PREFACE

The labor invested in the construction of facilities provides a relative measure of the anticipated durationof the occupation. Ethnoarchaeological observations (Binford 1983:144–192; Gamble and Boimier 1991;Kroll and Price 1991; O’Connell 1987; Yellen 1977), for example, suggest that minimally any residentialoccupation will be marked by one or more hearths, which serve as focal points for food preparation andconsumption, as well as a variety of other activities. Some type of shelter will probably be built if thecamp is occupied for more than a few days. For shorter stays and in warm weather, the shelters might besimple shades or windbreaks but for longer occupations, they may be more substantial. During coolweather, the structure will generally be larger with an interior hearth, and space for sleeping, foodpreparation, and storage. The presence of exterior storage pits is also characteristic of longer occupations,as is the segregation of areas on the periphery of the camp for activities that require considerable space orgenerate large quantities of debris (e.g., lithic tool manufacture, hide working, pit roasting).Refuse disposal patterns are another indicator of the duration of an occupation. Refuse disposal isunlikely to be a major concern at sites occupied for brief periods. At these sites, refuse will probably bediscarded at or near the location of use, possibly with some size sorting of materials into what Binford(1978) describes as “drop and toss zones” within activity areas and around features. At sites occupied forlonger periods, more effort is invested in clearing debris from living and work areas. Periodic cleaning ofstructures may result in the accumulation of “door dumps” near structure entrances, but most refuse tendsto be concentrated on the periphery of the camp or settlement. Depending on the length of theoccupation, this debris may be characterized as a discontinous scatter, sheet midden, or midden deposits.The “household” or “hearth group” is the smallest settlement unit that can be defined consistently usingarchaeological data, and it is generally the basic subsistence unit (Johnson and Earle 1987:19). Based ongeneral ethnographic analogy, the household is assumed to be roughly equivalent to a nuclear family orsmall extended family group. At Puebloan sites, the household is defined archaeologically as a pithouse,a suite of surface rooms, or some combination of both. At sites occupied by mobile groups, thehousehold may be marked by a hearth and associated activity area or by a structure and associatedextramural facilities depending on the duration of the occupation. In either case, the size of the householdgroup can be estimated based on the size of the residential structure and/or the total occupation area. Atlarger settlements, multiple households will generally be arrayed at some socially-prescribed interval,often surrounding a communal space. Group size can therefore be estimated by counting the number ofhouseholds and multiplying by the estimated size of the household group. If multiple households arewidely and irregularly spaced, however, then the site was likely reoccupied by household groups,particularly if evidence of communal facilities is lacking. Superimposed features or refuse deposits,structural additions and, at a coarse level, varying occupations dates also provide evidence that a locationwas reoccupied.In extreme cases, favorable locations may have been occupied repeatedly over long periods partially orwholly obscuring the patterning of individual households. This is particularly likely when theoccupations are on land surfaces that are either eroded or have been stable for long periods. In such“palimpsest” situations, it may be possible to discern some aspects of the site structure throughdistributional analysis of artifacts and features (e.g., differential distribution of temporally diagnosticartifacts, lithic raw materials, etc.) but the success of such analyses will depend in large part on knowingwhat household from different time periods are supposed to look like. An initial emphasis is singlecomponentsites is therefore recommended to provide the initial definitions of household site structure.Research at the area/generalization level is largely a matter of settlement pattern analysis. As suggestedby the questions posed for this scale of work, that analysis involves three related tasks. The first task is togeneralize from the information gleaned from individual sites to classes of sites evidencing the similaroccupations or activities; in other words, to define site types. The site types defined in Chapter 3represent a very preliminary attempt at such a classification and, as more excavation data becomeavailable it is expected that this typology will be tested and refined. That typology is morphologicallybased in that the type definitions are based on the presence of particular kinds of features but, like most4-46