The hegemonic-type empires of ancient Mesoamerica are difficult to study archaeologically because they left fewer material traces than more territorially organized empires such as the Inka or Roman cases. We present a material culture model for the identification of such empires using archaeological data. The model, based upon Michael Doyle’s analytical approach to imperialism, is developed fro...

This paper deals with the problem of measuring household wealth from domestic artifactual remains. After an archaeologically useful definition and classitication of wealth is presented, quantitative anthropological, sociological, and historical analyses demonstrating a strong association between household possessions and wealth are reviewed. Then, ethnographic and historical data on different f...

Snare use in the arid Desert West of North America is characteristic of a broad-spectrum subsistence strategy, a conclusion supported by the contextual occurrence of snare bundles. Such a system insured against economic crises by including a wide range of plants and animals on its list of food items. It is suggested that microfauna, which are often relegated to the "also present" category of ar...

Foraging theory is increasingly used as a framework to analyze prehistoric resource depression, or declines in prey capture rates that stem from the activities of foragers. Resource depression, with the resulting declines in foraging efŽciency, appears to be an important variable underlying many behavioral transitions in human prehistory. And, while two of the primary lines of evidence used to ...

Molecular DNA analyses of the New World grass (Poaceae) genus Zea, comprising five species, has resolved taxonomic issues including the most likely teosinte progenitor (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) of maize (Zea mays ssp. mays). However, archaeologically, little is known about the use of teosinte by humans both prior to and after the domestication of maize. One potential line of evidence to explo...

The incomplete skeletal remains of a young adolescent (10–12 years of age) recovered from the surface of an earth-oven in Qaranicagi Cave, Site Y2–39, Waya Island, Fiji are used to explore mortuary practices in these islands. Mortuary practices in Fiji are documented in explorer and missionary accounts, and a limited number of excavated burials. Additionally, cannibalism is ethnographically and...

This article reports on the successful completion of a large-scale pilot project, where 3D scanning technology, and newly developed software to optimally identify the rotation axis of wheel-produced ceramics, were used as practical tools for pottery analysis. Approximately 1000 potsherds from several sites and periods were scanned, their axis of symmetry computed, and their mean profiles drawn....

Two different types of chattel slavery, those permitted by the Christian and Islamic religions, were introduced into Africa but only the Christian slave trade to the Americas has been studied by archaeologists. The much longer duration (over 1000 years) of the Islamic slave trade to Asia and of the Dar el Islam in North and East Africa is at present known only from literary and eyewitness accou...

Current literature on disaster response argues that societies providing greater local participation in decision-making and which have more community coordination and governance organizations are more resilient to climate-related disasters. In contrast, recent research in psychology has argued that societies with tighter social norms and greater enforcement of those norms are more resilient. Thi...

Use of models derived from foraging theory to explain variation in prey-abundance indices over time and space, evidenced in the zooarchaeological record, is common in western North America. Such use presumes that models derived from ecologically scaled observations are applicable to archaeologically scaled observations. The influence of time averaging and space averaging, whether inherent in th...