Watson Brake, A Middle Archaic Mound Complex in Northeast Louisiana

Middle Archaic earthen mound complexes in the lower Mississippi valley are remote antecedents of the famous but much younger Poverty Point earthworks. Watson Brake is the largest and most complex of these early mound sites. Wry extensive coring and stratigraphic studies, aided by 25 radiocarbon dates and six huninescence dates, show that minor earthworks were begun here at ca. 3500 B.C. in association with an oval arrangement of burned rock middens at the edge of a stream terrace. The full extent of the first earthworks is not yet known. Substantial moundraising began ca. 3350 B.C. and continued in stages until some time after 3000 B.C. when the site was abandoned. All 11 mounds and their connecting ridges were occupied between building bursts. Soils,formed on some of these temporary surfaces, while lithics. fire-cracked rock. and,fired clay/loam objects became scattered throughout the mound fills. Faunal and floral remains from a basal midden indicate all-season occupation, supported by broad-spectrum foraging centered on nuts, fish, and deer All the overlying fills are so acidic that organics have not survived. The area enclosed by the mounds was kept clean of debris, suggesting its use as ritual space. The reasons why such elaborate activities first occurred here remain elusive. However some building bursts covary with very well-documented increases in El Nino/Southern Oscillation events. During such rapid increases in ENSO frequencies, rainfall becomes extremely erratic and unpredictable. It may be that early moundraising was a communal response to new stresses of droughts and flooding that created a suddenly more unpredictable food base

Sex Determination of Prehistoric Human Paleofeces

Analysis of 12 prehistoric human paleofecal specimens from the Mammoth Cave System, Kentucky has produced the first estimate of biological sex using fecal material from ancient humans. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating indicates that the specimens range in age from ca. 2700 B.P. to 2300 B.P. Dietary contents and steroids were extracted and analyzed. Chromatography and radioimmunoassay were used to measure levels of testosterone and estradiol in both modern fecal reference samples and in ancient feces. Results indicate that all 12 paleofeces were probably deposited by males whose diet included a variety of native crops and wild plants. These preliminary analyses have the potential to revolutionize the investigation of gender difference in diet, health, and nutrition