Anthropology

Kohler, Timothy A., Michael E. Smith, Amy Bogaard, Gary M. Feinman, Christian E. Peterson, Alleen Betzenhauser, Matthew Pailes, Elizabeth C. Stone, Anna Marie Prentiss, Timothy Dennehy, Laura Ellyson, Linda M. Nicholas, Ronald K. Faulseit, Amy Styring, Jade Whitlam, Mattia Fochesato, Thomas A. Foor, and Samuel Bowles. 2017. Greater Post-Neolithic Wealth Disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica. Nature 551(7680): 10.1038/nature24646.

How wealth is distributed among households provides insight into the fundamental characters of societies and the opportunities they afford for social mobility. However, economic inequality has been hard to study in ancient societies for which we do not have written records, which adds to the challenge of placing current wealth disparities into a long-term perspective. Although various archaeological proxies for wealth, such as burial goods or exotic or expensive-to-manufacture goods in household assemblages, have been proposed, the first is not clearly connected with households, and the second is confounded by abandonment mode and other factors. As a result, numerous questions remain concerning the growth of wealth disparities, including their connection to the development of domesticated plants and animals and to increases in sociopolitical scale. Here we show that wealth disparities generally increased with the domestication of plants and animals and with increased sociopolitical scale, using Gini coefficients computed over the single consistent proxy of house-size distributions. However, unexpected differences in the responses of societies to these factors in North America and Mesoamerica, and in Eurasia, became evident after the end of the Neolithic period. We argue that the generally higher wealth disparities identified in post-Neolithic Eurasia were initially due to the greater availability of large mammals that could be domesticated, because they allowed more profitable agricultural extensification, and also eventually led to the development of a mounted warrior elite able to expand polities (political units that cohere via identity, ability to mobilize resources, or governance) to sizes that were not possible in North America and Mesoamerica before the arrival of Europeans. We anticipate that this analysis will stimulate other work to enlarge this sample to include societies in South America, Africa, South Asia and Oceania that were under-sampled or not included in this study.

In 2017, the coupling of a federally funded transportation project with an undergraduate archaeological field school, and Applied Archaeology thesis research, produced an innovative approach to archaeological mitigation. The project funded a Phase III investigation of a lithic workshop site—the James W. Hatch Site. The site was occupied during the Early Archaic Period, and attracted occupations focused on jasper reduction at a location 1.2 kilometers from a quarry. The site produced over 9,000 prehistoric artifacts from contiguous block excavation. Another part of the federally funded project included the synthesis of survey data from sites surrounding the jasper quarry and helped re-evaluate and map the boundaries of the Houserville National Register Archaeological District. The reevaluation of the district will help guide the management of sites affected by future infrastructure projects for many years to come. This project serves as an example of an innovative and cost-effective alternative mitigation solution providing valuable experiential learning opportunities to students and young professionals while effectively managing cultural resources.

Preliminary zooarchaeological analysis of the Johnston Site (36IN2), a Middle Monongahela site in western Pennsylvania, has increased understanding of this important site. As faunal remains are one of the most commonly recovered materials from this site, further study of the faunal assemblage can add to interpretations of site structure and of the activities of Johnston Phase Monongahela people. We have identified and analyzed a sample of previously unstudied faunal remains collected between 2010 and 2014, examining distributions within the site, as well as feature associations and functions, in order to add to the understanding of taphonomic processes and animal resource use. For this study, a sample of faunal remains were analyzed by four IUP graduate students. The specimens were identified using the IUP Comparative Faunal Collection, as well as literature (Neusius 2010). The datasets were then combined in a Microsoft Access database in which further analysis was carried out.

The Squirrel Hill Site (36Wm0035) is a Monongahela village located in Westmoreland County, PA, along the floodplain of the Conemaugh River near the town of New Florence (Figure 1).  Although the site is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, previous investigation is extremely limited; many questions remain to be answered about this site, including verifying occupation and cultural affiliations; identifying the location and extent of site boundaries; characterizing the internal arrangement of houses, plaza, and stockades; and contextualizing its relationship with other Johnston Phase sites such as Johnston, Brant I and McJunkin.  Moreover, with the exception of a small geophysical survey in 2013 (DeHaven 2013), most work conducted at the site occurred decades ago, and not to modern excavation and analytical standards. In partnership with the Midwest office of the Archaeological Conservancy, we began to investigate these questions as part of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s (IUP) 2016 Archaeological Field School using a combination of geophysical survey, pedestrian survey and shovel testing, geomorphic testing, and test excavation.

The Squirrel Hill archaeological site (36Wm0035) is a Johnston-phase Monongahela village located in Westmoreland County, PA, on a terrace of the Conemaugh River near the modern town of New Florence.  Although the site is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, previous investigation is extremely limited; many questions remain to be answered, including verifying occupation and cultural affiliations; identifying the location and extent of site boundaries; characterizing the internal arrangement of houses, plaza, and stockades; and reconstructing the site’s paleo-landscape.  In partnership with the Midwest office of the Archaeological Conservancy, we began to investigate these questions as part of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s 2016 Archaeological Field School using a combination of geophysical survey, test excavation, and geomorphic testing. Preliminary results of a ground penetrating radar survey in the northwest portion of the site revealed what may be a large rectangular structure at 23-46 cmbs, with a size and shape that does not conform to the typical circular Johnston-phase “petal structure” house. Auger cores taken from the northern end of the site revealed what appear to be a series of buried landscapes at depths of ~108, ~130, and ~163 cmbs, suggesting that earlier occupations at the site may exist. Interestingly, these buried horizons do not appear in cores taken from the southern end of the site. Cores along the eastern edge of the site revealed alternating flood and gleyed deposits, suggesting and that the paleo-environment was more dynamic than researchers have previously thought. This poster will report on these field results, as well as recent radiocarbon, particle size and soil micromorphology analyses designed to refine the nature of occupation and past landscape history for the site.

This report summarizes the results of Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s 2016 archaeological field school at the Squirrel Hill Site (36Wm0035), a Monongahela village site located in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, along the floodplain of the Conemaugh River near the town of New Florence (Figures 1, 2).  Although the site is listed in the National Register, previous investigation has been extremely limited; many questions remain to be answered about this site, including verifying occupation and cultural affiliations; identifying the location and extent of site boundaries; characterizing the internal arrangement of houses, plaza, and stockades; and contextualizing its relationship with other Johnston Phase sites such as Johnston, Brant I and McJunkin.  Moreover, with the exception of a small geophysical survey in 2013 (DeHaven 2013), most work conducted at the site occurred decades ago, and not to modern excavation and analytical standards. The 2016 excavations sought to address these research questions and limitations as part of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s (IUP) 2016 Archaeological Field School. Specifically, we used a combination of geophysical survey, pedestrian survey and shovel testing, and test excavation. This investigation has allowed us to begin to better understand the internal organization of the Squirrel Hill Site and provide us with comparative data available for other regional Monongahela sites so that recent models (e.g., Means 2007; Neusius and Chiarulli 2013) of regional Monongahela settlement in southwestern Pennsylvania can be refined.  It has also provided researchers with valuable paleoenvironmnetal data in order to clarify human-environmental interaction and controls on settlement in the Conemaugh Valley.

The Squirrel Hill archaeological site (36Wm0035) is a Johnston-phase Monongahela village located in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, on a terrace of the Conemaugh River near the town of new Florence. Although listed in the National Register of Historic Places, previous investigation is extremely limited; many questions remain to be answered, including verifying occupation and cultural affiliations; identifying the location and extent of site boundaries; characterizing the internal arrangement of houses, plaza, and stockades; and reconstructing the site's paleo-landscape. In partnership with the Midwest office of the Archaeological Conservancy, we began to investigate these questions as a part of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania's 2016 archaeological field school using a combination of geophysical survey, test excavation, and geomorphic testing. We report on these field results, and recent radiocarbon, particle-size, and soil micromorphology analyses designed to refine the nature of occupation and past landscape history for the site.

Preliminary zooarchaeological analysis of the Johnston Site (36IN2), a Middle Monongahela site in western Pennsylvania, has increased understanding of this important site. As faunal remains are one of the most commonly recovered materials from this site, further study of the faunal assemblage can add to interpretations of site structure and of the activities of Johnston Phase Monongahela people. We have identified and analyzed a sample of previously unstudied faunal remains collected between 2010 and 2014, examining distributions within the site, as well as feature associations and functions, in order to add to the understanding of taphonomic processes and animal resource use. For this study, a sample of faunal remains were analyzed by four IUP graduate students. The specimens were identified using the IUP Comparative Faunal Collection, as well as literature (Neusius 2010). The datasets were then combined in a Microsoft Access database in which further analysis was carried out.