Kent G. Lightfoot

Culture Contact Studies: Redefining the Relationship between Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology

Archaeology is poised to play a pivotal role in the reconfiguration of historical anthropology. Archaeology provides not only a temporal baseline that spans both prehistory and history, but the means to study the material remains of ethnic laborers in pluralistic colonial communities who are poorly represented in written accounts. Taken together, archaeology is ideally suited for examining the multicultural roots of modern America. But before archaeology’s full potential to contribute to culture contact studies can be realized, we must address several systemic problems resulting from the separation of “prehistoric” and “historical” archaeology into distinct subfields. In this paper, I examine the implications of increasing temporal/regional specialization in archaeology on (1) the use of historical documents in archaeological research, (2) the study of long-term culture change, and (3) the implementation of pan-regional comparative analyses.

DAILY PRACTICE AND MATERIAL CULTURE IN PLURALISTIC SOCIAL SETTINGS: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF CULTURE CHANGE AND PERSISTENCE FROM FORT ROSS, CALIFORNIA

This paper presents an archaeological approach to the study of culture change and persistence in multi-ethnic communities through the study of daily practices and based on a crucial tenet of practice theory-that individuals will enact and construct their underlying organizational principles, worldviews, and social identities in the ordering of daily life. The study of habitual routines is undertaken in a broadly diachronic and comparative framework by examining daily practices from a multiscalar perspective. The approach is employed in a case study on the organization of daily life of interethnic households composed of Native Californian women and Native Alaskan men at the Russian colony of Fort Ross in northern California. Recognizing that different opportunities and choices existed for household members in this colonial setting, we explore how they constructed their own unique identities by examining the spatial layout of residential space, the ordering of domestic tasks, and the structure of trash disposal. We argue that trash deposits and middens in built environments, which often accumulate through routinized tasks, present great promise for examining the processes of culture change and persistence in archaeology. Este articulo presenta un metodo arqueolkgico para estudiar el cambio cultural y la persistencia de comunidades multiktnicas a traveis del estudio de prdcticas cotidianas. El mitodo se construye sobre un principio crucial de teoria de prdctica-que individuos promulgardn y construiradn sus principios de organizaci6n subyacentes, perspectives del mundo e identidad social en sus acciones de vida diaria. El estudio de rutinas habituales se emprende en un marco ampliamente diacronico y comparative al examinar las prdicticas diarias desde una perspectiva de multiples niveles. Este mitodo se emplea en un caso prdctico que estudia la organizaci6n de la vida diaria de unidades familiares intertnicas integradas por mujeres nativas de California y hombres nativos de Alaska en la colonia rusa de Fort Ross en California. Tomando en cuenta que existieron diferentes oportunidades y opciones para los miembros defamilias en este ambiente colonial, exploramos c6mo construyeron sus identidades propias anicas examinando el esquema espacial del espacio residencial, la manera de organizar las tareas domisticas, y la estructura de disposici6n de basura. Argiiimos que depositos y montones de basura en ambientes construidos, que a menudo se acumulan a medio de rutinas cotidianas, presentan una gran oportunidad para examinar los procesos de cambio cultural y la persistencia en la arqueologia.

Social Differentiation and Leadership Development in Early Pithouse Villages In the Mogollon Region of the American Southwest

This paper examines the development of social differentiation and simple decision-making organizations in the Mogollan region of the prehistoric American Southwest. We suggest that intensifying managerial problems associated with the transition to sedentism may have selected for suprahousehold sociopolitical organizations. Based on cross-cultural data, a set of theoretical expectations concerning social differentiation and leadership development is formulated which focuses on regularities in the regional settlement pattern and intrasettlement distribution of architectural features and material goods. These expectations are then used to generate a set of propositions which are evaluated archaeologically using data from early pithouse villages. On the basis of a test of these propositions it appears that simple suprahousehold decision-making organizations were present in the American Southwest by A.D. 600. The implications of this interpretation for understanding subsequent developments in Southwestern prehistoric sociopolitical organization are then discussed.

The Production Step Measure: An Ordinal Index of Labor Input in Ceramic Manufacture

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Political Hierarchies and Organizational Strategies in the Puebloan Southwest

This paper offers a new perspective for the study of prehistoric Pueblo political organization in the American Southwest. In reviewing salient developments in Puebloan archaeology over the last 20 years, we discuss shortcomings in previous studies that argued for either “simple” or “complex” societies without recognizing the potential for hierarchy and equality to coexist simultaneously in all human societies. An alternative approach is outlined that considers corporate and network strategies of political action as a continuum for examining the organizational structure of Southwestern societies. Consideration of the corporate-network dimension is not seen as a replacement for the dimension of hierarchy, but as an analog to it. We consider the utility of this approach in analyzing the community organization of historic Pueblos and argue that the corporate-network continuum may have “deep” time depth in the broader region of the Desert West. Our findings suggest that a diverse range of corporate and network strategies were employed among residents of pithouse villages (A.D. 200-900) and that the pithouse-to-pueblo transition (ca. A.D. 700-1000) marked a significant organizational shift to more corporate forms of political action that also characterize historic and modern Pueblos.

Long-term developments in complex hunter-gatherer societies: Recent perspectives from the pacific coast of North America

The Pacific coast of North America is ideally suited to the study of long-term developments in complex hunter-gatherer societies. This paper synthesizes current research in California and the Northwest Coast on three related research problems. The first concerns the timing, spatial distribution, and economies of the earliest coastal peoples in the region. The second problem involves the growth and florescence of complex Pacific hunter-gatherer societies. What constitutes archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherer complexity, when and where it occurs, and the interpretations proposed to account for it are reviewed. The final problem addresses how complex hunter-gatherer peoples responded to European exploration and colonization, and how these early encounters affected the Pacific coast societies recorded in early ethnohistoric accounts and later studied by ethnographers.

RETHINKING THE STUDY OF LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AMONG HUNTER-GATHERERS IN NORTH AMERICA

Abstract There has been little movement to systematically incorporate the study of indigenous landscape management practices into the method and theory of hunter-gatherer research in North American archaeology, despite a growing interest in this topic. The purposes of this article are twofold. One is to address why, until quite recently, archaeologists have been reluctant to engage in the current debate about the scale and ecological impact of these practices, particularly anthropogenic burning. We argue that this stems from a long tradition of viewing hunter-gatherers as passive, immediate-return foragers, as well as from the daunting methodological challenges of identifying landscape management activities using archaeological data. Our second purpose is to explore how archaeologists can make significant contributions to our understanding of past resource management practices through the creation of new kinds of collaborative, interdisciplinary eco-archaeological programs. Based on the current work of scholars in archaeological and environmental disciplines, as well as on our own implementation of such an approach in central California, we discuss the importance of maintaining mutual relationships with local tribes, the challenges of coordinating multiple data sets, and the process of rethinking our analytical methods and temporal scales for undertaking hunter-gatherer studies.

Regional Surveys in the Eastern United States: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Implementing Subsurface Testing Programs

The probability of detecting sites using subsurface testing programs is a serious concern for archaeologists working in the eastern United States. Some have suggested that current test-probe programs provide a poor method for estimating the frequency and distribution of sites. In this article I examine the usefulness of subsurface testing programs by comparing the results of an Eastern subsurface survey with a pedestrian surface survey conducted in the Southwest. The subsurface survey at Shelter Island, New York, was designed so that probability limits could be calculated for detecting sites of varying sizes. These probabilities were then employed to estimate the number and kinds of sites contained in sample units. When these results were compared with those from a pedestrian surface survey in northeastern Arizona, the results suggested that carefully designed subsurface surveys, although extremely labor-intensive, can provide settlement-pattern information as detailed as that collected in surface surveys.

Food Redistribution Among Prehistoric Pueblo Groups

ABSTRACTThe redistribution of food is viewed as one behavioral strategy that minimized the risk of resource uncertainty in the prehistoric Southwest. This paper discusses food redistribution among the prehistoric people of the Mogollon Rim and Colorado Plateau and considers the maximum distances over which food could have been efficiently redistributed on a regular basis. The efficiency of moving food over different distances by foot is determined through a transportation efficiency ratio. This ratio provides an index of cost/efficiency by dividing the caloric yield of food transported by the transportation costs. The maximum size of a redistribution network is determined by comparing the transportation efficiency ratio with the techno-environmental efficiency ratio (Harris 1971). An estimate of the maximum range of a prehistoric Southwestern redistribution network is provided.

Tidal and Seasonal Patterns in the Chondrophore of the Soft-Shell Clam Mya arenaria

Thin sections of a compact, internal structure projecting from the hinge region of the bivalve Mya arenaria reveal the presence of tidal and seasonal patterns. This is the first demonstration that microgrowth increments are formed in a stucture not associated with the growing edge of the shell. The clarity and simple orientation of these extensive patterns, combined with the hinge region to disturbance and damage, suggests that detailed examinations of internal shell structures will prove valuable in ecological, archaeological, and paleoecological studies.