The plaza is one of the most important elements of the built environment for bringing people together in the Pueblo World of the US Southwest. Yet, the myriad ways in which plazas were designed and used vary greatly through time. Although plazas have been significant components of Ancestral Pueblo site layouts for hundreds of years, nearly every research study has been based on the enclosed plazas of the Pueblo IV period. In this article, we evaluate variation in 861 plazas from the Pueblo World dating from AD 800 to 1550. Our analysis of settlement size, plaza area, and degrees of plaza accessibility demonstrates that the spacious plazas emblematic of the Pueblo IV period were built to accommodate more people than the resident population, suggesting the origins of the feast-day-type ceremonialism seen in contemporary Pueblo communities. Our analysis suggests that this is a relatively recent phenomenon, because plazas in earlier Chaco great house communities were built to be more exclusionary, and thus activities held within them were more restricted.

The transformation of the Birnirk culture into the Thule culture is essential in reconstructing the emergence of modern Inuit across Alaska and the larger Bering Strait. To this end, two adjacent semi-subterranean houses of late Birnirk and early Thule affiliation, respectively, at the Rising Whale (KTZ-304) site at Cape Espenberg were recently excavated and dated by radiocarbon and tree-ring measurements. We present the Bayesian analysis of the resulting large series of dates, demonstrating the lack of contemporaneity between the two features: the Birnirk house was occupied in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries AD, whereas the occupation of the Thule house occurred in the second half of the thirteenth into the early fourteenth century. With the increased precision made possible by coupling dendrochronology with radiocarbon, our results place the Birnirk-Thule transition more that 200 years later than the generally accepted date of AD 1000. A transition in the second half of the thirteenth century has major implications for the timing of Thule presence along the coast of Alaska and for their migration into the Alaska interior. It aligns with a thirteenth-century migration into the western Canadian Arctic and farther east and a brief early or “initial” Thule period.

Social power establishes and legitimizes actions for individuals within a society who accept the structures that create that power. Differences in power can develop without strict hierarchies, however. Here, we explore the power differences among groups living in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico using bioarchaeological data and a case study from the Harris site, a Late Pithouse period village occupied circa AD 550–1000. Aspects of mortuary practices and supporting archaeological data offer nuanced interpretations of individuals with situational power linked to social practices that both solidified and maintained power by particular households. The power differences documented here are not based on coercion; instead, they are tied to cooperation and engagement with the community. For small-scale communities such as Harris, situational power is interpreted for individuals with access to prime agricultural land and/or ritual, or by association with certain land-holding lineages. This system is consistent with a heterarchical structure that embraced flexibility in the use of power.

The concept of projectile point series was first developed in California and the Great Basin in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1981, applying the Monitor Valley projectile point key, Thomas (1981) assigned chronological ranges to five projectile point series for the Great Basin, the Gatecliff Series, the Humboldt Series, the Elko Series, the Rosegate Series, and the Desert Series, which were based on the Berkeley projectile point naming conventions. Each of these series, which are still in use today, include different morphological point forms that—although sharing the same primary designator—do not share the same temporal spans or geographic distributions. Morphologically different projectile points do not share a priori temporal, geographic, or cultural associations simply by virtue of sharing a series label. The use of the series concept and chronology in projectile point analyses in the West should be discontinued and replaced with analyses of morphological forms, geographic distributions, and temporal spans of individual point types.

Migration played a significant role in shaping the Native populations of the southwest United States and northwest Mexico. Large-scale migrations into and across the region were underlain by small-scale (intraregional) population shifts affected by environmental fluctuations (declines and improvements) and social phenomena such as aggregation and the spread of sociopolitical spheres of influence within the region. We compare projectile point types, mortuary patterns, and biodistance information from Early Agricultural period (2100 BC–AD 50) sites to identify subtle differences in population composition associated with the arrival and spread of maize across the region. Small-scale migrations occurring around the foundation of farming communities in the Sonoran Desert may have established the basis of broad regional connectivity, shared historical ties, and subsequent migration patterns and practices. Rooted in early farming traditions and a shared language family, we argue that farmers expanded north and east from the borderlands, then eventually returned to ancestral homelands when environmental and incursive pressures pushed them back south.

In this article, we explore transformations and continuities in cosmology and cultural landscape structure across Pueblo history in the US Southwest. Many researchers have directly compared the archaeology of the society centered at Chaco Canyon (ca. AD 850–1140) in northwestern New Mexico with ethnographic documentation of Pueblo communities from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This approach makes it difficult to understand how cultural transformation played out in the intervening centuries. Here, we investigate this history by comparing Kin Nizhoni, a Chaco-era Great House community in the Red Mesa Valley, with Wiyo’owingeh, a post-Chacoan community in the Rio Grande Valley. We find that the built environments of both sites expressed similar cosmological principles, but architectural expressions of these concepts became less explicitly marked over time. We also find that this similar cosmology was mapped onto different social structures, with a focus on elite architecture in the Chaco era as opposed to communal dwellings with spatially separated shrines in later Pueblo contexts. We close by proposing a connection between the functions of Chacoan Great Houses and later Pueblo World Quarter Shrines. Overall, our findings underscore the utility of cultural landscape studies for tracing relationships between religion and society across North American Indigenous histories.

Bioarchaeologists commonly record porous cranial lesions (PCLs). They have varied etiologies but are frequently associated with nutritional anemia without a differential diagnosis. This article provides a literature review, evaluates diet in the US Southwest over time, and identifies issues with associating PCLs with poor diet in this region. Generally, diet was adequate across time and space. Although maize was a dietary staple, other food items such as rabbits and amaranth provided complementary micronutrients. PCLs exhibit varied morphologies, which generally correspond with age: those characterized by fine, scattered porosity are associated with younger ages at death. Variation in PCL morphology indicates different and sometimes unrelated etiologies. Nutritional anemia is an insufficient explanation for PCL frequency in the Southwest, partly because the diet was adequate across time.

In this article, we seek to engage concretely with feminist and antiracist dialogues by exploring experiences of Latina archaeologists living and working in the United States, a group whose contributions, experiences, and challenges in the field have remained undertheorized to date. In this qualitative analysis of nine semi-structured interviews conducted in 2023 with Latina archaeologists, we consider historical structural factors that have suppressed representation of Latinas in archaeology; through their stories, we explore barriers and experiences that uniquely affect this group within the discipline, including familismo (familialism), cultural taxation, disenfranchisement, and harassment. Although much work remains to be done to move archaeology toward restorative justice, our goal by centering the experiences of Latinas is to add to conversations that have already emerged in archaeology and anthropology about the extractivist colonial legacies of our discipline and the various impacts of sexism, gender-based violence, white supremacy, and other hegemonic practices. We conclude with suggestions for how the archaeological discipline can change for the better and become more inclusive and equitable, not only for Latinx scholars but also for those from other historically marginalized groups.

Chipped stone tools termed perforators and gravers are characterized by projections. Although the implied function of these tool types differs, there are no guidelines for classifying perforators and gravers based on their morphology. Consequently, researchers classify these tools differently, which precludes meaningful comparisons of the frequencies of these types between assemblages. A use-wear study confirmed the hypothesis that specimens with a thin projection and a sharp distal angle often had perforation use wear. Specimens with graver use wear were characterized by a range of projection perimeters and distal angles. We recommend that specimens with a projection perimeter of 20 mm or less and a distal angle of 40 degrees or less be classified as perforators and those with greater dimensions as gravers. This will achieve a consistent classification system for perforators and gravers, although it must be recognized that these type names may not be indicative of the function of individual specimens.

By the end of the fourteenth-century AD, Native peoples throughout the midwestern and southeastern regions of North America had withdrawn from major monumental and political centers established in prior centuries. In this article, I present the results of a community-level examination of settlement transformations on the Georgia Coast that I argue are the outcome of this large-scale movement of Mississippian peoples. Specifically, I examine the consequences of the depopulation of the Savannah River Valley, a case of a rapid, historically contingent Mississippian emigration beginning in the fourteenth century AD. My results establish how a large-scale immigration event affected community spatial and political organization and demonstrate that migrants and coastal locals engaged in the collective cultural construction of new identities and lifeways in response to the challenges of negotiating the use of common pool resources, such as fisheries and suitable farmland. Reconstructing the spatial organization of communities can help explain the demographic, economic, and political processes that undergird the cultural materialization of space. Although much remains to be learned about intra-settlement organization at post-Archaic, precolonial sites along the Georgia Coast, this investigation provides new information about the local, community-level spatial response to the fourteenth-century immigration event.

Iroquoian groups inhabiting the St. Lawrence Valley in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries AD practiced agriculture and supplemented their diet with fish and a variety of wild plants and terrestrial animals. Important gaps remain in our knowledge of Iroquoian foodways, including how pottery was integrated to culinary practices and the relative importance of maize in clay-pot cooking. Lipid analyses carried out on 32 potsherds from the Dawson site (Montreal, Canada) demonstrate that pottery from this village site was used to prepare a range of foodstuffs—primarily freshwater fish and maize, but possibly also other animals and plants. The importance of aquatic resources is demonstrated by the presence of a range of molecular compounds identified as biomarkers for aquatic products, whereas the presence of maize could only be detected through isotopic analysis. Bayesian modeling suggests that maize is present in all samples and is the dominant product in at least 40% of the potsherds analyzed. This combination of analytical techniques, applied for the first time to Iroquoian pottery, provides a glimpse into Iroquoian foodways and suggests that sagamité was part of the culinary traditions at the Dawson site.

Drinking culture. What happens in the field. It was just a joke. Don’t rock the boat. Archaeology staggers under the weight of its many “gray zones,” contexts of disciplinary culture where boundaries, relationships, ethical responsibilities, and expectations of behavior are rendered “blurry.” Gray zones rely on an ethos of silence and tacit cooperation rooted in structures of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism. In the gray zone, subtle and overt forms of abuse become coded as normal, inevitable, impossible, or the unfortunate cost of entry to the discipline. Drawing on narrative survey responses and interviews collected by the Working Group on Equity and Diversity in Canadian Archaeology in 2019 and 2020, we examine the concept of the gray zone in three intersecting contexts: the field, archaeology’s drinking culture, and relationships. The work of making archaeology more equitable relies on our ability to confront gray zones directly and collectively. We offer several practical recommendations while recognizing that bureaucratic solutions alone will not be sufficient. Change will require a shift in archaeological culture—a collective project that pulls gray zones into the open and prioritizes principles of care.

In the Mississippian Southeast and Midwest, large fabric-impressed pans have traditionally been associated with the evaporation of brine to make salt. Although many of these vessels were undoubtedly used for this purpose, their presence at non-salt-making sites suggests that they sometimes served other functions. Using compound-specific isotope analysis, a sample of 74 fabric-impressed pan sherds from 12 sites in the Middle Cumberland Region of Tennessee was tested for absorbed organic residues to better understand the role of this vessel form in Mississippian foodways. Four residues from four different sites yielded evidence of C4 plant contribution, indicating that these vessels were likely involved in the preparation of maize. Additionally, 27 interpretable residues suggest a broader range of use, with three samples containing potential indicators of fish or shellfish, pointing to their role in preparing nonmaize foods.

There is no consensus on who built the numerous stone structures that dot the archaeological landscape in the northeastern United States. Professional archaeologists traditionally have attributed them to colonial farmers, but increasing numbers of archaeologists have joined many nonprofessional groups and Native Americans in arguing for Indigenous origins. Better understanding of these structures can be obtained by determining how old they are. This article reviews nearly 60 luminescence ages, on both sediments and rocks, that have been obtained in recent years. Many of the derived ages fall in the sixteenth century, between initial European contact and substantial colonial settlement. A few ages are significantly older, suggesting that this technology has a deeper origin. The results warrant more research into these structures and rethinking their significance.

A dramatic increase of small (“arrow-sized”) points, typically beginning after about 2,000 years ago (depending on locality), has often been characterized as marking the introduction of the bow and arrow throughout the Americas, eventually replacing earlier dart-and-atlatl weaponry in most areas. We analyze a large point assemblage from sites in the central Willamette Valley of western Oregon with a 6,000-year-long cultural record. We easily sorted the assemblage into small (“arrow-sized”) and large (“dart-sized”) sets using standard metrics, but we noted extreme temporal overlap, suggesting that (1) atlatls and bows continued in regular use as companion weapons; (2) both large and small projectile tips were affixed to arrows, depending on the target; or (3) there was some combination of these factors. Given the range of point forms, it appears that some served specialized functions (e.g., social conflict, hunting conditions, prey type), suggesting that the uses of stone-tipped weaponry may be more nuanced than has generally been acknowledged. Consequently, we find that assigning points to specific weapon systems requires assumptions we cannot support.

The morphological characteristics of starch granules preserved on ancient ground stone tools can reveal which plant species were processed and consumed and even infer tool function. Bedrock metates are commonly associated with the processing of localized seasonal resources, providing potential evidence for past human lifeways, including foods collected and processed, social gatherings, settlement patterns, land investment, and territorial behavior. In contrast to ground stone artifacts preserved in a buried context that have been studied extensively, limited starch research has been conducted on the potential for environmental contamination of open-air bedrock mortars and metates exposed to natural erosional elements. This project examines the residue samples of bedrock metates from three archaeological sites in southern Oregon in the United States to compare the starch yields of extraneous material cleaned from the grinding surface to those extracted from interstitial matrices deeper within the bedrock. Significantly greater number of starch granules were recovered from deep within the cracks and crevices than from the surface. Our study suggests that environmental contamination can be managed if separate surface and control samples are collected and analyzed in conjunction with the interstitial samples. Examining the potential for environmental contamination on exposed grinding surfaces is crucial for confidence in starch granule results and improving our understanding of human dietary behavior.

Here, we explore variation in a new record of archaeological house-floor sizes from the southwestern United States relative to spatially explicit time series estimates of local precipitation. Our results show that inequality becomes more severe during periods of high precipitation. This supports the theory suggesting that inequality may emerge where resources are dense, predictable, and clumped within heterogenous and circumscribed environments. Our findings indicate that wealth inequality may emerge among populations with similar subsistence adaptations as a result of local socioenvironmental variation.