Download or read book Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology written by Todd A. Surovell and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern humans and their hominid ancestors relied on chipped-stone technology for well over two million years and colonized more than 99 percent of the Earth's habitable landmass in doing so. Yet there currently exist only a handful of informal models derived from ethnographic observation, experiments, engineering, and "common sense" to explain variability in archaeological lithic assemblages. Because the fundamental processes of making, using, and discarding stone tools are, at root, exercises in problem solving, Todd Surovell asks what conditions favor certain technological solutions. Whether asking if a biface should be made thick or thin or if a flake should be saved or discarded, Surovell seeks answers that extend beyond a case-by-case analysis. One avenue for addressing these questions theoretically is formal mathematical modeling. Here Surovell constructs a series of models designed to link environmental variability to human decision making as it pertains to lithic technology. To test the models, Surovell uses data from the analysis of more than 40,000 artifacts from five Rocky Mountain and Northern Plains Folsom and Goshen complex archaeological sites dating to the Younger Dryas stadial (ca. 12,600-11,500 years BP). The primary result is the production of powerful new analytical tools useful to the interpretation of archaeological assemblages. Surovell's goal is to promote modeling and explore the general issues governing technological decisions. In this light, his models can be applied to any context in which stone tools are made and used.

Download or read book Clovis written by Ashley M. Smallwood and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New research and the discovery of multiple archaeological sites predating the established age of Clovis (13,000 years ago) provide evidence that the Americas were first colonized at least one thousand to two thousand years before Clovis. These revelations indicate to researchers that the peopling of the Americas was perhaps a more complex process than previously thought. The Clovis culture remains the benchmark for chronological, technological, and adaptive comparisons in research on peopling of the Americas. In Clovis: On the Edge of a New Understanding, volume editors Ashley Smallwood and Thomas Jennings bring together the work of many researchers actively studying the Clovis complex. The contributing authors presented earlier versions of these chapters at the Clovis: Current Perspectives on Chronology, Technology, and Adaptations symposium held at the 2011 Society for American Archaeology meetings in Sacramento, California. In seventeen chapters, the researchers provide their current perspectives of the Clovis archaeological record as they address the question: What is and what is not Clovis?

Download or read book Barger Gulch written by Todd A. Surovell and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph summarizes findings from nine seasons of excavation at Barger Gulch Locality B, a Folsom campsite in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Archaeologist Todd A. Surovell explains the spatial organization of the camp and the social organization of the people who lived there.

Download or read book Archaeology of the Atlantic Northeast written by Matthew W. Betts and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive look at the archaeological history of the Atlantic Northeast, this book presents the archaeology of the region from the earliest Indigenous occupation to the first centuries of European occupation.

Download or read book Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear written by Robert H. Brunswig and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2020-08-03 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear explores advances in the prehistory and early history of Numic hunter-gatherers in the Rocky Mountain West through the presentation and analysis of archaeological and historic research on the period from the earliest established presence in the Rockies and its borderlands more than a thousand years ago to the forced removal of Ute, Shoshone, and other tribes to reservations in the mid-nineteenth century. New research into Numic archaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography is significantly changing the understanding of migratory patterns, cultural interactions, chronology, and shared cultural-religious practices of regionally defined Numic branches and non-Numic populations of the American West. Contributors examine case studies of Ute and Shoshone material culture (ceramics, lithics, features and structures, trade and seasonal migration), chronology (dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence), and subsistence systems (hunting camps, game drives, faunal and botanical evidence of food sources). They also delineate different hunter-gatherer “ethnic groups” who co-occupied or interacted within one another’s territories through trade, raiding, or seasonal subsistence migrations, such as the Late Fremont/Ute and the Shoshone or the early Navajo/Ute and the Shoshone. With a strong emphasis on diverse cases and new and original archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic lines of evidence, Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear interweaves anthropological theory and innovative applications of leading-edge scientific methodologies and technologies. The book presents a cross-section of field, laboratory, and ethnohistoric studies—including indigenous consultation—that explore past, recent, and ongoing developments in Numic cultural history and prehistory. It will be of interest to scholars of Southwestern archaeology, as well as private and government cultural resource specialists and museum staff. Contributors: Richard Adams, John Cater, Christine Chady, David Diggs, Rand Greubel, John Ives, Byron Loosle, Curtis Martin, Sally McBeth, Lindsay Montgomery, Bryon Schroeder, Matthew Stirn

Download or read book First Peoples in a New World written by David J. Meltzer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of Ice Age Americans, highlighting genetic, archaeological and geological evidence that has revolutionized our understanding of their origins, antiquity, and adaptations.

Download or read book Early Human Life on the Southeastern Coastal Plain written by Albert C. Goodyear and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-04-02 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together major archaeological research projects from Virginia to Alabama, this volume explores the rich prehistory of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. Contributors consider how the region’s warm weather, abundant water, and geography have long been optimal for the habitation of people beginning 50,000 years ago. They highlight demographic changes and cultural connections across this wide span of time and space. New data are provided here for many sites, including evidence for human settlement before the Clovis period at the famous Topper site in South Carolina. Contributors track the progression of sea level rise that gradually submerged shorelines and landscapes, and they discuss the possibility of a comet collision that triggered the Younger Dryas cold reversion and contributed to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna like mastodons and mammoths. Essays also examine the various stone materials used by prehistoric foragers, the location of chert quarries, and the details stone tools reveal about social interaction and mobility. This volume synthesizes more than fifty years of research and addresses many of today’s controversial questions in the archaeology of the early Southeast, such as the sudden demise of the Clovis technoculture and the recognition of the mysterious "Middle Paleoindian" period. Contributors: Robert J. Austin | Mark J. Brooks |Christopher R. Moore | I. Randolph Daniel, Jr. | Joseph E. Wilkinson | Joseph Schuldenrein | Allen West | David K. Thulman | James K. Feathers | Terry E. Barbour II | Douglas Sain | Thomas A. Jennings | Albert C. Goodyear | Andrew H. Ivester | Dr. Malcolm A. LeCompte | Adam M. Burke | James S. Dunbar | Jon Endonino | Richard Estabrook | H. Blaine Ensor | A. Victor Adedeji | Douglas J. Kennett | Ashley M. Smallwood | Kara Bridgman Sweeney | Sam Upchurch | James P. Kennett | Wendy S. Wolbach | M. Scott Harris | Ted Bunch | David G. Anderson | C. Andrew Hemmings | James. M. Adovasio | Dr. Frank J. Vento | Dr. Anthony J. Vega

Download or read book Lithic Technological Systems and Evolutionary Theory written by Nathan Goodale and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-22 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stone tool analysis relies on a strong background in analytical and methodological techniques. However, lithic technological analysis has not been well integrated with a theoretically informed approach to understanding how humans procured, made, and used stone tools. Evolutionary theory has great potential to fill this gap. This collection of essays brings together several different evolutionary perspectives to demonstrate how lithic technological systems are a by-product of human behavior. The essays cover a range of topics, including human behavioral ecology, cultural transmission, phylogenetic analysis, risk management, macroevolution, dual inheritance theory, cladistics, central place foraging, costly signaling, selection, drift, and various applications of evolutionary ecology.

Download or read book Lithic Technological Organization and Paleoenvironmental Change written by Erick Robinson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this edited volume is to bring together a diverse set of analyses to document how small-scale societies responded to paleoenvironmental change based on the evidence of their lithic technologies. The contributions bring together an international forum for interpreting changes in technological organization - embracing a wide range of time periods, geographic regions and methodological approaches.​ ​As technology brings more refined information on ancient climates, the research on spatial and temporal variability of paleoenvironmental changes. In turn, this has also broadened considerations of the many ways that prehistoric hunter-gatherers may have responded to fluctuations in resource bases. From an archaeological perspective, stone tools and their associated debitage provide clues to understanding these past choices and decisions, and help to further the investigation into how variable human responses may have been. Despite significant advances in the theory and methodology of lithic technological analysis, there have been few attempts to link these developments to paleoenvironmental research on a global scale.

Download or read book From the Yenisei to the Yukon written by Ted Goebel and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-25 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who were the first people who came to the land bridge joining northeastern Asia to Alaska and the northwest of North America? Where did they come from? How did they organize technology, especially in the context of settlement behavior? During the Pleistocene era, the people now known as Beringians dispersed across the varied landscapes of late-glacial northeast Asia and northwest North America. The twenty chapters gathered in this volume explore, in addition to the questions posed above, how Beringians adapted in response to climate and environmental changes. They share a focus on the significance of the modern-human inhabitants of the region. By examining and analyzing lithic artifacts, geoarchaeological evidence, zooarchaeological data, and archaeological features, these studies offer important interpretations of the variability to be found in the early material culture the first Beringians. The scholars contributing to this work consider the region from Lake Baikal in the west to southern British Columbia in the east. Through a technological-organization approach, this volume permits investigation of the evolutionary process of adaptation as well as the historical processes of migration and cultural transmission. The result is a closer understanding of how humans adapted to the diverse and unique conditions of the late Pleistocene.

Download or read book The Mountaineer Site written by Brian N. Andrews and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2021-06-07 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Mountaineer Site presents over a decade’s worth of archaeological research conducted at Mountaineer, a Paleoindian campsite in Colorado’s Upper Gunnison Basin. Mountaineer is one of the very few extensively excavated, long-term Folsom occupations with evidence of built structures. The site provides a rich record of stone tool manufacture and use, as well as architectural features, and offers insight into Folsom period adaptive strategies from a time when the region was still in the grip of a waning Ice Age. Contributors examine data concerning the structures, the duration and repetition of occupations, and the nature of the site’s artifact assemblages to offer a valuable new perspective on human activity in the Rocky Mountains in the Late Pleistocene. Chapters survey the history of fieldwork at the site and compare and explain the various excavation procedures used; discuss the geology, taphonomic history, and geochronology of the site; analyze artifacts and other recovered materials; examine architectural elements; and compare the present and past environments of the Upper Gunnison Basin to gain insight into the setting in which Folsom groups were operating and the resources that were available to them. The Folsom archaeological record indicates far greater variability in adaptive behavior than previously recognized in traditional models. The Mountaineer Site shows how accounting for reduced mobility, more generalized subsistence patterns, and variability in tool manufacture and use allows for a richer and more accurate understanding of Folsom lifeways. It will be of great interest to graduate students and archaeologists focusing on Paleoindian archaeology, hunter-gatherer mobility, lithic technological organization, and prehistoric households, as well as prehistorians, anthropologists, and social scientists. Contributors: Richard J. Anderson, Andrew R. Boehm, Christy E. Briles, Katherine A. Cross, Steven D. Emslie, Metin I. Eren, Richard Gunst, Kalanka Jayalath, Brooke M. Morgan, Cathy Whitlock

Download or read book The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies written by Steven L. Kuhn and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term trajectories of evolutionary change in Paleolithic tools and tool-makers. Members of the human lineage have been producing stone tools for more than 3 million years. These artefacts provide key evidence for important evolutionary developments in hominin behaviour and cognition. Avoiding conventional approaches based on progressive stages of development, this book instead examines global trends in six separate dimensions of technological behaviour between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago. Combining these independent trends results in both a broader and a more finely punctuated perspective on key intervals of change in hominin behaviour. To draw this picture together, the concluding section explores behavioural, cognitive, and demographic implications of developments in material culture and technological procedures at seven key intervals during the Pleistocene. Researchers interested in Paleolithic archaeology will find this book invaluable. It will also be of interest to archaeologists researching stone tool technology and to students of human evolution and behavioural change in prehistory.

Download or read book Archaeological Concepts Techniques and Terminology for American Prehistoric Lithic Technology written by Wm Jack Hranicky and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological Concepts, Techniques, and Terminology for American Prehistory Lithic Technology by Wm Jack Hranicky is a 600-page comprehensive publication that encompasses the study of American prehistoric stone tools and implements. It is a look-up volume for studying the material culture of prehistoric people and using its concepts and methods for researching this aspect of archaeology. There are over 3000 entries which are defined and illustrated. It also has an extensive set of references and an overview for the study of stone tools.

Download or read book Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology written by Anna Marie Prentiss and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolutionary Research in Archaeology seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of contemporary evolutionary research in archaeology. The book will provide a single source for introduction and overview of basic and advanced evolutionary concepts and research programs in archaeology. Content will be organized around four areas of critical research including microevolutionary and macroevolutionary process, human ecology studies (evolutionary ecology, demography, and niche construction), and evolutionary cognitive archaeology. Authors of individual chapters will address theoretical foundations, history of research, contemporary contributions and debates, and implications for the future for their respective topics. As appropriate, authors present or discuss short empirical case studies to illustrate key arguments. ​

Download or read book Archaeology in Practice written by Jane Balme and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This much-enhanced new edition of the highly accessible guide to practical archaeology is a vital resource for students. It features the latest methodologies, a wealth of case studies from around the world, and contributions from leading specialists in archaeological materials analysis. New edition updated to include the latest archaeological methods, an enhanced focus on post-excavation analysis and new material including a dedicated chapter on analyzing human remains Covers the full range of current analytic methods, such as analysis of stone tools, human remains and absolute dating Features a user-friendly structure organized according to material types such as animal bones, ceramics and stone artifacts, as well as by thematic topics ranging from dating techniques to report writing, and ethical concerns. Accessible to archaeology students at all levels, with detailed references and extensive case studies featured throughout

Download or read book Contemporary Lithic Analysis in the Southeast written by Philip J. Carr and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2012-07-13 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing work by a mixture of veterans and a new generation of lithic analysts, Contemporary Lithic Analysis in the Southeast explores fresh ideas while reworking and pushing the limits of traditional methods and hypotheses. The variability in the southeastern lithic landscape over space and through time makes it a dynamic and challenging region for archaeologists. Demonstrating a holistic approach and using a variety of methods, this volume aims to derive information regarding prehistoric lifeways from lithic assemblages. The contributors use data from a wide temporal span and a variety of sites across the Southeast, ranging from Texas to South Carolina and from Florida to Kentucky. Not merely cautionary tales, these case studies demonstrate the necessity of looking beyond the bag of lithic material sitting in the laboratory to address the key questions in the organization of prehistoric lithic technologies. How do field-collection strategies bias our interpretations? What is therelationship between technological strategies and tool design? How can inferences regarding social and economic strategies be made from lithic assemblages? Contributors William Andrefsky Jr. / Andrew P. Bradbury / Philip J. Carr / CarolynConklin / D. Randall Cooper / Jason L.Edmonds / Jay D. Franklin / Albert C.Goodyear III / Joel Hardison / Lucinda M. Langston / D. Shane Miller / George H.Odell / Charlotte D. Pevny / Tara L. Potts /Sarah E. Price / Douglas Sain / Sarah C.Sherwood / Ashley M. Smallwood /Paul Thacker

Download or read book Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Stone Age Weaponry written by Radu Iovita and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The objective of this volume is to showcase the contemporary state of research on recognizing and evaluating the performance of stone age weapons from a variety of viewpoints, including investigating their cognitive and evolutionary significance. New archaeological finds and experimental studies have helped to bring this subject back to the forefront of human origins research. In the last few years, investigations have expanded beyond examining the tools themselves to include studies of damage caused by projectile weapons on animal and hominin bones and skeletal asymmetries in ancient hominin populations. Only recently has there been a growing interest in controlled and replicative experiments. Through this book readers will be updated in the state of knowledge through a multidisciplinary scientific reconstruction of prehistoric weapon use and its implications. Contributions from expert authors are organized into three themed parts: recognizing weapon use (experimental and archaeological studies of impact traces), performance of weapon systems (factors influencing penetration depth etc.), and behavioral and evolutionary ramifications (cognitive and ecological effects of using different weapons).