Mid-Holocene hunter-gatherers, housepits, and landscape reuse: Sweetwater River, Wyoming

<p>Archaic period housepits in Wyoming are components of a larger strategy characterized by high residential mobility, broad-spectrum resource procurement, and repeated utilization of landscape locations that afforded perennial and seasonally available resources. Housepits in ecologically productive areas were advantageous for hunter-gatherers, and were likely reoccupied periodically. Recent excavation of several housepit sites located within the Sweetwater River catchment in central Wyoming provide additional information relative to understanding hunter-gatherer behavior within the context of a xeric mid-Holocene environment.</p

New Evidence of the Earliest Domestic Dogs in the Americas

The domestication of dogs likely occurred in Eurasia by 16,000 years ago, and the initial peopling of the Americas potentially happened around the same time. Dogs were long thought to have accompanied the first migrations into the Americas, but conclusive evidence for Paleoindian dogs is lacking. In this study, the direct dating of two dogs from the Koster site (Greene County, Illinois) and a newly described dog from the Stilwell II site (Pike County, Illinois) to between 10,190 and 9,630 cal BP represents the earliest confirmed evidence of domestic dogs in the Americas and individual dog burials anywhere in the world. Analysis of these animals shows Early Archaic dogs were medium sized, lived active lifestyles, and exhibited significant morphological variation. Stable isotope analyses suggest diets dominated by terrestrial C3 resources and substantial consumption of riverine fish