Michael Steven Shackley

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at University of California, Berkeley

OPEN ACCES - Available at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00231940.2023.2210479 or https://doi.org/10.1080/00231940.2023.2210479 ABSTRACT Chaco Canyon in New Mexico was the center of an extensive regional cultural system. The strength of Chaco's regional interactions has been partly defined by the presence of non–local goods including...

Direct evidence of the presence of the Mexican indigenous soldiers that accompanied the Coronado entrada into what is now the United States has remained invisible. Dolan and Shackley's recent examination of the presence of four obsidian blades produced from obsidian sources in the Sierra de Pachuca in Hidalgo state of Mexico, was the first intensiv...

Located in the north-central Caucasus, about 70 km from the highest European mountain peak of Elbrus (5640 m asl) and 7 km from the only obsidian source (Zayukovo or Baksan) known in the Northern Caucasus, Psytuaje rockshelter is the first stratified late Epipaleolithic site dated from the beginning of the Holocene that was intensively investigated...

Significance Understanding the evolution, dispersals, behaviors, and ecologies of early African Homo sapiens requires accurate geochronological placement of fossils and artifacts. We introduce open-air occurrences of such remains in sediments of the Middle Awash study area in Ethiopia. We describe the stratigraphic and depositional contexts of our...

This paper reports the results of an archaeological survey and test excavation conducted in one of the ancient megalithic stele sites in south Ethiopia, Sakaro Sodo. The Sakaro Sodo stele site is situated in Gedeo zone, which is known to have the largest number and highest concentration of megalithic stele monuments in Africa, with an estimate of m...

The connection between people in the prehispanic U.S. Southwest / Northwest Mexico (SW/NW) and Mesoamerica is one of the most debated research topics in American archaeology. SW/NW groups used objects from Mesoamerica, but did they also trade for obsidian? Archaeologists have yet to find Mesoamerican obsidian from confirmed prehispanic SW/NW contex...

Here we present data on lithic raw material exploitation, obtained from petrography and geochemical analyses, and the examination of an archaeological collection from the Middle Palaeolithic at Saradj-Chuko Grotto, the only MP stratified site known in the Zayukovo (Baksan) obsidian source area, North-Central Caucasus, Russia. From 2016 an excavatio...

The transition from the dart to the arrow, and the commensurate changes in lithic technology is poorly understood in the American Southwest. This transition has often been linked to shifts in sedentism and the increasing use of expedient flake tools. However, the relationship between the use of bifacial and core reduction strategies are conditioned...

Saradj-Chuko Grotto is located about 70 km from Mount Elbrus (5642 m), the two-peaked cone of a dormant volcano, Russia’s and Europe’s highest mountain. Near Saradj-Chuko Grotto and Zayukovo lies the only obsidian source known in the Northern Caucasus. Stone Age people highly valued obsidian as a raw material. They transported obsidian both from th...

In this paper, the authors report the discovery of a new site called Psytuaje rockshelter, located close to the town of Zayukovo in Kabardino-Balkaria Republic (Elbrus region, north-central Caucasus, Russia). The area is famous in that it is the only obsidian source known in the Northern Caucasus, called Zayukovo or Baksan. A single radiocarbon dat...

Arakawa and colleagues (2011) use temporal changes in obsidian source patterns to link the late thirteenth-century abandonment of the Mesa Verde region to Ortman's (2010, 2012) model of Tewa migration to the northern Rio Grande. They employ Anthony's (1990) concept of reverse migration, inferring that an increase in Mesa Verde–region obsidian from...

Archaeologists know less about how hunter-gatherers and early agriculturists lived during the Archaic period in the Mexican Northwest compared to the U.S. Southwest. To evaluate Archaic period mobility, lithic technology, and regional and temporal patterns in raw material procurement in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, we characterized the trace ele...

The north-central Caucasus region is notable as the area producing the only obsidian source (called Baksan or Zayukovo) known in the Northern Caucasus. Recent research indicates that both Upper Paleolithic humans and Middle Paleolithic (MP) Neanderthals exploited the Zayukovo obsidian and transported it to distances in order 250 km from the source....

The following report provides new data on a Sun Pyramid cache excavated by René Millon in 1959, including confirmation that the cache was associated with a substructure. A technological analysis illustrates the anthropomorphic eccentric production sequence, and indicates that the miniature projectile points were produced from debitage from multiple...

Located in the Salton Basin of Imperial County in southeastern Alta California, Obsidian Butte was the major prehistoric obsidian toolstone source in southern Alta California and northern Baja California and is frequently referenced in the archaeological literature. Reported in detail geoarchaeologically by Richard Hughes in the 1980s, the study he...

The Zayukovo (Baksan) source is the only obsidian source known in the Northern Caucasus. We report new data, collected in 2017–2018, about exploitation of the Zayukovo (Baksan) source in the Paleolithic, including results of analysis of 34 new samples from Saradj-Chuko grotto, Mezmaiskaya cave, Sosruko rockshelter and Kasojskaya cave. This is the l...

Liebmann's (2017) essay on the relationship between Jemez Pueblo and the Valles Caldera of northern New Mexico seems to imply that the Jemez Pueblo had an exclusive relationship with the caldera, particularly Redondo Peak, and the major obsidian source Cerro del Medio (CDM). This is curious given that abundant obsidian provenance studies from the r...

While X‐ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) has fallen out of favor in a number of sciences, it has seen increasing popularity in archaeology, in part due to portable XRF (pXRF) availability and relatively low cost. Laboratory/desktop XRF, however, is still the mainstay of this technique in archaeology mainly due to the ability to acquire many more...

We use ceramic and obsidian data from the ancient Maya port site of Vista Alegre to discuss long-distance exchange during the Terminal Classic (c. AD 850–1100) period. This is a time often associated with increased international trade relations and the growth of Chichen Itza as a dominant regional power in the northern Maya lowlands. Critical to th...

Perhaps the most ambitious social policy carried out by the Incas, the mitmaq program resettled one third to one quarter of subject populations for the purposes of control and producing for the state. Ethnohistoric sources suggest that the relocated people, called mitmaqkuna, were given access to fertile lands and enjoyed elevated social status and...

We discuss a new research effort to identify, document, date and better understand megalithic stele sites of the Gedeo zone in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR) of southern Ethiopia. The Gedeo zone is home to numerous stele sites, features that occur as isolates, in small groups, and as localities with numerous stele....

The aphyric high quality, high silica Zayukovo (Baksan) obsidian source in the north central Caucasus range in Russia was a favored obsidian raw material from the Middle through Late Pleistocene in the region. Recent archaeological research has pointed to the value of the obsidian to both Neanderthal and modern human populations, indeed exclusively...

Solving issues of intersource discrimination in archaeological obsidian is a recurring problem in geoarchaeological investigation, particularly since the number of known sources of archaeological obsidian worldwide has grown nearly exponentially in the last few decades, and the complexity of archaeological questions asked has grown equally so. Thes...

The Baksan (Zayukovo) outcrop, which is the only obsidian source known in the Northern Caucasus, was the center of attraction for both MP and UP populations. However, previous attempts of many research groups to find stratified MP sites in this area failed. Here we report the discovery in 2016 of the first MP cave site in the Baksan obsidian area....

A piece of obsidian was found during excavations of a possible Middle Holocene Calf Creek biface cache at site 34ML168 in Oklahoma. Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the obsidian flake shows that the source material derives from Glass Mountain in California. This is the first instance of California obsidian in this region. However, m...

Archaeologists rarely discuss obsidian procurement for the Jornada Mogollon region, but studies indicate groups overwhelmingly used obsidian that can be collected from Rio Grande gravels in southern New Mexico. Obsidian artifacts from two El Paso phase sites, Cottonwood Spring Pueblo and Madera Quemada Pueblo, were sourced using EDXRF spectrometry...

This article offers a reassessment of the sources of archaeological obsidian found in southern California and northern Baja California based on new information regarding the geological availability of obsidian in Baja California, Mexico. In particular, we demonstrate that a previously unknown obsidian chemical group, referred to here as Tinajas obs...

A piece of mahogany obsidian came to the attention of the senior author during an excavation project near the town of Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Mexico in 2015. Because mahogany obsidian in northwestern Mexico is particularly rare, the question was raised, what obsidian source did this sample derive? Using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) s...

Recent field and analytical studies of what has been traditionally called “Paliza Canyon obsidian” in the archaeological vernacular show it to be Bearhead Rhyolite that is part of the Late Tertiary (Neogene) Keres Group of the Jemez Mountains, northern New Mexico. The geological origin of all other archaeological obsidian sources in the Jemez Mount...

Twenty-six Middle Stone Age obsidian artifacts from the Gademotta Formation were instrumentally characterized by energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence. Analysis of artifacts from the type locality enabled sampling of a greater time depth while avoiding the uncertainties in previous results on artifacts sampled from a "disturbed" context at Kulkulett...

This paper presents a study of raw material procurement strategies during the Late Middle Paleolithic Eastern Micoquian industry in the Northwestern Caucasus, Russia. The study is based primarily on the data collected by the authors from the cave sites of Mezmaiskaya and Matuzka, the Baranaha-4 open-air site, and the Hadjoh-2 open-air flint-knappi...

Eden projectile points associated with the Cody complex are underrepresented in the late Paleoindian record of the American Southwest. EDXRF analysis of an obsidian Eden point from a site in Sierra County, New Mexico demonstrates this artifact is from the Cerro del Medio (Valles Rhyolite) source in the Jemez Mountains. We contextualize our results...

An energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) analysis of nineteen obsidian source rocks from a mid-Tertiary rhyolite/perlite flow in the upper Río Bavispe basin of northeastern Sonora, Mexico solves the location of “Sonora Unknown B” as reported by) for recent archaeological projects in northeastern Sonora and southeastern Arizona. This newly di...

This paper presents a review of the Epipaleolithic (EPP) sites postdating the Last Glacial Maximum in the northern and southern Caucasus. Although securely excavated EPP sites are as yet rare in the Caucasus, those that provide homogeneous artifact assemblages contain tool types characteristic of EPP industries in Europe and in the Near East. Tool...

Avocational archaeologists surface collected an obsidian tool identified as a graver in 1979 from the Twin Birds Site (16CD118) in Cross Lake near Shreveport, LA. An article in the LAS newsletter in 1984 announced this as the first documented prehistoric obsidian artifact in Louisiana. The article also reported the results of a "trace element analy...

Introduction All the known sources of archaeological obsidian in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico have been well dated and chemically, stratigraphically, and isotopically studied for a number or years, mainly due to geologically recent, extraordinary caldera collapse events -all except one, traditionally called Paliza Canyon (Baugh and Ne...

This paper is the first comprehensive study of obsidian exploitation in the Middle, Upper, and Epipaleolithic in the Northern Caucasus. The authors analyzed 528 obsidian artifacts from Mezmaiskaya Cave (Northwestern Caucasus, Russia) and characterized 38 samples by XRF to determine source. This is the first report of all obsidians sampled from Mezm...

Публикуются данные об открытых и исследованных авторами месторождениях каменного сырья и способах его транспортировки на стоянки в верхнем палеолите Северо-Западного Кавказа. Изучение обсидиановых изделий позволяет говорить о перемещении обсидиана из отдаленных районов Центрального и Южного Кавказа, что подтверждает межрегиональные контакты в верхн...

Sources of lithic raw material discovered by the authors are described with special regard to methods of transporting stone to Upper Paleolithic sites in the northwestern Caucasus. The analysis of obsidian artifacts suggests that materials were imported from remote regions such as the central and South Caucasus, evidencing mobility patterns in the...

Clovis sites occur throughout the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, but are poorly documented in the central Rio Grande rift region. Here, we present data from two relatively unknown Clovis projectile point assemblages from this region: the first is from the Mockingbird Gap Clovis site and the second is from a survey of the surrou...

The late pre-Hispanic period in the US Southwest (A.D. 1200-1450) was characterized by large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and population aggregation. To reconstruct how these processes reshaped social networks, we compiled a comprehensive artifact database from major sites dating to this interval in the western South...

A recent study by Frahm (2013) on the application of portable XRF (PXRF) for chemical characterization of obsidian ignores fundamental issues of reliability and validity in the measurements, and justifies "internally consistent" measurements as acceptable. We argue this form of science is unacceptable, point out several flaws in Frahm's paper, and...

The obsidian sources of northern Baja California remain understudied even though archaeological work in the region has expanded in recent decades. In this article, we provide descriptions and geochemical characterizations for several known and as-yet unlocated sources of artifact quality obsidian in the northern region of Baja California. These dat...

X-ray fluorescence analysis of obsidian artifacts from sites located in Chaco Canyon and from three Chaco-era communities in New Mexico permits determination of their geological origin. These source data are used to describe patterning in obsidian procurement in sites located in Chaco Canyon dating from A.D. 500–1150, and in a three non-Canyon comm...

Previous studies of the Hohokam have suggested that obsidian procurement and distribution practices were conducted differently between two subsequent intervals, the Sedentary and Classic periods. In the Sedentary period, obsidian may have changed hands at events associated with the ballcourt ritual. By the Classic period, obsidian is argued to have...

It is rather axiomatic that "this is the only book of its kind," which all publishers and authors note in publishing today, but this volume on the range of glass studies in a 21st-century archaeology is truly the only volume of its kind. In 1998 when many of the authors here collaborated on the volume Archaeological Obsidian Studies: Method and The...

Geochemical signatures of Southwestern U.S. obsidians have been intensively studied, in part to use as a provenance method for archaeological obsidians (Shackley, 2005). We reported (Sternberg et al. 2010) examined magnetic properties of 50 unoriented samples from 10 geologic obsidian sources in Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico; here we provide addi...

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that ancestral Pueblo people living in the central Mesa Verde region of the U. S. Southwest maintained long-distance contacts with other Pueblo peoples. Questions of Pueblo interactions through time and across space have traditionally been addressed using ceramic sourcing data. This research uses obsidian sou...

For over a decade and a half the locality of “AZ Unknown A” obsidian source has remained unknown. In 2006, during an archaeological reconnaissance of the upper Rio Sonoyta in northern Sonora, members of the Ajo Chapter of the Arizona Archaeological Society discovered a new obsidian source on a dome complex on the southeast side of the river basin n...

For years archaeologists in New Mexico, particularly in the northern Rio Grande region have noticed a very fine-grained what appeared to be mafic or basalt raw material source in late Paleoindian and Archaic contexts in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Indeed, a number of Folsom, Cody, Plainview, and Archaic bifaces are produced from this...

Edward Hall’s abstract for his 1960 paper entitled “X-ray fluorescent analysis applied to archaeology” in the journal Archaeometry is just as appropriate half a century later. X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) is even more “well established” now, but is “not suitable for some projects” even though it might seem so, and archaeologists might thin...

Non-destructive XRF analysis of obsidian artifacts presents unique challenges for quantitative trace element characterization. These empirical tests of the effects of sample size and surface configuration allow estimation of minimum size requirements for different analyses. The results also show that errors resulting from surface irregularities are...

As I have discussed in the last chapter, our goal here is not to elucidate XRF for the entire scientific community – this has been done admirably by others – but to translate the physics, mechanics, and art of XRF for those in archaeology and geoarchaeology who use it as one of the many tools to explain the human past in twenty-first century archae...

Since the 1960s, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), both wavelength and energy-dispersive have served as the workhorse for non-destructive and destructive analyses of archaeological materials. Recently eclipsed by other instrumentation such as LA-ICP-MS, XRF remains the mainstay of non-destructive chemical analyses in archaeology, particularly...

For many decades now, geologists and archaeologists have been analyzing archaeological obsidian using a spate of techniques. No single technology, however, can solve all of the chemical, petrological, or archaeological problems that arise from this disordered substance. The future is indistinct for obsidian studies with the rising use and misuse of...

The Lead Renovation, Repair, and Painting Rule and the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, both enacted in 2008, were intended to protect children from exposure to lead by setting federal limits on lead content. Neither of these federal actions, however, addresses a newly recognized pathway of exposure to lead from the use of used consumer pro...

In this paper we evaluate the relative analytical capabilities of SEM-EDS, PIXE and EDXRF for characterizing archaeologically significant Anatolian obsidians on the basis of their elemental compositions. The study involves 54 geological samples from various sources, together with an archaeological case study involving 100 artifacts from Neolithic Ç...

Continuing research into the possibility of super-long-distance exchange of obsidian materials has revealed additional archaeological specimens bolstering theories of exchange across the North American continent. A collection of obsidian artifacts from East Coast archaeological sites has been analyzed using X-ray fluorescence to reveal West Coast g...

For the first time, we have identified evidence that the disappearance of Neanderthals in the Caucasus coincides with a volcanic eruption at about 40,000 BP. Our data support the hypothesis that the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in western Eurasia correlates with a global volcanogenic catastrophe. The coeval volcanic eruptions (from a larg...

For over 15years chemical compositional analyses of obsidian artifacts recovered from archaeological sites in the southwestern United States have been increasingly used to address many research agendas. Despite this increasing interest in obsidian studies, few have attempted to synthesize the ever-growing amount of data generated from the numerous...

The Classic Period Migration Project involves the analysis of archaeological sites at Perry Mesa in central Arizona and resulted in the discovery of several small marekanite1 obsidian artifacts that signaled a previously unlocated source. The source was eventually located in the Topaz Basin area of the upper Cienega Creek stream basin, southwest of...

Two sources of archaeological obsidian that have appeared in analyses of archaeological assemblages in the Southwest but whose location has remained unknown have now been located, mapped, and chemically characterized. These sources, Bull Creek in western Arizona near the well-known Burro Creek source and the Bear Springs Peak source in the southern...

A small group of exotic obsidian blades supplied from over 600km distant reached a particular area of the East Mound at çatalhöyük in the Early Ceramic Neolithic (7000-6300 cal BC). The authors explore a variety of explanations and contexts, including changes in technology, agricultural expansion, gift exchange, bride-wealth and incomers from the e...

Geochemical studies of volcanic glasses (obsidians and perlites) from geological outcrops (N = 80) and archaeological collections (N = 110) were performed in order to determine source provenance in Primorye (Russian Far East), using neutron activation analysis and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Three major sources of archaeological volcanic glass...

For 50 years, archaeologists and physical scientists have been dating, determining the composition of and measuring stone tools, and reporting them in Archaeometry and many other journals. In Archaeometry specifically, the number of papers devoted to the analysis of lithic material has increased at least 30 times since 1958 and volume 1. This is a...

Chemical sourcing is becoming an increasingly important component of archaeological investigation. Instruments used for elemental analysis generally must be operated in a controlled laboratory environment. Further, many methods require destruction of a small portion of the objects under investigation. These facts inhibit the application of chemical...

This paper details the chemical sourcing of 42 obsidian artefacts from a single Neolithic structure at atalhöyük (central Anatolia), using Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF). The chemical signatures of the samples match those of two geological sources in southern Cappadocia: East Göllü Dağ and Nenezi Dağ. The data provide a counterpoint f...

Twenty obsidian artifacts from the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene phase of the site of Beseka, central Ethiopia, have been instrumentally characterized using EDXRF and electron microprobe. Results show that most of the artifacts were derived from the silicic centers of Fentale and Kone. A nearby source of Abadir, although with better quality r...

High-resolution synchrotron-source Fourier Transform Infrared (SR-FTIR) data on hydration rinds of obsidian clasts from sedimentary hosts are presented. Since SR-FTIR spectroscopy is a nondestructive technique, we use overlapping steps to obtain high spatial resolutions (1-3 microns). Variations in H2O and OH concentrations are represented by profi...

The source provenance of 10 Early Stone Age artifacts from the localities in Melka Konture has been determined by EDXRF. Results show that the early to mid-Pleistocene makers of the artifacts derived the raw material from a source located in their proximity, supporting the previously proposed short distance transport of raw material for the time pe...

Obsidian geochemical analysis has become an indispensable tool in archaeological research and has wide applications. However, in spite of the abundance of geological and archaeological obsidian, there has been virtually no such investigation in Ethiopia. Recent instrumental characterization of 31 obsidian artefacts from the Middle Stone Age site of...