This paper presents an archaeological approach to the study of culture change and persistence in multi-ethnic communities through the study of daily practices and based on a crucial tenet of practice theory-that individuals will enact and construct their underlying organizational principles, worldviews, and social identities in the ordering of daily life. The study of habitual routines is undertaken in a broadly diachronic and comparative framework by examining daily practices from a multiscalar perspective. The approach is employed in a case study on the organization of daily life of interethnic households composed of Native Californian women and Native Alaskan men at the Russian colony of Fort Ross in northern California. Recognizing that different opportunities and choices existed for household members in this colonial setting, we explore how they constructed their own unique identities by examining the spatial layout of residential space, the ordering of domestic tasks, and the structure of trash disposal. We argue that trash deposits and middens in built environments, which often accumulate through routinized tasks, present great promise for examining the processes of culture change and persistence in archaeology.

Most archaeological studies of frontiers and boundaries are informed by a colonialist perspective of core-periphery relationships. In this review, we identify three problems with colonialist models of territorial expansion, boundary maintenance, and homogeneousc olonial populations. These problems are (a) insular models of culture change that treat frontiers as passive recipients of core innovations, (b) the reliance on macro scales of analysis employed frontier research, and (c) the expectation of sharp frontier boundaries visible material culture. In the final section, we reconceptualize frontiers as zones of cross-cutting social networks based largely on our research on fur-trade outposts in western North America. Our approach considers the study of diverse and overlapping segmentary or factional groups that cross-cut traditionally perceived colonial-indigenous boundaries on the frontier at different spatial and temporal scales of analysis.

Variations in natural abundance of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) stable isotopes are widely used as tools for many aspects of scientific research. By examining variations in the ratios of heavy to light stable isotopes, information can be obtained as to what physical, chemical and biological processes may be occurring. The spatial heterogeneity of soil delta(15)N- and delta(13)C-values across a range of scales and under different land use have been described by a number of researchers and the natural abundances of the C and N stable isotopes in soils have been found to be correlated with many factors including hydrology, topography, land use, vegetation cover and climate. In this study the Latin square sampling +1 (LSS+1) sampling method was compared with a simple grid sampling approach for delta(13)C and delta(15)N measurement at the field scale. A set of 144 samples was collected and analysed for delta(15)N and delta(13)C from a 12 x 12 grid (in a 1 ha improved grassland field in south-west England). The dimension of each cell of the grid was approximately 11 x 6 m. The 12 x 12 grid was divided into four 6 x 6 grids and the LSS+1 sampling technique was applied to these and the main 12 x 12 grid for a comparison of sample means and variation. The LSS+1 means from the 12 x 12 grid and the four 6 x 6 grids compared well with the overall grid mean because of the low variation within the field. The LSS+1 strategy (13 samples) generated representative samples from the 12 x 12 grid, and hence would be an acceptable method for sampling similar plots for the measurement of mean isotopic composition.

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Variation in human breastfeeding and weaning practices is subject to changing social pressures and norms, as well as individual agency. This paper presents a case study from the Yukisma Mound (CA‐SCL‐38), a prehistoric site in the San Francisco Bay Area, which was used as a ceremonial and cemetery space by the ancestral Ohlone Indians between 780 and 230 cal years bp. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values from bone collagen of 201 individuals, including 26 subadults, are analysed. The Weaning Age Reconstruction with Nitrogen isotope analysis package in R is used to model expected δ15N values of infant bone collagen, against which measured δ15N values reveal individual variation in weaning practices. Infants from this burial sample were exclusively breastfed until approximately 0.8 years (maximum density estimation (MDE), marginal probability = 0.0456), and completely weaned by around 4.4 years (MDE, marginal probability = .0409). Range of variation in adult diets is used as a baseline of comparison, in addition to mean δ15N values of adult females, to better consider supplementary food options, and to avoid the assumption of a homogeneous maternal diet. Comparison with weaning data from contemporaneous regional sites, drawn from studies using tooth dentin of individuals who survived childhood, reveals that introduction of complementary foods and cessation of breastfeeding occurred somewhat later at the Yukisma Mound. This contrast suggests prolonged supplementation with breastmilk for children who expressed nutritional stress or disease. Variation in weaning trajectories is further interpreted using δ13C values to identify individuals with elevated δ15N values due to supplementation with high trophic level foods (e.g., freshwater fish and marine foods). Changes in weaning practices are demonstrated by comparison of this sample to ethnohistoric accounts of the Ohlone. This study provides an example of collaborative research with descendent populations and of making the most of available materials.