Archaeological research on the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods has tended to focus on rock shelters, caves, large game kills, and occasionally butchery sites. Diversity in Open-Air Site Structure across the Pleistocene/Holocene Boundary examines a diverse range of open-air sites—bounded both naturally and culturally—in Siberia and Germany and throughout North America. Open-air sites are difficult for researchers to locate and, because of depositional processes, often more difficult to interpret; they contain many superimposed events but often show evidence of only the most recent. Working to overcome the limitations of data and poor preservation, using decades of prior research and new analytical tools, and diverging from a one-size-fits-all mode of interpretation, the contributors to this volume offer fresh insight into the formation and taphonomy of open-air sites. Contributors: Douglas B. Bamforth, Ian Buvit, Brian J. Carter, Robin Cordero, Robert Dello-Russo, George C. Frison, Kelly E. Graf, Bruce B. Huckell, Michael A. Jochim, Joshua D. Kapp, Robert L. Kelly, Aleksander V. Konstantinov, Banks Leonard, Madeline E. Mackie, Christopher W. Merriman, Matthew J. O’Brien, Spencer Pelton, Neil N. Puckett, Beth Shapiro, Todd A. Surovell, Karisa Terry, Steve Teteak, Robert Yohe

The role of place-making and architecture in mobile cultures The relationship of hunter-gatherer societies to the built environment is often overlooked or characterized as strictly utilitarian in archaeological research. Taking on deeper questions of cultural significance and social inheritance, this volume offers a more robust examination of houses as not only places of shelter but also of memory, history, and social cohesion within these communities. Bringing together case studies from Europe, Asia, and North and South America, More Than Shelter from the Storm utilizes a diverse array of methodologies including radiocarbon dating, geoarchaeology, refitting studies, and material culture studies to reframe the conversation around hunter-gatherer houses. Discussing examples of built structures from the Pleistocene through Late Holocene periods, contributors investigate how these societies created a sense of home through symbolic decoration, ritual, and transformative interaction with the landscape. Demonstrating that meaningful relationships with architecture are not limited to sedentary societies that construct permanent houses, the essays in this volume highlight the complexity of mobile cultures and demonstrate the role of place-making and the built environment in structuring their worldviews. Contributors: Brian Andrews | Amy E. Clark | Margaret W. Conkey | Kelly Eldridge | Randy Haas | Knut A. Helskog | Bryan C. Hood | Sebastien Lacombe | Danielle Macdonald | Lisa Maher | Brooke Morgan | Christopher Morgan | Gustavo Neme | Lauren Norman | Matthew O’Brien | Spencer Pelton | Sarah Ranlett | Vladimir Shumkin | Kathleen Sterling | Todd Surovell | Christopher B. Wolff

This revised and updated edition provides a comprehensive synthesis of Southern Africa's archaeology over more than 3 million years.

Mobile pastoralist activities occur at different scales across the landscape, including local, regional, and supra-regional scales. Most archaeological studies of mobile pastoralist social organization have focused on the latter two scales via the extant monumental and herding landscapes. Household levels of analysis figure much less in these studies. This volume brings together the work of archaeologists currently engaged in mobile pastoralist household research in different regions of the world to highlight the importance of household studies and the utility of both archaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches in understanding mobile pastoralist household formation, continuity, and adaptation to environmental, social, economic, and political change.

At the end of the last Ice Age in a valley bottom in the Rocky Mountains, a group of bison hunters overwintered. Through the analysis of more than 75,000 pieces of chipped stone, archaeologist Todd A. Surovell is able to provide one of the most detailed looks yet at the lifeways of hunter-gatherers from 12,800 years ago. The best archaeological sites are those that present problems and inspire research, writes Surovell. From the start, the Folsom site called Barger Gulch Locality B was one of those sites; it was a problem-rich environment. Many Folsom sites are sparse scatters of stone and bone, a reflection of a mobile lifestyle that leaves little archaeological materials. The people at Barger Gulch left behind tens of thousands of pieces of chipped stone; they appeared to have spent quite a bit of time there in comparison to other places they inhabited. Summarizing findings from nine seasons of excavations, Surovell explains that the site represents a congregation of mobile hunter-gatherers who spent winter along Barger Gulch, a tributary of the Colorado River. Surovell uses spatial patterns in chipped stone to infer the locations of hearths and house features. He examines the organization of household interiors and discusses differential use of interior and exterior spaces. Data allow inference about the people who lived at the site, including aspects of the identity of flintknappers and household versus group mobility. The site shows evidence of a Paleoindian camp circle, child flintknapping, household production of weaponry, and the fission/fusion dynamics of group composition that is typical of nomadic peoples. Barger Gulch provides key findings on Paleoindian technological variation and spatial and social organization.

Archaeologists have long encountered evidence of natural disasters through excavation and stratigraphy. In Surviving Sudden Environmental Change, case studies examine how eight different past human communities—ranging from Arctic to equatorial regions, from tropical rainforests to desert interiors, and from deep prehistory to living memory—faced, and coped with, such dangers. Many disasters originate from a force of nature, such as an earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, drought, or flood. But that is only half of the story; decisions of people and their particular cultural lifeways are the rest. Sociocultural factors are essential in understanding risk, impact, resilience, reactions, and recoveries from massive sudden environmental changes. By using deep-time perspectives provided by interdisciplinary approaches, this book provides a rich temporal background to the human experience of environmental hazards and disasters. In addition, each chapter is followed by an abstract summarizing the important implications for today’s management practices and providing recommendations for policy makers. Publication supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

Sustainability and Water Management in the Maya World and Beyond investigates climate change and sustainability through time, exploring how political control of water sources, maintenance of sustainable systems, ideological relationships with water, and fluctuations in water availability have affected and been affected by social change. Contributors focus on and build upon earlier investigations of the global diversity of water management systems and the successes and failures of their employment, while applying a multitude of perspectives on sustainability. The volume focuses primarily on the Precolumbian Maya but offers several analogous case studies outside the ancient Maya world that illustrate the pervasiveness of water’s role in sustainability, including an ethnographic study of the sustainability of small-scale, farmer-managed irrigation systems in contemporary New Mexico and the environmental consequences of Angkor’s growth into the world’s most extensive preindustrial settlement. The archaeological record offers rich data on past politics of climate change, while epigraphic and ethnographic data show how integrated the ideological, political, and environmental worlds of the Maya were. While Sustainability and Water Management in the Maya World and Beyond stresses how lessons from the past offer invaluable insight into current approaches of adaptation, it also advances our understanding of those adaptations by making the inevitable discrepancies between past and present climate change less daunting and emphasizing the sustainable negotiations between humans and their surroundings that have been mediated by the changing climate for millennia. It will appeal to students and scholars interested in climate change, sustainability, and water management in the archaeological record. Contributors: Mary Jane Acuña, Wendy Ashmore, Timothy Beach, Jeffrey Brewer, Christopher Carr, Adrian S. Z. Chase, Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase, Carlos R. Chiriboga, Jennifer Chmilar, Nicholas Dunning, Maurits W. Ertsen, Roland Fletcher, David Friedel, Robert Griffin, Joel D. Gunn, Armando Anaya Hernández, Christian Isendahl, David Lentz, Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Dan Penny, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Michelle Rich, Cynthia Robin, Sylvia Rodríguez, William Saturno, Vernon Scarborough, Payson Sheets, Liwy Grazioso Sierra, Michael Smyth, Sander van der Leeuw, Andrew Wyatt