North American Archaeologist

I provide a brief personal introduction including my professional background, interests, and qualifications. I invite authors with a wide diversity of interests to submitted manuscripts to the journal.

Comparison of Late Paleoindian sites of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains reveals 36 site components from 28 sites containing ground stone tools, including nine Cody Complex examples. Much of the ground stone use appears related to generalized activity, as few items have functionally specific forms. However, the Cody components have an unexpectedly higher number of grooved abraders as compared to other complexes. We note that Paleoindian examples contain wider u-shaped grooves compared to Late Prehistoric/Protohistoric abraders related to arrow production. We argue that Paleoindian abraders represent shaft abraders, used in the production of dart shafts within weaponry systems. We propose several hypotheses for the emergence of this technology during Cody times. The most parsimonious explanation is that the specific sites containing these abraders represent large camps, occupied for long periods and containing diverse chipped and ground stone assemblages.

The fortuitous discovery of an isolated Late Archaic burial (10MO84) in southeastern Idaho is a rare contribution to bioarchaeology of the region. This study describes the osteobiography of this skeleton and contextualizes results to published accounts of bioarchaeology within Idaho, the Great Basin, and the Intermountain West. Analysis suggests that there is much potential variability in burial styles and goods in the region through time, dental attrition is consistently severe, and arthritis of the upper limb is common. More systematic and collaborative bioarchaeology will continue to improve a bio-cultural synthesis of prehistoric Idaho and surrounding regions.