Abstract
We examine the spatial scale of prehistoric social networks represented by point types documented in western North America through comparison with ethnohistorically documented Native American interactive networks at different levels of inclusion. The ethnohistorical data come from Joseph Jorgensen’s (1980) Western Indians, which maps tribal boundaries at European contact and the associated language lineage for each tribe. We assume that frequency of interaction follows language relationships. Proximity aside, people will share ideas more often if they possess a language, or part of a language, in common. We use tribal regions and different levels of language affiliation (families, large language groupings, and phyla) that represent increasingly broad spatial scales of social interaction. We compare these measures with the areas calculated for point types in the same general region to determine which level of social interaction recorded ethnohistorically best fits with the point type data. Our analyses show that point type areas most closely resemble the spatial extents of large language groupings and language phyla. The areas of point types are greater than individual tribal regions recorded in western North America at the time of European contact and language families. Based on these results, we suggest that the conflation of point types with prehistoric cultures commonly implied in archeology is not justified. Building on the fundamental ideas of the culture historians, we suggest that point type distributions are a consequence of extensive social interaction networks where combinations of functional and neutral point traits are shared and inherited over a large area.
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Notes
We refer to once-hafted bifacial weapon tips as “points” rather than the more common “projectile points” because not all points were used as projectiles; some were used with thrusting spears and not thrown. Furthermore, some artifacts, assumed to have been projectile points that once tipped the ends of darts, presumably also did not always serve as projectiles. Ahler (1971) has suggested that hafted bifaces sometimes were used as knives, some of which may have never served as weapon tips. In this study, we use the short description “points” to refer to all once-hafted bifaces.
Our assessment of where this split occurs was done visually. However, additional analyses using dividing lines of 8000 C14 bp and 5000 C14 bp indicate qualitatively similar results to the results we report using 6000 C14 bp as the dividing line. For the older dividing line, we used 8000 C14 bp rather than 7000 C14 bp because no point types date to the period between 6000 C14 and 7000 C14 bp. The results indicate that the areas of point types that date pre-5000 C14 bp, pre-6000 C14 bp, and pre-8000 C14 bp have significantly greater means and medians than tribal areas, language families, and large language groupings. Whereas, point type areas that date post-5000 C14 bp, post-6000 C14 bp, and post-8000 C14 bp have significantly smaller means and medians than tribal areas and language families. The additional analyses of pre- and post-8000 C14 bp and pre- and post-5000 C14 bp are reported in the Supplementary Materials.
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Buchanan, B., Hamilton, M.J., Hartley, J.C. et al. Investigating the scale of prehistoric social networks using culture, language, and point types in western North America. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 11, 199–207 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-017-0537-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-017-0537-y