<p> Historical and archaeological research has established that European glass beads are high-resolution temporal markers for colonial sites in North America. Additionally, recent studies have demonstrated that compositional analyses of certain bead types can refine the chronological resolution of these artifacts. This study contributes to this growing body of knowledge by extending these methods to drawn beads manufactured from black glass. Using X- ray fluorescence spectrometry and a sample of simple black glass trade beads (n = 940) recovered from the cemetery of Mission Santa Catalina de Guale (St. Catherines Island, Georgia), I identify diachronic patterns in the recipes that guided their manufacture during the seventeenth century. The concentrations of temporally diagnostic opacifiers (i.e., tin [Sn] and antimony [Sb]) found within beads assemblages from individual contexts are then used to refine the existing site chronology and contribute to ongoing studies of the occupation and use of the mission. I argue that the seventeenth century mission complex was built during multiple stages of construction separated by decades. Furthermore, relative dates for a number of burial contexts have been proposed, which provide insight into diachronic variation in indigenous Guale burial practices. In this study, I specifically address differences in color patterning between the newly dated burial contexts as a means of identifying and comparing the preferential consumption of five culturally salient bead colors and their relationship to indigenous identities.</p><p>

<p> Researchers on the Northwest Coast (NWC) are often interested in complex questions regarding social organization, resource intensification, resource control, and impacts of environmental change on resources and in turn human groups. However, the excavation strategies used on the NWC often do not provide the spatial and chronological control within a site that is necessary to document their variability and answer these research questions. The &Ccaron;&iuml;x^wicen site has the potential to address some of the limitations of previous Northwest Coast village site excavations because of its unique and robust sampling strategy, the wide expanse of time that it was occupied, and the multiple house structures present. An on-going project is examining changing human ecodynamics over the breadth of site occupation, focusing on zooarchaeology and geoarchaeological records.</p><p> This site, located on the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Port Angeles, WA was excavated in 2004 as part of a Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) undertaking to build parts for the Hood Canal Bridge Large scale excavation (261.4 m³ 528 m²) generated enormous quantities of faunal remains. Radiocarbon dates and historic records show occupation extends from 2750 cal. BP to the early 20^th century.</p><p> Statistical sampling methods provide an empirical way to maximize the amount of information obtained with the least amount of effort. My thesis addressed the utility of Sampling to Redundancy (STR) as a statistical sampling method for sampling faunal remains from large village sites. My project has documented the variability of fish family representation across time and space in one part of the &Ccaron;&iuml;x^wicen village, while minimizing the time and effort required to do so. This thesis applies STR to &ldquo;S&rdquo; (> 1/4 in.) 10 Liter bucket samples from eight excavation units and a total of 26 separate unique temporal and spatial contexts. I focused on 1/ 4 in. samples for my study for a particular reason. Previous fish faunal studies have focused on effects of mesh size on fish representation; and emphasized the need to use fine mesh (e.g., 1/ 8 in. or finer) to document small-bodied fishes. This focus on fine mesh typically means that only limited volumes of matrix are studied, which in turn may mean that remains of rarer, large- bodied fishes are under- represented. The on-going research project has focused on buckets screened to 1/ 8 in. mesh (called &ldquo;C&rdquo; buckets). I used STR to sample additional volumes of matrix screened to 1/ 4 in. to examine whether expanding the volume studied would affect fish representation, which was a second goal of my project.</p><p> Overall, I studied remains from 269 &ldquo;S&rdquo; buckets out of a total of 419 buckets, or 47% of the buckets. STR was most helpful for six of the high bone abundance and density contexts, where I analyzed less than 50% of the total buckets, was moderately helpful for 14 contexts, and not at all helpful for the six contexts with low fishbone abundance, where I analyzed 100% of the buckets. This analysis took me a total of 154 hours, and based on the percentage of material analyzed, 174 hours were saved.</p><p> As to the second project goal, to assess whether adding fish remains documented from additional matrix volume affected fish representation, I found the differences were minimal. Both for my study units as a whole, and for each time period, adding the fish records from the &ldquo;S&rdquo; buckets did not alter the main trends in fish representation as documented by the larger study, using a smaller volume. To further examine whether the added volume from >1/ 4 in &ldquo;S&rdquo; buckets affected results, I explored specific research questions that are relevant to the larger project regarding environment-animal interactions and fishbone deposition and bone condition inside and outside of a house structure. Adding the &ldquo;S&rdquo; bucket samples did not affect fish representation or fishbone distribution and condition, which affirms that the sampling strategy used in the larger research project was sufficient in most cases to characterize the fish record at the site. </p><p> My approach to STR has focused on fish remains that were previously excavated from a Pacific coastal village site with dense archaeological deposits. STR could be employed in other types of archaeological settings in a range of environments (coast or interior) representing a range of cultural contexts (from hunting camps to urban centers) to establish sample redundancy after an excavation is complete. STR could be used during on-going excavation. Further research is required to explore the implications of STR in these settings, however it is likely that the success of STR in other contexts will be dependent on the density and overall abundance of remains, the diversity or material types being studied, as well of course in the range and specificity of questions in each case.</p><p>

<p> This research explores the relationship between social identity, artifact style, and communities of practice in the late prehispanic U.S. Southwest, focusing on how domestic, utilitarian objects and contexts both shape and reflect social identities. During the A.D. 1200s and 1300s, large-scale migration and aggregation occurred over much of the U.S. Southwest, bringing diverse individual and community identities into contact and, potentially, conflict. Within this social context, this research focused on clarifying the relationship between social identities and utilitarian objects and domestic contexts, and how this relationship can elucidate the social history of a community. These issues were explored through analysis of corrugated utilitarian pottery from the sites of the Homol&rsquo;ovi Settlement Cluster (HSC), a community of seven villages in northeastern Arizona occupied from around 1260 through 1400. </p><p> The social organization of corrugated pottery production in the HSC was approached from several angles. To identify the number and nature of the ceramic manufacturing communities present during the Pueblo IV occupation of the Homol&rsquo;ovi area, sherds were submitted for instrumental neutron activation analysis and petrographic analysis. The results of the compositional analyses indicate that ceramic production groups in the Homol&rsquo;ovi area were not primarily distinguished by access to specific raw material resources. What differentiation there is within the raw materials used by Homol&rsquo;ovi potters appears to have been determined primarily by village, with the residents of a few villages preferring to use specific clay or temper sources. Both locally produced pottery and ceramics imported into the Homol&rsquo;ovi area were incorporated into a typological and stylistic analysis. This analysis found evidence of two different production styles in the corrugated pottery assemblage. One appears stylistically similar to pottery produced in areas to the north around the Hopi Mesas; the other appears to be more akin to stylistic traditions practiced in the Puerco area and in the Chevelon drainage. This diversity suggests the presence of multiple immigrant communities co-residing within the HSC. This social diversity is not reflected in the decorated ceramic tradition of the HSC, which largely conforms to the ceramic traditions of the Hopi Mesas. </p><p> Interrogating the disjuncture in the identities embodied through different categories of material culture, used in different social contexts, provides a framework through which to explore the complex social relationships that characterized Pueblo IV villages formed as individuals and communities negotiated the competing forces of integration and differentiation. This study demonstrates the value of approaching identity from multiple scales. If identity is understood as fundamentally multi-faceted and multi-scalar, even seemingly homogeneous cultural units are characterized by social diversity and the tension that accompanies such diversity. The patterns of production visible in utilitarian corrugated pottery provide a nuanced method of clarifying the complex identities of Ancestral Puebloan communities and assessing social connections and differences between groups.</p><p>

<p> This thesis investigates similarities in the chemistry of the Linear B clay tablets and sealings found at the Palace of Nestor in Pylos, located in the western Peloponnese. These similarities, or lack thereof, provide clues to the flow of material goods in and out of the palace and therefore to the degree of centralization of the government. Over a thousand 3000 year-old clay tablets and sealings currently housed at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens were analyzed using a pXRF over the course of the summers of 2015 and 2016. The chemical compositions were analyzed statistically. Results of the study and the conclusions are presented here.</p><p>

Arkeologian pro gradu-työssä ”Kuusamon Puutteenkylän Pyhälahden ympäristöhistoria — ihmistoimintaan liittyvä siitepölyanalyysi” on tutkittu ihmisen aiheuttamaa kasvillisuusmuutosta siitepölyanalyysin keinoin. Geologian metodia hyödyntämällä tutkimuksessa pyrittiin tuomaan lisätietoa Pyhälahdessa tapahtuneesta ihmistoiminnasta. Siitepölyanalyysi tehtiin turvepalkista, joka noudettiin Kuusamon Puutteenkylän Pyhälahdesta. Tällä alueella tiedetään olleen ihmistoimintaa kivikaudelta historialliseen aikaan saakka, joten oli oletettavaa, että siitä näkyisi merkkejä myös siitepölyissä. Radiohiiliajoitus auttoi asettamaan siitepölysarjan ajalliseen viitekehykseen ja hiilipartikkeleiden laskenta antoi tietoa alueella tapahtuneista paloista. Tutkimuksen tarkoitus oli siis tehdä ympäristörekonstruktio ja olennaisin tutkimuskysymys oli se, näkyykö kasvillisuudessa muutoksia ihmistoiminnan seurauksena. Tutkimus osoitti selkeästi, että esihistoriallinen ihmistoiminta on havaittavissa siitepölyanalyysin keinoin. Metsän koostumus muuttui huomattavasti siitepölysarjan keskivaiheilla ja samalla näkyi muutamia ihmistoimintaa indikoivien kasvilajien siitepölyjä. On kuitenkin vaikeampaa todentaa minkälaista toimintaa alueella on ollut pelkästään siitepölyjen perusteella. Yksi hyvin todennäköinen selitys kasvillisuusmuutoksiin on alueella tapahtunut kulotus. Joka tapauksessa voidaan esittää, että huomattavat muutokset puiden koostumuksessa ja tietyt indikaattorilajit todistavat ihmisen muokanneen ympäristöään jo esihistoriallisella ajalla. Tämän näytesarjan alimmissa ja ylimmissä näytteissä ei selkeää ihmisen vaikutusta voitu havaita, joten ympäristöön kohdistuneet toimet eivät ole olleet tasaisia. Tutkimusmenetelmä osoittautui varsin toimivaksi ja siitepölyanalyysillä pystyttiin todennäköisesti täydentämään arkeologisten löytöjen pitkiä aikavälejä. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että ihmisen toimintaa on voitu havaita ajalla, jolta ei ole jäänyt kiinteitä muinaisjäännöksiä. Jotta tälle saataisiin täysi varmuus, tarvittaisiin kuitenkin myös toinen radiohiiliajoitus näytesarjaan, koska muutosten yläikäraja jäi nyt selvittämättä. Tutkimustulos oli kuitenkin onnistunut, koska sillä saatiin vastaus tutkimuskysymykseen: ihmistoiminta on siis muuttanut Pyhälahden alueen kasvillisuutta.

Työni käsittelee arkeologiselle museopedagogiikalle hyödyllisiä digitaalisen arkeologian käytäntöjä, päähuomion suuntautuessa professori Maurizio Forten määrittelemään kyberarkeologiaan, jolle ominaisia piirteitä ovat täysdigitaalinen työnkulku (workflow) ja sen läpinäkyvyys sekä virtuaaliympäristöjen käyttö arkeologisten tulkintojen esittämiseen ja keskinäiseen vertailuun. Lähestyn aihetta tapausesimerkin kautta, suunnittelemalla arkeologisen näyttelysuunnitelmaehdotuksen Keski-Suomen museolle, mahdollisena osana museon 2016 alkavaan remonttiin liittyvää perusnäyttelyuudistusta. Tarkoitukseni on selvittää miten digitaalipainotteinen arkeologinen näyttelysuunnitelma olisi koostettava, että se voisi parhaiten palvella ja täyttää museoiden tarpeita ja velvoitteita nykypäivän tilanteessa, jolle on leimallista rajutkin teknologiset muutokset sekä museoita ja arkeologiaakin kohtaavat muutospaineet. Toisin sanoen, näyttelysuunnitelman teko ei tässä tilanteessa ole suoraviivainen tekninen suoritus, vaan siihen linkittyy paljon eri tasoisia teknologisia, poliittisia, organisatorisia, sosiaalisia, taloudellisia ja kulttuurisia tekijöitä. Lähestyn tätä hajanaista ja muuttuvaista tutkimuskenttääni hermeneuttisella otteella, pyrkien ymmärtämään kokonaisuutta sen osatekijöistä käsin, ja osatekijöitä kokonaisuudesta käsin: kartoitan sekä museoiden että arkeologian nykytilaa ja muutosta, huomioiden erityisesti arkeologian digitaalista kehitystä, jäsentäen ja havainnollistaen sitä kronologisten “kasvuvaiheiden” kautta, sekä jäsentämällä sen olennaisimpia työkaluja kyberarkeologisen työnkulun mukaiseksi “työkalupakiksi”. Saman metodologisen asenteen mukaisesti olen tehnyt myös näyttelysuunnitelman avoimesti ja adaptiivisesti edelleen kehitettäväksi muuttuvissa tilanteissa. Käytän lähinnä kirjallisia lähteitä, jotka aiheeni luonteesta johtuen ovat hyvin monilukuisia ja -tasoisia: monografioita, artikkeleita, standardeja, suosituksia, raportteja, laatumäärityksiä, lehtiartikkeleita, kotisivuja ja ruutukaappauksia. Tein myös sähköpostikyselyn maakuntamuseoille, lisäksi olen itse 3D-skannannut 10 museoesinettä näyttelysuunnitelmaa tukemaan ja esinemallinnuksen prosessia selkeyttämään. Päälähteinäni ja innoittajinani pidän Maurizio Forten 2007–2014 julkaisuja sekä Graham Blackin Transforming Museums in the 21st Century -teosta. Keskeinen tulos on, että kuvaamani näyttelymalli voi nähdäkseni vastata useisiin alan museotyötä kohtaaviin haasteisiin, ollen samalla kiinnostava, informatiivinen, historiallisesti perusteltu ja tieteellisesti läpinäkyvä. Toteutukseen kuitenkin liittyy epävarmuuksia, joista osa on teknologisia ja taloudellisia, yhtenä haasteena olen todennut 3D-alan saaman vähäisen huomion etenkin muistiorganisaatioiden toimintaa ohjaavissa ohjeistuksissa, standardeissa ja strategioissa. Suositan työssäni monipuolista lisätutkimusta sekä poikkitieteellisiä yhteistyöhankkeita aiheesta.

The role of big game in human foraging economies, and subsistence specialization on such resources, are issues that have received considerable attention in anthropological literature. The Northwest Plains of North America is one area where historic specialization on bison is well known and this economy has been projected onto prehistory. My research outlines alternative economic and subsistence strategies for the prehistoric inhabitants of the region. These strategies are outlined through the development of a broad spectrum model of forager subsistence in the western Black Hills, a portion of the Northwest Plains culture area. The investigation begins with foraging theory, a consideration of the available resources, and ecological principles constraining their exploitation. The spatial organization of technology is used to evaluate the model. Specifically, attributes of chipped stone, ground stone, and pottery are analyzed with respect to spatial distribution, co-occurrence and relationships to environmental variables. The point of departure in this analysis of technological organization is the use of spatially expansive data from widely distributed surface recorded sites, rather than the more commonly used spatially constricted excavated site data. The results suggest that the Northwest Plains technological organization is consistent with a generalized subsistence economy, and that prehistoric Plains populations were broad spectrum foragers, rather than specialists.

The process of defining heritage is fraught with the inequalities of social and political power concomitant with colonialism. As a result, disenfranchised and marginalized groups worldwide have been given little say in heritage matters until recently. Though often perceived as “experts” on the past, archaeologists are just one of many stakeholders with interests in how the past is used in the present. As such, archaeologists today face the challenge of decolonizing heritage work through engagement with diverse stakeholder communities. In this dissertation, I explore the ways that archaeologists have been working at this over the last two decades through a variety of community-based approaches to the archaeological dimensions of heritage work. I propose a multi-stakeholder model—what I call a “poly-communal approach”—that builds on and address several shortcomings I identify in these efforts. This approach engages diverse local and non-local stakeholders in collective heritage work that aims to restructure traditional power relationships in archaeological projects. I explicate this approach and, through a case study, evaluate its effectiveness as a tool for decolonizing practice and dominant histories. The case study focuses on the social relationships of multiple stakeholders (Native American descendant communities, heritage institutions, archaeologists, landowners, avocational archaeologists, local residents, and scholars) catalyzed by the archaeology of a seventeenth-century Native American site in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The site, believed to be a fortified place of Pocumtuck peoples, plays a critical role in the dominant English and early American colonial history commemorated in the town for a century. The Pocumtuck Fort is popularly, though inaccurately, believed to be the last place the Pocumtuck lived before they “disappeared” just prior to the first English settlement in Deerfield and this dominant narrative has contributed to historical erasures of Native American peoples in the New England interior. Here, I combine a poly-communal approach to heritage work, archaeological research, and current fieldwork in this case study. I conclude that poly-communal heritage work, like that of the Pocumtuck Fort Archaeology and Stewardship project, can transform sites of historical erasures to places that mobilize and facilitate intercultural discourse and action, demonstrating that heritage and the power to mobilize the past can be shared.

In this dissertation, I broadly consider how the recent past has affected archaeologist's present understandings of the deep past. To do so, I complete a historiography of the shell midden site type on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, Massachusetts using Foucault's archaeological and genealogical methods. While archaeologists have generally interpreted shell middens as places for food refuse disposal, Native oral traditions as well as ethnohistorical and archaeological data have prompted some to reconsider such monolithic views of these complex sites. Through a series of interviews with local professional and avocational archaeologists, I show that there is, in fact, little consensus about what constitutes a shell midden at all. Inspired by recent scholarship in Social Network Analysis (SNA), Actor-Network theory (ANT), fluid space, and wayfaring, I consider how knowledge that has been constructed about shell middens may have been affected by one's personal and professional relationships as well as one's institutional affiliations. By tracing the social connections of ten generations of professional and avocational archaeologists working here, I examine how these complex social worlds impacted local shell midden archaeology. I also review the ways in which archaeologists have written about shell middens through time. Although a great deal has changed in terms of what archaeologists try to glean from shell midden sites, the ways in which archaeologists construct their narratives have changed very little. These narratives actually focus more on archaeologists than on Native lifeways and in ways that make archaeologists the heroes of their own dramas. I conclude that using rigid typological categories like “shell midden” is an act of structural violence. In fact, many shell midden narratives have correlated food and culture with progress, disappearance, and fate. In all, the shell midden site type offers a long established, but clearly outdated, explanation for past human behavior. From here, archaeologists should consider the complex uses and potential meanings of these sites in the deep past and work to forge new narrative molds when writing about ancient Native lives in ways that both inspire and inform present and future generations.

The emergence of archaeological interest in native copper in the mid-1800s developed in concert with explanations that privileged the Lake Superior area over other potential sources of native copper. It has generally been assumed that when native copper artifacts first appear in the Northeast, they arrived as finished implements or were locally made from Lake Superior raw materials. This dissertation evaluates the 150-year-old assumption that Late Archaic and Early Woodland hunter-gatherers utilized native copper exclusively from the Lake Superior area. The dominant model of native copper procurement is evaluated by a documentary analysis of the ethnohistorical record, a literature survey of the range of geological sources of native copper, an examination of the procurement of other raw materials, and trace element analysis through neutron activation analysis. This study defined 12 discrete geological sources of native copper to compare against the trace element data derived from 10 Late Archaic sites and from 9 Early Woodland sites. Taken together, these several lines of inquiry demonstrate that the dominant model should not be considered a valid, scientifically established archaeological reality. This dissertation concludes that, under scrutiny, the assumptions traditionally made about the source of native copper recovered from archaeological sites in the Northeast is at best poorly informed and at worst specious.