano complex. This work, which was done principally by the El Llano Archaeological Society (Portales, New Mexico), yielded the skeletons of four mammoths and other Pleistocene faunal remains and enlarged the tool inventory of the Llano complex. Significant ancestral ties with the Upper Paleolithic of Siberia, which have been postulated on the basis of prismatic blades and blade-tools collected from the Clovis horizon seem to be further confirmed. Further information on the size range of Clovis projectile points has been obtained from small projectile points found in the mammoth-bone bed. Analysis of lithic materials from the Clovis site reveals extensive use of Alibates flint from the Canadian River valley of Texas.

A decade of intensive archaeological survey of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming has revealed one stratified Paleoindian site along with several thousand sites of later age. This site is only a remnant of a much larger one. It has four cultural levels that include Clovis, Folsom, Agate Basin-Hell Gap, and Alberta-Cody respectively, with intervening sterile deposits. The site location and the taphonomics of the bone bed in the Alberta-Cody level suggest that the site was associated with the procurement of large animals. Interdisciplinary investigation of the site indicates that past geologic activity is largely responsible for the scarcity of Paleoindian sites in the basin. The history and basic philosophy of cultural resource management in this area are reviewed. Currently, land ownership is divided between federal and state agencies and private operators, such that the surface may be privately owned while the subsurface is federally owned. The argument is made for a future cultural resource management program for the Powder River Basin that is strongly oriented toward research in contrast to the present policy of inventory and avoidance of archaeological sites.

Melting and retreating glaciers and ice patches (aniuvat) have revealed frozen archaeological remains on several continents, including North America. Artifacts from these sites provide information about high-latitude and high-altitude human adaptations and unique insights into prehistoric material culture. A Geographic Information System (GIS) model, “Modeling Archaeological Potential of Ice and Snow,” or MAPIS, is being developed to focus aerial reconnaissance and pedestrian survey for archaeological and paleontological site discovery over vast areas containing glaciers and ice patches. Two field surveys in Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve refined the MAPIS model and documented historic and prehistoric artifacts on the surface of recently melted glaciers and aniuvat. Because thawed and exposed organic artifacts decompose or are destroyed soon after exposure, there is an urgent need to locate and preserve them before they are lost forever.

Recent models for the organization of Classic period Maya in the Guatemala lowlands suggest a complex system of stratified social classes. Much of the basic data supporting such theoretical models is derived from the evidence for the existence of numerous occupational specializations. Previously, the data have been largely inferential, but extensive and comprehensive excavations at Tikal over a period of 13 yr have provided significant information suggesting that the occupations of residents of specific buildings or house groups can be determined. This evidence also suggests techniques by which future excavations might be directed in order to augment existing information.

A compilation of 63 stratigraphic situations with evidence for human presence and two or more radiocarbon ages older than 10,500 B.P. has been processed to increase the accuracy and precision of the estimated ages and to compare their distributions at hemispheric scale. The compilation was developed to perceive patterns of population expansion and to plot early sites in their temporal and geographic order. The use of radiocarbon dates as data, criteria for inclusion in the compilation, the statistical processing methods used, and effects of controlling for precision and accuracy are described. The results indicate three earliest mean ages with great distance from each other in North and South America by 12,000 B.P., slightly later mean ages in Alaska, and the abrupt occurrence of Fluted and Fishtail Point sites at the beginning of the Younger Dryas climatic reversal (YD). One interpretation of these data is that there were different colonizing groups settling into different parts of the hemisphere in near-contemporaneity. Another is that Fluted and Fishtail Point sites may represent population relocations due to YD related ecological disturbances at the shorelines of those times. Corollary to the conclusions of early population diversity is the possibility of landfalls of people from areas other than Beringia in the late Pleistocene.

Throughout the world, public agencies, professional societies, and individual archaeologists have recognized the need for more and better public education about archaeology. We are challenged to act on this recognition by providing opportunities for the public to learn about, and even participate in, archaeological interpretations and investigations. The audiences for these efforts include the general public, students and teachers, legislators, public administrators, and Native Americans. Archaeology has been a subject of interest to the public for centuries, and the archaeological record has fascinated people for even longer. Contemporary archaeologists must reach out to the public by providing them with understandable interpretations and explanations. We must do this if appreciation for archaeology and for the importance of archaeological preservation is to grow in America.

Despite a tendency to treat Mississippian production as involving specialization, little effort has been made to test these proposals in actual field work. A distinction between specialization at a site and specialization of producers is made in this article and applied to materials from the Great Salt Spring, a Mississippian salt production site in southern Illinois. Testing and excavations in 1981 and 1982 show that this was a true limited activity site. Nonetheless, the data on producer organization do not strongly support the conclusion of specialist production there and are consistent with simpler models of non-specialist production.