A common issue for archaeologists who study intermediate-scale societies is defining scale and complexity of occupations across entire villages or towns. This can be a major problem since an understanding of site-wide inter-household occupation patterns can be crucial for accurate reconstruction of village demographics and socio-economic organization. In this paper we present new research at the Bridge River site, a large complex hunter-gatherer village in British Columbia, designed to develop a site-wide history of household occupation patterns. We accomplish this through broad-scale geophysical investigations, test excavations and an extensive program of radiocarbon dating. Results of the study suggest that the village grew rapidly between ca. 1800 and 1250 cal. B.P. expanding from 7 to at least 29 simultaneously occupied houses. Variability in household spacing and size indicate that social organization may have grown increasingly complex parallel with rising numbers of households.

S ocial inequality evolved in the Middle Fraser (Mid-Fraser) Canyon of British Columbia prior to European contact (Teit 1906). Long before the coming of Europeans, the ancient people of the Mid-Fraser Canyon constructed large villages (or towns) and their chiefs presided over massive households of sometimes 50 or more per-sons. Archaeological research in the Mid-Fraser villages offers the opportunity to develop and test theoretical models of emergent inequality (Prentiss and Kuijt 2012; Prentiss et al. 2007).Our research is concerned with the emergence of material wealth-based inequality. By emergence we mean development of a new or previ-A fundamental problem for anthropological archaeology lies in defining and explaining the evolutionary origins of social inequality. Researchers have offered a range of models emphasizing variability in the roles of managers, aggrandizers, ecological variability, and historical contexts. Recent studies suggest that the form of emergent inequality may have varied significantly between groups, implying that pathways to inequality may have varied as well. Unfortunately it has been difficult to test many of these models using archaeological data given their requirements for fine-grained assessments of spatiotemporal variability in many data classes. Recent research at the Bridge River site in British Columbia provides the opportunity to explore the utility of a range of explanatory models associated with early social inequality. Results of the study suggest that inequality, measured as significant variability in accumulation of a range of material wealth items, came late to the Bridge River site (ca. 1200-1300 cal. B.P.) and was associated with a period of demographic packing and apparent declining access to some critical subsistence resources. Assessment of interhousehold variability in demography, wealth accumulation, and occupational longevity suggests that markers of significant affluence manifested only in newly established houses. An important implication is that material wealth-based inequality may not have been hereditary in nature at Bridge River during the period prior to 1100 cal. B.P.La definición y explicación de los orígenes evolutivos de la desigualdad social son problemas fundamentales para la arqueología antropológica. Diferentes investigadores han proporcionado una gama de modelos que enfatizan la variabilidad en los roles de administradores y aggrandizers, versatilidad ecológica, y de los contextos históricos. Estudios recientes sugieren que la forma de desigualdad emergente pudo haber variado notablemente entre los grupos, lo cual implica que los caminos hacia la desigualdad pudieron haber variado también. Desafortunadamente ha sido difícil probar estos modelos usando datos arqueológicos, debido a que estos requieren detalladas evaluaciones sobre variabilidad espacio-temporal en diferentes clases de datos. Investigaciones recientes en el sitio Bridge River (Columbia Británica) ofrecen la oportunidad de explorar la utilidad de un rango de modelos explicativos aso...

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Glaciological measurements and an airborne radar sounding survey of the glacier lying in Mount Wrangell caldera raise many questions concerning the glacier thermal regime and volcanic history of Mount Wrangell. An interpretation model has been developed that allows the depth variation of temperature, heat flux, pressure, density, ice velocity, depositional age, and thermal and dielectric properties to be calculated. Some predictions of the interpretation model are that the basal ice melting rate is 0.64m yr−1 and the volcanic heat flux is 7.0 W m−2. By using the interpretation model to calculate two‐way travel time and propagation losses, radar sounding traces can be transformed to give estimates of the variation of power reflection coefficient as a function of depth and depositional age. Prominent internal reflecting zones are located at depths of approximately 59–91 m, 150 m, 203 m, and 230 m. We attribute these internal reflectors to buried horizons of acidic ice, possibly intermixed with volcanic ash, that were deposited during past eruptions of Mount Wrangell. The depositional dates corresponding to these reflecting zones are 1950–1924, 1853, 1770, and 1728 A.D., and we use this information to propose a volcanic history for Mount Wrangell.

Although unprocessed ground penetrating radar

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Preliminary results from a multiple-traverse radar survey across an ice cap situated on top of Hoodoo Mountain, a Quaternary subglacial stratovolcano in northwestern British Columbia are presented. The project defined the shape of the ice sheet and mapped the subglacial summit region of the volcano. Four traverses, using low-frequency ice radar and higher frequency ground-penetrating radar units, provided traces of the ice base as well as shallow, finer scale, internal reflectors. GPS was used to locate survey lines and individual radar traces were time tagged to position. The ice cap has a relatively even thickness (120-150 m) across the summit region, with no evidence of a deep crater or caldera beneath. The minimum volume of ice is estimated at 3.2 km3. To more accurately gauge the potential for significant jökulhlaups at Hoodoo Mountain, additional work is necessary to define the nature and size of subglacial catchments basins.

A graphical method is characterized for estimating seismic velocity directly from diffraction patterns observed on common offset records. The nature of the resulting estimate is examined by illustrating the connection between the graphical approach and a related method used by practitioners of ground penetrating radar. While the latter provides only a crude stacking velocity, the graphical technique yields the generalized rms velocity for stratified media. Associated interval velocities can be derived from two or more diffraction events having their sources within the plane of survey. Where there is a lack of geological evidence to suggest that scatterers reside in‐plane, we propose a simple strategy for locating a scatterer from its expression on two or more independent records. Error in the resulting location is directly related to subsurface velocity heterogeneity. Finally, since the diffraction‐based velocity estimates assume that source and receiver are coincident, the error stemming from nonzero offset is characterized.