Artifact Scatters and Subsistence Organization

AbstractAs a class of archaeological remains, artifact scatters, though frequently abundant in regional archaeological records, are often ambiguous with respect to their origins. Consequently, with few exceptions their suspected usefulness in furnishing data that pertain to regional research issues, such as the organization of prehistoric subsistence, has gone unrealized. An approach for optimizing the inferential potential of artifact scatters is illustrated with an example from the Grand Canyon area of the American Southwest. Using detailed analyses of surface artifact distributions, debitage assemblage variation, and ceramic assemblage variation, inferences are developed regarding the formation patterns of a large ceramic-period (ca. A.C. 850/900 to post-1300) artifact scatter, Site 19 (AZ I:1:19[ASM]). These diachronic interpretations, in turn, are used to advance hypotheses about organizational differences between Cohonina and Kayenta Anasazi subsistence economies.

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