Over the past five decades, archaeologists have proposed a wide range of methods for the study of spatial organization within hunter-gatherer sites. Many of these methods sought to identify the spatial location of activities based on patterns of behavior observed in ethnographic contexts. While this resulted in productive observations at certain sites, many of these methods were tailored to specific situations and thus could not be applied to a wide range of sites. For example, open-air sites rarely contain preserved bone or features, such as hearths, which were central components to identifying characteristics of site structure. In addition, many of these methods often did not take into consideration the temporal dynamics of the occupation, i.e., that many sites were formed through subsequent occupations of differing duration. This paper proposes the use of two related methods that assume many assemblages are the result of more than one occupation. The methods target the distribution of lithic artifacts, the most ubiquitously preserved of archaeological materials, and accounts for the potential that the final resting place of artifacts was the result of both intentional and unintentional movement by humans and a host of biological and geological processes. The main goal of this paper is to use an understanding of how these processes influenced the formation of site structure to estimate the relative number and duration of occupations for each site in the sample. These new methods will be presented and explained through the study of seven open-air Middle Paleolithic sites in France but are applicable to a wide range of hunter-gatherer sites.

Nesquehoning Creek (36CR142) is a stratified, multicomponent site situated on a late Wisconsin age terrace in Lehigh Gorge State Park, Carbon County, Pennsylvania. Cultural occupations represented at Nesquehoning Creek include Colonial (late 17th-early 18th century); Late, Middle, and Early Woodland; Transitional, Late, Middle and Early Archaic; and Paleoindian. The Paleoindian component is deeply buried, contextually secure, and produced a Crowfield fluted point with associated radiocarbon dates of 12,422 ± 164, 12,255 ± 177, and 11,398 ± 110 cal BP. This dissertation focuses on: 1) assessing the Paleoindian occupation history at Nesquehoning Creek, 2) analyzing the organization of Paleoindian lithic technology, and 3) examining Paleoindian residential mobility patterns in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast regions. The history of research at Nesquehoning Creek, Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene environmental data, and Paleoindian culture history are reviewed in order to provide background information. By examining the stratigraphy and geomorphology at the Nesquehoning Creek site, this study was able to propose a model of landscape evolution and determine excavation areas with the greatest potential for stratified Paleoindian occupations. A lithic refitting and artifact distribution analysis of these excavation areas was able to identify a single Crowfield Paleoindian occupation zone. The Crowfield component lithic assemblage displayed production and reduction strategies similar to Clovis and later Paleoindian complexes. Lithic raw material types represented in the Crowfield toolkit suggest a relatively small territorial range on the order of 50 km. An evaluation of Early and Late Paleoindian residential mobility patterns in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast showed continuity in the relative occupation span of sites from both periods. This suggests that although Late Paleoindian groups had smaller territorial ranges, they appear to have moved from site to site within those territories about as frequently as Early Paleoindians in the Middle Atlantic and Northeast regions. Detailed analysis of contextually secure Paleoindian assemblages are crucial to identifying similarities and differences between archaeological complexes. This research demonstrates the importance of lithic refitting studies in the assessment of stratified, multicomponent archaeological sites. Detailed examination of the Crowfield lithic assemblage improved our understanding of Paleoindian technological organization in the Middle Atlantic region. The evaluation of Paleoindian residential mobility patterns has complimented previous studies and presented data that may be updated and reassessed in the future. / Anthropology