American Antiquity 

About: American Antiquity is an academic journal published by Society for American Archaeology. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Population & Pottery. It has an ISSN identifier of 0002-7316. Over the lifetime, 5837 publications have been published receiving 147421 citations.

Willow Smoke and Dogs’ Tails: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation

Abstract: Hunter-gatherer subsistence-settlement strategies are discussed in terms of differing organizational components, "mapping-on" and "logistics," and the consequences of each for archaeological intersite variability are discussed. It is further suggested that the differing strategies are responsive to different security problems presented by the environments in which hunter-gatherers live. Therefore, given the beginnings of a theory of adaptation, it is possible to anticipate both differences in settlement-subsistence strategies and patterning in the archaeological record through a more detailed knowledge of the distribution of environmental variables.

Archaeology as Anthropology

Abstract: It is argued that archaeology has made few contributions to the general field of anthropology with regard to explaining cultural similarities and differences. One major factor contributing to this lack is asserted to be the tendency to treat artifacts as equal and comparable traits which can be explained within a single model of culture change and modification. It is suggested that “material culture” can and does represent the structure of the total cultural system, and that explanations of differences and similarities between certain classes of material culture are inappropriate and inadequate as explanations for such observations within other classes of items. Similarly, change in the total cultural system must be viewed in an adaptive context both social and environmental, not whimsically viewed as the result of “influences,” “stimuli,” or even “migrations” between and among geographically defined units. Three major functional sub-classes of material culture are discussed: technomic, socio-technic, and ideo-technic, as well as stylistic formal properties which cross-cut these categories. In general terms these recognized classes of materials are discussed with regard to the processes of change within each class. Using the above distinctions in what is termed a systemic approach, the problem of the appearance and changing utilization of native copper in eastern North America is discussed. Hypotheses resulting from the application of the systemic approach are: (1) the initial appearance of native copper implements is in the context of the production of socio-technic items; (2) the increased production of socio-technic items in the late Archaic period is related to an increase in population following the shift to the exploitation of aquatic resources roughly coincident with the Nipissing high water stage of the ancestral Great Lakes; (3) this correlation is explicable in the increased selective pressures favoring material means of status communication once populations had increased to the point that personal recognition was no longer a workable basis for differential role behavior; (4) the general shift in later periods from formally “utilitarian” items to the manufacture of formally “nonutilitarian” items of copper is explicable in the postulated shift from purely egalitarian to increasingly nonegalitarian means of status attainment.

Archaeological Context and Systemic Context

Abstract: The cultural aspect of the processes responsible for forming the archaeological record is argued to be an underdeveloped branch of archaeological theory. A flow model is presented by which to view the "life history" or processes of systemic context of any material element. This model accounts for the production of a substantial portion of the archaeological record. The basic processes of this model are: procurement, manufacture, use, maintenance, and discard. Refuse labels the state of an element in archaeological context. The spatial implications of the model suggest a largely untapped source of behavioral information. Differential refuse disposal patterns are examined as they affect artifact location and association. The meaning of element relative frequencies in refuse is discussed.

Demography and cultural evolution: How adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses: The Tasmanian case

Abstract: A combination of archeological and ethnohistorical evidence indicates that, over an approximately 8,000-year period, from the beginning of the Holocene until European explorers began arriving in the eighteenth century, the societies of Tasmania lost a series of valuable skills and technologies. These likely included bone tools, cold-weather clothing, hafted tools, nets, fishing spears, barbed spears, spear-throwers, and boomerangs. To address this puzzle, and the more general question of how human cognition and social interaction can generate both adaptive cultural evolution and maladaptive losses of culturally acquired skills, this paper constructs a formal model of cultural evolution rooted in the cognitive details of human social learning and inference. The analytical results specify the conditions for differing rates of adaptive cultural evolution, and reveal regimes that will produce maladaptive losses of particular kinds of skills and related technologies. More specifically, the results suggest that the relatively sudden reduction in the effective population size (the size of the interacting pool of social learners) that occurred with the rising ocean levels at the end of the last glacial epoch, which cut Tasmania off from the rest of Australia for the ensuing ten millennia, could have initiated a cultural evolutionary process that (1) kept stable or even improved relatively simple technological skills, and (2) produced an increasing deterioration of more complex skills leading to the complete disappearance of some technologies and practices. This pattern is consistent with the empirical record in Tasmania. Beyond this case, I speculate on the applicability of the model to understanding the variability in rates of adaptive cultural evolution.

Style and Social Information in Kalahari San Projectile Points

Abstract: The results of a study on the relationship between stylistic variation in Kalahari San projectile points and aspects of San social organization are summarized. Five issues relevant to archaeology are discussed in light of the San data: (1) stylistic behavior and the different aspects of style, (2) which items of material culture carry social information and why, (3) which attributes on San projectile points carry social information, (4) what the results of the analysis of stylistic variation in projectile points imply for current methods of stylistic analysis and interpretation, and (5) the correspondence between style in San projectile points and San organization.