The eastern Idaho archaeological record is a unique confluence of the Great Basin, Columbia Plateau, and Great Plains, resulting in a diverse and complex projectile point sequence. This study presents a revised typology and chronology of projectile points in the region, grounded in a comprehensive review of over 750 diagnostic examples from 16 stratified sites and 106 associated radiocarbon dates. We reevaluate existing classifications and propose a revised chronological framework with regionally appropriate types. This study provides a thorough background to eastern Idaho projectile points and contributes to broader discussions of projectile point typology and chronology in the Desert West, offering a robust tool for future archaeological research in the region.
This research focuses on the geochemistry and archaeological exploitation of fine-grained volcanic (FGV) lithic sources in eastern Idaho. By combining energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF) characterization of these sources with a discussion of their exploitation at 27 precontact archaeological sites, this paper provides one of the few overviews of these important resources. The geological context of each source is discussed, and the XRF results are used to classify the volcanic rock types, in turn demonstrating how these sources can be distinguished based on their elemental signatures. Moving forward, our hope is that the current study can contribute to the reconstruction of lithic procurement strategies and associated conveyance zones for FGV that can add nuance to the wide range of existing studies focused on obsidian.
Excavations of the historical burial ground of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia yielded approximately 400 individual burials, the majority of coffins from which were severely degraded. Documentation of coffin construction in colonial and post-colonial America is scarce. One adult coffin from the site, preserved in remarkable condition, was selected for detailed examination to address this gap. Careful disassembly, as part of a structural conservation treatment, facilitated the study of carpentry techniques employed in the coffin's design, as well as the recording of comprehensive measurements of its dimensions. One key carpentry technique, kerf bending, found in multiple locations across the coffin, represents ingenuity on the part of its maker and may be a feature of eighteenth-century American coffin design more common than previously thought.
The fate of Labrador's Point Revenge complex has been a subject of educated speculation amongst archaeologists working in Labrador for fifty years. The understanding of the relationship between this archaeological culture and ethnographically known Indigenous populations such as the Beothuk and Innu has also had an interesting history and has been considered a settled matter by some archaeologists for the past three decades. In this paper we examine three hypotheses on the fate of the Point Revenge complex as laid out in the literature, and we test them against archaeological data, relying on the locations of known archaeological sites and the presence or absence of diagnostic stone tools. The results suggest that the people of the Point Revenge complex did not disappear from the archaeological record in the early colonial period, but instead they returned to the island of Newfoundland in the early sixteenth century rather than migrating to the interior of Labrador. Our research provides additional support for a long-recognized relationship between the Point Revenge and contemporaneous archaeological cultures on the Island of Newfoundland and the Quebec North Shore and between these cultures and the historically known Beothuk of Newfoundland.
Carroll Cabin is a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)-eligible property located in southwestern Pennsylvania on land stewarded by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). Master's thesis research conducted between 2015 and 2016 provided DCNR with a cultural context of the extant building and associated woodland to assist with their stewardship of the resource. Amongst the five methodologies utilized to research the resource and property were geochemical sampling, archaeological excavation, and dendrochronological study. Used as the first step to geochemically analyze the landscape, soil chemistry results revealed several locations of cultural activity. Excavation of foundations revealed secondary deposition and activity associated with the mid-nineteenth to twentieth-centuries, matching part of the available documentary record. Collected dendrochronology samples indicated that the original hewn-log building was likely constructed between c.1775-1810 and ultimately supported the determination of eligibility due to age and association with the American Frontier.
Crescents are flaked stone tools found throughout western North America that are often associated with waterbodies and projectile points diagnostic of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, such as the Western Stemmed Tradition. Archaeologists continue to debate the function of crescents and they remain poorly dated outside of the Channel Islands. Here we report a crescent from recent excavations at Connley Cave 6 in central Oregon and provide a first look at associated stratigraphy, radiocarbon ages, and tools. The crescent's age (ca. 9715-9245 cal BP) and associated projectile points are remarkably like the crescent from Little Steamboat Point-1 Rockshelter in Oregon and suggest that people who used Cascade points during the early Holocene also made crescents. This work helps refine the age of crescents and our understanding of their associated toolkits.
The term 'cross dating' originated in dendrochronology in the 1920s and was not initially used by North American archaeologists although the method was used. The method was used by European archaeologists since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Authors of the North American literature on cross dating speak of correlation of materials of known age with materials of unknown age but typically do not indicate how the correlation is to be established. Occasionally the assumption underpinning the cross-dating method is said to involve cultural transmission resulting in typological similarity of artifact specimens, thereby warranting the inference that formal similarity implicates temporal similarity even when artifact specimens are considerable distances apart geographically. Introductory textbooks on archaeological method generally provide incomplete discussion of the cross-dating method and do not always use the term. The archaeological cross-dating method can be implemented using the cross dating by association technique, the typological cross-dating technique, or the contextual cross-dating technique. All three depend on utilizing artifact types unlikely to be independently replicated and referred to as index fossils, horizon styles, and other terms. The inference of temporal similarity may be said to represent contemporaneity or synchroneity, but one must keep in mind that formally similar artifacts, or specimens that belong to the same type (homotaxis), need not represent the same calendric moment but instead a period of some duration.
This article describes preliminary results of ongoing research at the Greenbrier site (3IN1), a late Mississippian town site now located on privately owned land in the Middle White River Valley in Independence County, Arkansas. In 1999 and 2000 the Arkansas Archeological Society and Arkansas Archeological Survey excavated part of a roughly 9-m 2 burned structure (House 1) initially interpreted as a dwelling. Ceramic sherds from this house and four radiocarbon dates from the site, ranging from AD 1400–1600 (calibrated), indicate that Greenbrier is contemporary with Late Mississippian sites in the eastern Lowlands along the St Francis and Mississippi Rivers. Prestige goods suggest that Greenbrier was part of the wider Mississippian sociopolitical economy and was likely a node along a major trade route. Results from instrumental neutron activation analyses suggest that potters at Greenbrier used local clay sources; however, a chemically equivalent local source has yet to be identified. From December 2019 to October 2021 a gradiometer survey of approximately 30 percent of the estimated site area identified traces of a double-walled ditch and/or palisade that appears to have been expanded at least once. Images from the gradiometer survey show over 123 anomalies that are plausibly interpreted as dwellings, in addition to a central square plaza, and two separate double ditches and/or walls. Spatial patterning of dwellings and wall-like anomalies suggests that the late Mississippian town expanded to accommodate growth of the community. Excavation of House 1 in 2023–24 revealed a central hearth and platform surrounded by posts. Radiocarbon dates on charred plants recovered in recent excavations precisely date the burning of the structure to the mid-sixteenth century and suggest the destruction of the house may be attributable to the De Soto expedition that passed through this area in 1541.
Excavations at two Precontact Native American sites in the Wallkill River Valley in Orange County, New York provided considerable new information about the production and use of fossil crinoid beads. The Historian Site in the Town of Minisink and Medline Site 3 in the Town of Montgomery collectively have radiocarbon dates spanning 2300 to 1500 years ago. Crinoids are marine dwelling animals that are found in limestone bearing strata throughout much of North America. Native Americans use of crinoid columnal segments for beads was widespread throughout the United States and Canada in the Precontact and Historic Periods. Archaeological sites with crinoid beads are detailed in this report. The larger significance and possible interpretations of these discoveries are discussed. Because of their small size and fossil origin, excavators and analysts could overlook crinoids. Reexamination of existing archaeological collections will likely “discover” more. Increased use of flotation can recover more crinoids.
The historic burial ground (1722–1859) of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia was excavated in 2016/17 as part of a development project. All human remains were reinterred in Mount Moriah Cemetery in 2024. The excavations recovered skeletal remains representing several hundred individuals (MNI = 354), Many of these individuals were recovered in coffins which were still in suitable condition to be documented. However, because the headstones were historically removed, dates are limited leaving artifacts and historical records to provide a time range of the sample's burial dates. Nails and screws collected from 206 of the coffins provide a unique opportunity to analyze a large sample of fasteners from a historic burial ground. This paper presents the results from a novel method of empirically driven analysis of the nails and screws in which we attempt to extract supplemental data to assist placing the coffin sample in a time range within the burial ground usage.
Mid-Atlantic Native archaeology has focused primarily on cultural horizons that predate the arrival of Europeans, culture contact phenomena, or the frontier dynamic of post-contact. In recent decades, the discipline has made important strides toward civic engagement with Native peoples. However, the focus on pre-contact/contact archaeology and settler history has inhibited the work of decolonization by unconsciously reaffirming colonialist narratives of Native disappearance. From the vantage of the public and present-day communities, several "middle centuries" of Indigenous experiences remain unexplained, and thus, an era of significant culture change is obscured. My call-to-action urges archaeologists to expand the lens of "deep history" across the prehistory/history divide into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, using historical anthropology to engage an understudied period of Indigenous cultural adaptation and persistence. In this article, I overview four examples of recent applied anthropological research that address these silenced spaces and consider decolonizing practices that align with the needs of Native communities.
This paper describes the results of a multi-year reassessment of the Hand site (44SN0022) archeological collection. The Hand site, located on the Nottoway River in southeastern Virginia, was intensively excavated in the 1960s, revealing a complex Native American settlement at least three and a half acres in size. While prior researchers emphasized the site's ties to colonial actors and suggested the site's primary occupation dated to the turn of the seventeenth century, this reexamination instead demonstrates the site's primary components date to the Middle Woodland II (800–900 CE) and the Late Woodland (1200–1300 CE). Rather than a place of colonial encounter, this paper suggests the Hand site is better understood as a prominent Middle to Late Woodland principal town, where domestic and civic-ceremonial life regularly intersected.
In 1953 15 archaeological sites in eastern Washington State had produced remains of bison (Bison bison). Over the following years, the growing archaeological record of bison in the area was revisited as scholars sought to determine if technology changed in response to the presence of bison, the butchering practices used to process carcasses, the demography of resident populations, the kind of activity areas with which bison remains were associated, the frequency of the animal during the Holocene, and the body size of individuals during the Holocene. In this, the study of bison remains tracks well the history of North American zooarchaeology and the history of archaeology in general. Today 70 archaeological and 10 paleontological sites are known to have produced bison remains. Restudy of the larger collections from a modern standpoint will likely reveal much about eastern Washington Holocene bison-an ecologically and biogeographically peripheral or marginal population-that has not yet been considered.
Modeling archaeological site erosion often depends on regional site databases that record sites accurately but with variable precision. This study examines the impact of sea-level rise (SLR) on 10 archaeological sites in the Quoddy Region of Maine through comparing models and field observations. Sites were categorized as low, mid, or high priority for field excavation based on exposure to tides. These model results were compared to field reports of site condition to evaluate the accuracy of modeling SLR as an indicator of erosion and to evaluate the application of models in developing prioritization protocols for site investigations. Models for current sea level scenarios broadly underestimate the degree of erosion reported by field observations because not all site locations were recorded at the precision required for analysis. This study emphasizes the importance of field audits for sites recorded in databases to enable large-scale modeling for the prioritization of urgently threatened sites.
Shorelines have always been hubs of human activity and development meaning much of our cultural heritage is concentrated in coastal settings. In recent decades, changing environmental conditions and the effects of global warming (i.e., shoreline erosion, sea-level rise, land subsistence) threaten to destroy much of our remaining global coastal heritage. To prevent the further loss of archaeological contexts, this study seeks to develop a coastal vulnerability index through geospatial analysis to assess the vulnerability of 35 precontact shell midden sites along the Nansemond River in Suffolk, Virginia. The Nansemond middens offer a long-term history of how coastal inhabitants interacted with their surrounding landscape, with occupation of the area ranging from the Early Archaic period through European contact. This research considers various environmental and cultural variables used to determine which archaeological sites are most threatened by environmental changes and have the greatest potential to contribute valuable data to understand the past.
This themed issue of North American Archaeologist reexamines the deep history of the Chesapeake region's Native societies through five papers. The articles describe collaborative approaches that challenge traditional narratives, focusing on climate change, community dynamics, reassessment of a key archaeological site, and decolonization efforts.
