Cladistics Is Useful for Reconstructing Archaeological Phylogenies: Palaeoindian Points from the Southeastern United States

After almost three centuries of investigations into the question of what it means to be human and the historical processes of becoming human, archaeologists have amassed a huge volume of data on prehistoric human interactions. One of the largest data sets available is on the global distribution and exchange of materials and commodities. What still remains insufficiently understood is the precise nature of these interactions and their role in shaping the diverse cultures that make up the human family as we know it. A plethora of theoretical models combined with a multitude of methodological approaches exist to explain one important aspect of human interaction—trade—and its role and place in shaping humanity. We argue that trade parallels political, religious, and social processes as one of the most significant factors to have affected our evolution. Here we review published literature on archaeological approaches to trade, including the primitivist-modernist and substantivist-formalist-Marxist debates. We also discuss economic, historical, and ethnographic research that directly addresses the role of traders and trade in both past and contemporary societies. In keeping with the complexities of interaction between trade and other aspects of human behavior, we suggest moving away from the either/or perspective or strong identification with any particular paradigm and suggest a return to the middle through a combinational approach to the study of trade in past societies.

The Archaeology of Trading Systems, Part 1: Towards a New Trade Synthesis

In the 1970s and 1980s, regional analysis was an influential part of archaeological research, providing a discrete set of geographical tools inspired by a processual epistemological and interpretive perspective. With the advent of new technologies, new methods, and new paradigms, archaeological research on regional space has undergone significant changes. This article reviews the state of regional archaeology, beginning with a consideration of its history and a discussion of the fundamental issues facing regional investigations before focusing on developments over the last several years. On one hand, the diversification of archaeological theory has created new paradigms for thinking about human relationships with one another and with the physical environment across regional space; in this regard, historical ecology, landscape archaeology, and evolutionary theory have been particularly influential in recent years. This has led to a corresponding diversification of the traditional methods of regional analysis. Most notably, the advent of powerful digital technologies has introduced new tools, especially those from the geographic information sciences, that build on the quantitative methods of past approaches. The investigation of regional data is no longer based on a discrete toolkit of simple mathematical and graphical procedures for representing spatial relationships. Instead, regional archaeology has matured into a diversity of multiscalar spatial and geostatistical techniques that inform many areas of archaeological inquiry.

The Archaeology of Regions: From Discrete Analytical Toolkit to Ubiquitous Spatial Perspective

List of Tables. List of Figures. List of Equations. Acknowledgments. 1 Quantifying Archaeology. 2 Data. Scales of Measurement. Nominal level measurement. Ordinal level measurement. Interval level measurement. Ratio level measurement. The relationship among the scales of measurement. Validity. Accuracy and Precision. Populations and Samples. 3 Characterizing Data Visually. Frequency Distributions. Histograms. Stem and Leaf Diagrams. Ogives (Cumulative Frequency Distributions). Describing a Distribution. Bar Charts. Displaying Data like a Pro. Archaeology and Exploratory Data Analysis. 4 Characterizing Data Numerically: Descriptive Statistics. Measures of Central Tendency. Mean. Median. Mode. Which measure of location is best? Measures of Dispersion. Range. Interquartile range. Variance and standard deviation. Calculating Estimates of the Mean and Standard Deviation. Coefficients of Variation. Box Plots. Characterizing Nominal and Ordinal Scale Data. Index of dispersion for nominal data and the index of qualitative variation. 5 An Introduction to Probability. Theoretical Determinations of Probability. Empirical Determinations of Probability. Complex Events. Using Probability to Determine Likelihood. The Binomial Distribution. The psychic's trick. Simplifying the binomial. Probability in Archaeological Contexts. 6 Putting Statistics to Work: The Normal Distribution. 7 Hypothesis Testing I: An Introduction. Hypotheses of Interest. Formal Hypothesis Testing and the Null Hypothesis. Errors in Hypothesis Testing. 8 Hypothesis Testing II: Confi dence Limits, the t-Distribution, and One-Tailed Tests. Standard Error. Comparing Sample Means to m. Statistical Inference and Confidence Limits. The t-Distribution. Degrees of freedom and the t-distribution. Hypothesis Testing Using the t-Distribution. Testing One-Tailed Null Hypotheses. 9 Hypothesis Testing III: Power. Calculating. Statistical Power. Increasing the power of a test. Calculating Power: An Archaeological Example. Power Curves. Putting it all Together: A Final Overview of Hypothesis Testing. Steps to hypothesis testing. Evaluating common hypotheses. 10 Analysis of Variance and the F-Distribution. Model II ANOVA: Identifying the Impacts of Random Effects. Model I ANOVA: The Analysis of Treatment Effects. A Final Summary of Model I and Model II ANOVA. ANOVA Calculation Procedure. Identifying the Sources of Signifi cant Variation in Model I and Model II ANOVA. Comparing Variances. 11 Linear Regression and Multivariate Analysis. Constructing a Regression Equation. Evaluating the Statistical Significance of Regression. Using Regression Analysis to Predict Values. Placing confi dence intervals around the regression coefficient. Confidence Limits around Y for a Given Xi. Estimating X from Y. The Analysis of Residuals. Some Final Thoughts about Regression. Selecting the right regression model. Do not extrapolate beyond the boundaries of the observed data. Use the right methods when creating reverse predictions. Be aware of the assumptions for regression analysis. You may be able to transform your data to create a linear relationship from a curvilinear relationship. Use the right confi dence limits. 12 Correlation. Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient. The assumptions of Pearson's product-moment correlation coeffi cient. Spearman's Rank Order Correlation Coeffi cient. Some Final Thoughts (and Warnings) about Correlation. 13 Analysis of Frequencies. Determining the Source of Variation in a Chi-Square Matrix. Assumptions of Chi-Square Analysis. The Analysis of Small Samples Using Fisher's Exact Test and Yate's Continuity Correction. The Median Test. 14 An Abbreviated Introduction to Nonparametric and Multivariate Analysis. Nonparametric Tests Comparing Groups. Wilcoxon two-sample test. Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric ANOVA. Multivariate Analysis and the Comparison of Means. A review of pertinent conceptual issues. Two-way ANOVA. Nested ANOVA. 15 Factor Analysis and Principal Component Analysis. Objectives of Principal Component and Factor Analysis. Designing the Principal Component/Factor Analysis. Assumptions and Conceptual Considerations of Factor Analysis. An Example of Factor Analysis. Factor Analysis vs. Principal Component Analysis. 16 Sampling, Research Designs, and the Archaeological Record. How to Select a Sample. How Big a Sample is Necessary? Some Concluding Thoughts. References. Appendix A Areas under a Standardized Normal Distribution. Appendix B Critical Values for the Student's t-Distribution. Appendix C Critical Values for the F-Distribution. Appendix D Critical Values for the Chi-Square Distribution. Appendix E Critical Values for the Wilcoxon Two-Sample U-Test. Index.

Quantitative analysis in archaeology

The organization of human behavior often defies utilitarian or practical reason. Inferences based in practical reason simplify behavioral variability and as a result obscure evidence of ritual organization contained in sequences of archaeological deposits. To expose such sequences, 1 offer a behaviorally based artifact life history approach to the study of prehistoric ritual stratigraphy. I illustrate this approach through a case study of ethnographic and archaeological evidence of ritual and warfare in the American Southwest. [Key words: theory, ritual, war, stratigraphy, Casas Grandes]

Stratigraphy and Practical Reason

This analysis uses flaked stone artifacts to gain insight into the social and economic structure of the Casas Grandes region, northern Chihuahua, Mexico. It begins by considering the intrasite variation in flaked stone reduction at Galeana, a large site near the modern town of Galeana. The analysis of debitage and cores from Galeana indicates that the assemblage is primarily the product of hard hammer, generalized reduction of locally available materials. Differences within the assemblage indicate the presence of spatially distinct reduction areas, with initial core reduction occurring in open areas, and then continuing in room blocks. We then compare the Galeana assemblage with the flaked stone assemblage from the site of Paquime (Casas Grandes), Chihuahua. The analysis indicates that the reduction technique employed at both sites is similar, but that the Paquime assemblage is characterized by a greater proportion of cryptocrystaline silicates and obsidian than the Galeana assemblage. Furthermore, much of the raw material from Paquime does not appear to be locally available. We conclude that the prehistoric inhabitants of Paquime had greater access to cryptocrystaline silicates and obsidian acquired through trade than did the inhabitants of Galeana. This evidence indicates that the economic pattern evident at Paquime did not extend to Galeana and supports the idea that Paquime's economic and political influence over other Casas Grandes sites was limited beyond a 30-km radius.

Rafael Cruz Antillón

Papers

Flaked Stone and Social Interaction in the Casas Grandes Region, Chihuahua, Mexico