This paper presents the results of testing technological and techno-functional hypotheses concerning the effects of organic temper. Behaviorally relevant tests are used to compare the performance characteristics of untempered, mineral-, and organic-tempered briquettes and vessels. The characteristics tested include impact resistance, abrasion resistance, portability, thermal shock resistance, ease of manufacture, and heating effectiveness. Organic-tempered ceramics have superior performance characteristics during manufacture, allowing for an expedient ceramic technology. This, along with reduced weight and greater portability, may explain the preference for organic-tempered vessels by groups that frequently shift their residence. Moreover, it is found that all low-fired ceramics, but especially organic-tempered ceramics, are susceptible to complete breakdown in a moist environment under freeze-thaw conditions. Frost wedging is thought to be responsible for an underestimation of Late Archaic organic-tempered ceramics in northern latitudes as well as the destruction of any low-fired pottery subject to a moist depositional environment and freeze-thaw cycles.

Fiber-tempered potsherds recovered from three sites of the Nebo Hill phase in western Missouri and eastern Kansas date to between 4550 and 3550 radiocarbon years (2600–1600 B.C.) and represent the earliest dated vessels in the midwest. The occurence of fiber-tempered pottery at this time period and this far north and west of the traditionally-defined southeastern hearth for such wares requires a major reappraisal of the assumed distribution and antiquity of Late Archaic ceramics in eastern North America. This report describes the ceramic sherds from the Nebo Hill type site in terms of their method of manufacture and probable use, and identifies factors influencing their survival and preservation in the middle-latitude lowlands. It is proposed that the temperate latitude distribution pattern of shallowly-buried, fiber-tempered potsherds is shaped primarily by the variables of time, ambient moisture and temperature, and ware porosity, and is not necessarily isomorphic with the prehistoric distribution of fiber-tempered vessels.

Many archaeological sites along coastlines and rivers contain large quantities of marine and riverine bivalve shell. Often shell is the only datable organic material available to determine radiocarbon age estimates of features and to build regional chronologies. Shell is difficult to date accurately because of reservoir effects, and archaeologists have avoided it despite its abundance. If reservoir effects are understood, shell can provide accurate radiocarbon age estimates. This report provides an example using regression relations computed from radiocarbon assays of paired shelll charcoal samples from archaeological sites along the middle and lower Snake River, Northwestern North America.

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The presence of chert in mid-Holocene lithic assemblages along the Snake River has been attributed to long distance mobility, with the material introduced in bifacial form to the canyons from upland quarries. Geological field studies, however, show that chert, argillite, and quartzite are common in terrace and alluvial gravels along the lower Snake River. These lithologies probably provided a major source of high quality raw material for populations wintering near the river throughout the Holocene.