Anna Marie Prentiss

EVOLUTION OF A LATE PREHISTORIC WINTER VILLAGE ON THE INTERIOR PLATEAU OF BRITISH COLUMBIA : GEOPHYSICAL INVESTIGATIONS, RADIOCARBON DATING, AND SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF THE BRIDGE RIVER SITE

A common issue for archaeologists who study intermediate-scale societies is defining scale and complexity of occupations across entire villages or towns. This can be a major problem since an understanding of site-wide inter-household occupation patterns can be crucial for accurate reconstruction of village demographics and socio-economic organization. In this paper we present new research at the Bridge River site, a large complex hunter-gatherer village in British Columbia, designed to develop a site-wide history of household occupation patterns. We accomplish this through broad-scale geophysical investigations, test excavations and an extensive program of radiocarbon dating. Results of the study suggest that the village grew rapidly between ca. 1800 and 1250 cal. B.P. expanding from 7 to at least 29 simultaneously occupied houses. Variability in household spacing and size indicate that social organization may have grown increasingly complex parallel with rising numbers of households.

THE CULTURAL EVOLUTION OF MATERIAL WEALTH-BASED INEQUALITY AT BRIDGE RIVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Abstract A fundamental problem for anthropological archaeology lies in defining and explaining the evolutionary origins of social inequality. Researchers have offered a range of models emphasizing variability in the roles of managers, aggrandizers, ecological variability, and historical contexts. Recent studies suggest that the form of emergent inequality may have varied significantly between groups, implying that pathways to inequality may have varied as well. Unfortunately it has been difficult to test many of these models using archaeological data given their requirements for fine-grained assessments of spatiotemporal variability in many data classes. Recent research at the Bridge River site in British Columbia provides the opportunity to explore the utility of a range of explanatory models associated with early social inequality. Results of the study suggest that inequality, measured as significant variability in accumulation of a range of material wealth items, came late to the Bridge River site (ca. 1200–1300 cal. B.P.) and was associated with a period of demographic packing and apparent declining access to some critical subsistence resources. Assessment of interhousehold variability in demography, wealth accumulation, and occupational longevity suggests that markers of significant affluence manifested only in newly established houses. An important implication is that material wealth-based inequality may not have been hereditary in nature at Bridge River during the period prior to 1100 cal. B.P.

Cultural Stasis and Change in Northern North America: A Macroevolutionary Perspective

Archaeologists have long recognized that some cultures persist for extraordinarily long periods with little change in the archaeological record. While the pattern of apparent cultural stasis is well known, it is significantly under-theorized in archaeology. In this chapter, we explore macroevolutionary theories of stasis and change in hunter-gatherer societies. We use these ideas to interpret the prehistoric record of the Eastern Arctic region with an emphasis on the long spans of stasis and punctuated change characterizing the Paleoeskimo period. Results of the study suggest that patterns of stasis will be affected by the internal structure of resource management strategies and broader ecological and social selective context. We recognize that while adaptive specialization could be highly successful in the short term, adaptive flexibility likely offered greater long-term advantages for groups living in arctic contexts.

Get Rad! The Evolution of the Skateboard Deck

Today there is growing interest in material culture studies among a wide range of social and biological scientists. Researchers recognize that some concepts drawn from biology can be useful in understanding aspects of material culture evolution. Indeed, recent research has demonstrated that material culture can evolve in a branching manner (vertical transmission) similar to that of biological species. However, there are many complicating factors as well, particularly the human penchant for borrowing and resurrecting old ideas resulting in extensive blending and hybridization (lateral transmission). But blending and hybridization occurs in biology as well depending upon the nature and scale of interacting organisms. There is far more lateral information transfer between populations within species than between species (although there are always exceptions). History can also be expected to play a role in the degree to which evolution is affected by vertical versus lateral transmission processes. All things equal, we should expect branching to be most important early in the history of a cultural system since blending could not become significant without the early development of distinct lineages. This is different from most biological systems in the sense that the development of distinct lineages would significantly reduce (or prevent) opportunities for blending. We explore these ideas with an analysis of skateboard decks spanning the history of professional skateboards since 1963. We apply cladistic and networking models in order to develop an understanding of the degree by which skateboard evolution was affected by branching and blending/hybridization processes. The study is enhanced by a historical record that provides significant insight into the actual innovation and borrowing processes associated with skateboard evolution. Results confirm that both branching and blending played important roles and that branching was most critical early in professional skateboard history. The study offers the important implication that while cultural systems will typically incorporate far more horizontal transmission in the evolutionary process (particularly in later stages) than many biological systems, general principles governing early stage branching and disparity may apply to both.

The Demography of Prehistoric Fishing/Hunting People: A Case Study of the Upper Columbia Area

The calibrated radiocarbon evidence reveals a bimodal distribution indicating aggregated and dispersed occupations in the Upper Columbia region of North America. Through examining changes in settlement and subsistence in conjunction with dating sequences, we propose a model of population dynamics and their changing amplitude through time. The correlated lines of evidence suggest that population levels show a relationship to changing economic systems as well as social structures. In this paper we map these changes from forager to collector type economic systems as well as generalized to more complex forms of hunter-gatherer socio-systems

Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica

How wealth is distributed among households provides insight into the fundamental characters of societies and the opportunities they afford for social mobility. However, economic inequality has been hard to study in ancient societies for which we do not have written records, which adds to the challenge of placing current wealth disparities into a long-term perspective. Although various archaeological proxies for wealth, such as burial goods or exotic or expensive-to-manufacture goods in household assemblages, have been proposed, the first is not clearly connected with households, and the second is confounded by abandonment mode and other factors. As a result, numerous questions remain concerning the growth of wealth disparities, including their connection to the development of domesticated plants and animals and to increases in sociopolitical scale. Here we show that wealth disparities generally increased with the domestication of plants and animals and with increased sociopolitical scale, using Gini coefficients computed over the single consistent proxy of house-size distributions. However, unexpected differences in the responses of societies to these factors in North America and Mesoamerica, and in Eurasia, became evident after the end of the Neolithic period. We argue that the generally higher wealth disparities identified in post-Neolithic Eurasia were initially due to the greater availability of large mammals that could be domesticated, because they allowed more profitable agricultural extensification, and also eventually led to the development of a mounted warrior elite able to expand polities (political units that cohere via identity, ability to mobilize resources, or governance) to sizes that were not possible in North America and Mesoamerica before the arrival of Europeans. We anticipate that this analysis will stimulate other work to enlarge this sample to include societies in South America, Africa, South Asia and Oceania that were under-sampled or not included in this study.

Niche Construction, Macroevolution, and the Late Epipaleolithic of the Near East

Cultural macroevolution results from a complex interplay between human socio-ecological action and the transmission of packages of information. Niche construction theory helps us to frame the often complex relationships between human actions and their ecological contexts within an evolutionary context. In this chapter, we offer an approach to cultural macroevolution that combines tenets of niche construction and evolutionary anthropology. We apply the approach to the Epipaleolithic of the Near East in order to address the complex processes of cultural evolution preceding the development of Neolithic farming communities. Results of the study suggest that the Epipaleolithic was characterized by short periods of emergent cultural variation punctuating longer term stability. The short-lived diversification events may have played important roles in developing core elements crystallized later in the Neolithic period.

THE COARSE VOLCANIC ROCK INDUSTRY AT RIO IBÁÑEZ 6 WEST, AISÉN REGION, PATAGONIAN CHILE

Abstract Excavations at the stratified rockshelter, Rio Ibáñez 6 west (RI-6 west), located in west-central Patagonia, uncovered a previously unrecognized lithic industry featuring the production of a range of tools from coarse volcanic rock actually derived from the wall of the shelter. Tool forms from this material at RI-6 west include a variety of bifaces, projectile points, picks, knives, and wedges. This paper will present a description of the industry with a focus on production techniques and tool functions. Conclusions are drawn with a focus on relationships between patterns of lithic technology and those associated with food procurement and processing activities. The study suggests that tools were produced to function as situational and transported personal gear. An implication is that many factors affect decisions to use coarse stone for tool production and use.

The Emergence of New Socioeconomic Strategies in the Middle and Late Holocene Pacific Northwest Region of North America

Macroevolutionary archaeology recognizes that evolutionary forces act in complex ways on cultural entities spanning a range of scales from simple artifact-based traits to population-held emergent characters like socioeconomic strategies. Evolutionary origins of these complex characters can be difficult to identify and understand, particularly in ancient contexts lacking written records. This chapter outlines theories of emergent fitness, emergent characters, and adaptive landscapes as a step toward explanation of cultural macroevolutionary process. Case studies consider the evolution of complex hunter-gatherer societies from North America’s Pacific Northwest. The study indicates that new socioeconomic strategies evolved in short-lived events resulting from fortuitous decision making by small groups in patchy, sometimes socially isolated ecological contexts. Once present, the strategies dispersed into adjacent areas probably via actual population expansion but also via cultural transmission. Study results suggest that both biological and cultural fitness may play significant roles in the emergence and dispersal of complex cultural variants when examined on macroevolutionary scales.

Mosaic Evolution in Cultural Frameworks: Skateboard Decks and Projectile Points

There has been significant debate in paleoanthropology and more recently, archaeology, over the concept of mosaic evolution. Essentially, proponents of the concept argue that different aspects of organisms evolve separately while others argue that organisms evolve as integrated entities. Similarly, archaeologists debate the relevance of cultural evolution as a complex multi-scalar process. In this paper we conduct two cladistic analyses of cultural phenomena focusing on skateboard decks and projectile points from an archaeological site to examine variability in the evolutionary process. We find evidence for mosaic evolution in both studies and conclude that modularity likely is an important factor in cultural evolution, at least at the level of artifact design. We caution future investigators of evolution in ancient stone tools that modularity could have complicating effects on phylogenetic outcomes unless explicitly considered.