D B Bamforth
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 11242 |
|---|---|
| NOME | D B Bamforth |
| PRENOMES | D B |
| SOBRENOME | Bamforth |
| ASSINATURA | BAMFORTH D B |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3362-7873 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 60 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 1005 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 60 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1979 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 17 |
House structure, cultural connections between Middle Missouri and Central Plains communities, and peopling the Ponca Creek sites
A series of exceptionally large sites along Ponca Creek in northeastern Nebraska appear to have been home to a large population of maize farmers for roughly a century around AD 1300. People settled at these sites too quickly for their population to represent local demographic processes, raising the question of where they came from. Ceramic data suggests a population with diverse backgrounds. We consider how household architecture, particularly th…
On the (Non-)Scalability of Target Media for Evaluating the Performance of Ancient Projectile Weapons
When they work, controlled experiments can efficiently and clearly reveal essential characteristics of the functions and performance of ancient hunting and fighting weapons. However, homogenous target media must be carefully validated to ensure that controlled tests capture the same variables that made weapons effective in their original application. Although homogenous flesh simulants have proven effective for studying firearms, the same simulan…
Thirteenth and fourteenth century ceramic decoration and social groups in the central great Plains
This paper considers possible social groups and interactions on the thirteenth through fifteenth century central Plains by examining patterns of ceramic rim face and upper body decoration. My analysis tabulates design motifs by site and/or locality, identifying a basic dichotomy between the northern / western area of the central Plains and the southern / eastern area, along with a third distinct pattern in the set of anomalously large sites on Po…
The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains
In this volume, Douglas B. Bamforth offers an archaeological overview of the Great Plains, the vast, open grassland bordered by forests and mountain ranges situated in the heart of North America. Synthesizing a century of scholarship and new archaeological evidence, he focuses on changes in resource use, continental trade connections, social formations, and warfare over a period of 15,000 years. Bamforth investigates how foragers harvested the gr…
Mortars, maize, and Central Plains tradition farmers
Plains archaeologists have referred to a class of features they have labelled mortar holes at least since the 1940s. These features are typically postholes identified in locations in the floors of houses that seem unlikely to have supported the weight of the house’s roof. Instead, researchers suggest that these holes once held wooden mortars used to process maize and other materials. These references are uneven: essentially identical features are…
Bayesian analysis of the chronology of the Lynch site (25BD1) and comparisons to the Central Plains Tradition and Central Plains Oneota
This paper presents a series of new radiocarbon dates on the Lynch site (25BD1), an Initial Coalescent site in northeastern Nebraska, and takes a Bayesian approach to examining them in three contexts. First, we consider what they tell us about the chronology of occupation at the site itself. Second, we combine them with dates on other sites in the Ponca Creek drainage to consider the chronological pattern of horticultural settlement there. Finall…
Finding Archaeological Relevance during a Pandemic and What Comes After
This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease, archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, …
Late Pleistocene protein residues from the Mahaffy cache, Colorado
Paleoindian Perambulations and the Harman Cache
The Harman cache is a collection of Cody-era artifacts found in south-central Nebraska in the 1930s. The collection includes finished Cody projectile points and a large number of projectile point preforms made from raw materials originating in widely dispersed areas. At least one, and possibly two, of the bifaces in the cache resemble Hell Gap preforms. The range of materials and the kinds of artifacts in the cache are consistent with other post-…
Radiocarbon calibration curves, summed probability distributions, and early Paleoindian population trends in North America
Origin Stories, Archaeological Evidence, and Postclovis Paleoindian Bison Hunting on the Great Plains
Reconstructions of the Paleoindian period are archaeology's origin stories about the native people of North America. These reconstructions have strongly emphasized great differences between recent and ancient Native Americans, echoing a perspective with its roots in the nineteenth century. One central component of the differences archaeologists have seen lies in the way that Paleoindian groups moved across the landscape. Particularly on the Great…
Projectile points, people, and Plains Paleoindian perambulations
Production Skill and Paleoindian Workgroup Organization in the Medicine Creek Drainage, Southwestern Nebraska
Introduction
Reconsidering the Occupational History of the Crow Creek Site (39BF11)
This paper considers the occupational history of the Crow Creek site, arguably the most famous archaeological site on the northern Plains. We recognize that no single aspect of the currently available evidence makes it possible to examine this topic in rigorous detail. However, we argue that multiple lines of evidence converge on the conclusion that the site locality was an important place to Indian people on the Plains for at least the last 1,00…
The Windy Ridge quartzite quarry
Studies of hunter-gatherer activity at lithic raw material sources are relatively rare and largely descriptive, in part because archaeologists have viewed hunter-gatherer lithic procurement as a casual and low-cost activity. This paper presents the results of fieldwork at a hunter-gatherer quartzite quarry along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado that suggests that this perspective is incorrect. Hunter-gatherer gro…
Intrasite Spatial Analysis, Ethnoarchaeology, and Paleoindian Land-Use on the Great Plains
This paper examines the way in which patterns of human occupation and geomorphic processes interacted to produce a highly structured distribution of artifacts and hearths over a period of over 3,000 years at the Allen site (25FT50), a Paleoindian campsite in southwestern Nebraska. Despite accumulation of roughly a meter of sediment, artifact concentrations remained in almost exactly the same horizontal locations throughout the period of site occu…
Tool hoards and Neolithic use of the landscape in north‐eastern Ireland
Archaeologists frequently suggest that the Neolithic occupants of Ireland and Britain may not have been fully settled farmers, but were, instead, at least partially nomadic pastoralists. However, human use of any landscape is more complex than the current debate suggests, and this debate has included few systematic studies designed to evaluate this issue in detail. This paper examines hoards (or ‘caches’) of flaked stone tools in County Antrim, I…
Stephen Shennan. Genes, memes and human history
Stephen Shennan. Genes, memes and human history: Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution. 304 pages, 47 figures. 2002. London: Thames & Hudson; 0-500-05118-6 hardback £19.95. - Volume 77 Issue 298
What Is Archaeology? (Or, Confusion, Sound, and Fury, Signifying)
O'Brien, Lyman, and Leonard's comment misrepresents my paper and obscures the problems evolutionary archaeology faces. In particular, I took the ongoing operation of natural selection among modern humans as one of my fundamental assumptions and I did not limit evolution to genetic change. The assertion that the selectionists have identified the operation of natural selection in the archaeological record fails to meet the most basic standards of a…
The Paleoindian Occupation of the Medicine Creek Drainage, Southwestern Nebraska
High-Tech Foragers? Folsom and Later Paleoindian Technology on the Great Plains
Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology
Evolutionary theory and terminology are widely used in recent archaeological work, and many evolutionary archaeologists have argued that the integration of such theory and terminology is essential to the future of our field. This paper considers evolutionary archaeology from two perspectives. First, it examines substantive claims that archaeology can study the operation of Darwinian evolution, either through a reliance on optimal-foraging theory …
Lithics
The Culture History of the Central Great Plains Prior to the Introduction of Pottery
The Culture History of the Central Great Plains Prior to the Introduction of Pottery." Plains Anthropologist, 65(256), pp. 378–379
Technological Efficiency and Tool Curation
Archaeologists frequently explain tool curation by its efficiency. Such explanations ignore the fact that curation is a complex activity and that its component parts are efficient in different ways. I argue that the nature and distribution of lithic resources critically affect technological efficiency and I discuss two aspects of curation, maintenance and recycling, asserting that they are responses to raw material shortages. Shortages result fro…
Technology, Flaked Stone Technology, and Risk
Recent theoretical studies of flaked stone technology have identified many factors that affect the ways in which human beings make and use tools. However, these studies lack a unified body of theory that might help to integrate their diverse perspectives. This paper expands recent anthropological discussions of risk as the basis for such a theory. We begin by defining risk, emphasizing two distinct components of this concept-the probability that …
Technological Organization and Hunter-Gatherer Land Use
Recent research has identified a number of general factors with important effects on flaked-stone technology but has been less effective in solving the problem of examining these factors in specific archaeological contexts. This paper discusses this issue and presents a case study focused on mobility patterns in one area of coastal California to exemplify one approach to dealing with it. This study emphasizes the importance of considering, first,…
Introduction
Ecology and Human Organization on the Great Plains
High-Tech Foragers? Folsom and Later Paleoindian Technology on the Great Plains
Radiocarbon calibration curves, summed probability distributions, and early Paleoindian population trends in North America
Core/Biface Ratios, Mobility, Refitting, and Artifact Use-Lives
Low core/biface ratios are often linked to high mobility, and high ratios to more sedentary life styles. The Paleoindian Allen site assemblage exhibits low core/biface ratios among recovered artifacts and higher ratios among refitted sequences. This suggests that cores passed through the site more often than bifaces, but were rarely discarded there. This pattern probably reflects low failure and discard rates in core reduction relative to biface …
The Windy Ridge quartzite quarry
Studies of hunter-gatherer activity at lithic raw material sources are relatively rare and largely descriptive, in part because archaeologists have viewed hunter-gatherer lithic procurement as a casual and low-cost activity. This paper presents the results of fieldwork at a hunter-gatherer quartzite quarry along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado that suggests that this perspective is incorrect. Hunter-gatherer gro…
Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology
Evolutionary theory and terminology are widely used in recent archaeological work, and many evolutionary archaeologists have argued that the integration of such theory and terminology is essential to the future of our field. This paper considers evolutionary archaeology from two perspectives. First, it examines substantive claims that archaeology can study the operation of Darwinian evolution, either through a reliance on optimal-foraging theory …
Origin Stories, Archaeological Evidence, and Postclovis Paleoindian Bison Hunting on the Great Plains
Reconstructions of the Paleoindian period are archaeology's origin stories about the native people of North America. These reconstructions have strongly emphasized great differences between recent and ancient Native Americans, echoing a perspective with its roots in the nineteenth century. One central component of the differences archaeologists have seen lies in the way that Paleoindian groups moved across the landscape. Particularly on the Great…
Indigenous People, Indigenous Violence
S'appuyant sur l'ethnographie des grandes plaines du Nord americain, des anthropologues montrent que le contact des indigenes avec les Europeens intensifia et generalisa la violence guerriere inter-tribale. Cette conclusion n'est pas corroboree par les faits archeologiques qui suggerent que les guerres inter-tribales meurtrieres etaient deja endemiques dans certaines regions des grandes plaines bien des siecles avant l'arrivee des blancs. Ces don…
Investigating microwear polishes with blind tests
Intrasite Spatial Analysis, Ethnoarchaeology, and Paleoindian Land-Use on the Great Plains
This paper examines the way in which patterns of human occupation and geomorphic processes interacted to produce a highly structured distribution of artifacts and hearths over a period of over 3,000 years at the Allen site (25FT50), a Paleoindian campsite in southwestern Nebraska. Despite accumulation of roughly a meter of sediment, artifact concentrations remained in almost exactly the same horizontal locations throughout the period of site occu…
Ambiguous use traces and blind test results
The Technological Organization Of Paleo-Indian Small-Group Bison Hunting on the Llano Estacado
Noncommunal bison hunting on the Plains has rarely been studied. This paper discusses the lithic material from eight small, non communal bison kills at the Lubbock Lake site in the Texas Panhandle. This collection differs fundamentally from those found in communal kills, particularly in the range of quality in the raw materials and in the diversity of tool uses present. The Lubbock Lake assemblage integrates curated tools of nonlocal stone and ex…
On the Macroscopic Identification of Used Flakes
The most common method used by archaeologists to identify flaked-stone artifacts that were used by prehistoric people to accomplish some task is to inspect an artifact's edges for macroscopic edge damage. The results of a test of this 'no-magnification' approach to microwear analysis indicate that such an approach is likely to produce highly inaccurate and biased data in many or most cases
Late Pleistocene protein residues from the Mahaffy cache, Colorado
Historical Documents and Bison Ecology on the Great Plains
Although many anthropologists have studied the Plains bison using historical documents, such studies often do not consider the information needed to make ecological sense out of the data these documents contain. Arguments about the “predictability” of herd movements are particularly weakened by this problem. Modern ecological research indicates that there are two critical factors which need to be addressed in reconstructing bison ecology on the P…
Production Skill and Paleoindian Workgroup Organization in the Medicine Creek Drainage, Southwestern Nebraska
Finding Archaeological Relevance during a Pandemic and What Comes After
This article emerged as the human species collectively have been experiencing the worst global pandemic in a century. With a long view of the ecological, economic, social, and political factors that promote the emergence and spread of infectious disease, archaeologists are well positioned to examine the antecedents of the present crisis. In this article, we bring together a variety of perspectives on the issues surrounding the emergence, spread, …
Tool hoards and Neolithic use of the landscape in north‐eastern Ireland
Archaeologists frequently suggest that the Neolithic occupants of Ireland and Britain may not have been fully settled farmers, but were, instead, at least partially nomadic pastoralists. However, human use of any landscape is more complex than the current debate suggests, and this debate has included few systematic studies designed to evaluate this issue in detail. This paper examines hoards (or ‘caches’) of flaked stone tools in County Antrim, I…
Human behavior, explanation, archaeology, history, and science
On the (Non-)Scalability of Target Media for Evaluating the Performance of Ancient Projectile Weapons
When they work, controlled experiments can efficiently and clearly reveal essential characteristics of the functions and performance of ancient hunting and fighting weapons. However, homogenous target media must be carefully validated to ensure that controlled tests capture the same variables that made weapons effective in their original application. Although homogenous flesh simulants have proven effective for studying firearms, the same simulan…
Theory and Inference in Plains Archaeology
Plains archaeology tends to lack overtly theoretical discussion, and examples from the Plains rarely enter into theoretical discussions of American archaeology. This lack of overt theorizing in our field masks the fact that archaeological and anthropological theory permeates every step of all archaeological research ever conducted on the Plains. This paper explains why this is so and considers its implications for the ways in which archaeologists…
Replies
Human behavior, explanation, archaeology, history, and science
The Technological Organization Of Paleo-Indian Small-Group Bison Hunting on the Llano Estacado
Noncommunal bison hunting on the Plains has rarely been studied. This paper discusses the lithic material from eight small, non communal bison kills at the Lubbock Lake site in the Texas Panhandle. This collection differs fundamentally from those found in communal kills, particularly in the range of quality in the raw materials and in the diversity of tool uses present. The Lubbock Lake assemblage integrates curated tools of nonlocal stone and ex…
A Comment on “Functional Variability in an Assemblage of Endscrapers”
Technological Efficiency and Tool Curation
Archaeologists frequently explain tool curation by its efficiency. Such explanations ignore the fact that curation is a complex activity and that its component parts are efficient in different ways. I argue that the nature and distribution of lithic resources critically affect technological efficiency and I discuss two aspects of curation, maintenance and recycling, asserting that they are responses to raw material shortages. Shortages result fro…
Historical Documents and Bison Ecology on the Great Plains
Although many anthropologists have studied the Plains bison using historical documents, such studies often do not consider the information needed to make ecological sense out of the data these documents contain. Arguments about the “predictability” of herd movements are particularly weakened by this problem. Modern ecological research indicates that there are two critical factors which need to be addressed in reconstructing bison ecology on the P…
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Climate and Bison Adaptations on the Great Plains
Ungulate Ecology
Recent and Paleoindian Environments of the Southern High Plains
Summary and Conclusions
Grassland Ecology
Patterns of Forage Production on the Great Plains
Paleoindian Responses to Environmental Change on the Southern High Plains
Recent Population Movements on the Great Plains
Paleoindian Adaptations on the Great Plains
Resource Structure and Human Organization
Ecological Relationships in Recent Plains Society
Investigating microwear polishes with blind tests
Ecology and Human Organization on the Great Plains
Ethnohistory And Bison On The Southwestern Plains
Settlement, raw material, and lithic procurement in the central Mojave Desert
Ambiguous use traces and blind test results
An Empirical Perspective on Little Ice Age Climatic Change on the Great Plains
Discussions of climatic conditions on the Great Plains during the Protohistoric and Historic periods often focus on the concept of a “Little Ice Age, “a period of time during which precipitation in the region is argued to have been significantly greater and temperatures significantly lower than during the twentieth century. This paper reviews the available data on the Little Ice Age climate of the Great Plains, emphasizing historical records and …
Time, Energy, and Stone Tools
List of contributors Preface 1. Tools as optimal solutions Robin Torrence 2. From shopper to celt: the evolution of resharpening techniques Brian Hayden 3. The occupational history of sites and the interpretation of prehistoric technological systems: an example from Cedar Mesa, Utah Eileen Camilli 4. Trade or embedded procurement?: a test case from southern Illinois Carol A. Morrow and Richard W. Jefferies 5. Economies in raw material use by preh…
On the Macroscopic Identification of Used Flakes
The most common method used by archaeologists to identify flaked-stone artifacts that were used by prehistoric people to accomplish some task is to inspect an artifact's edges for macroscopic edge damage. The results of a test of this 'no-magnification' approach to microwear analysis indicate that such an approach is likely to produce highly inaccurate and biased data in many or most cases
Geography (46 obras) · Archaeology (44 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (37 obras) · History (30 obras) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (23 obras) · Biology (21 obras) · Computer Science (19 obras) · Ecology (16 obras) · Archaeology and Natural History (15 obras) · History (15 obras)