The Ledbetter Landing Site: A Study of Late Archaic Mortuary Patterning

The Ledbetter Landing site (9BN25) is placed in its environmental context and its archaeological background is discussed. The archaeological studies of the subsistence/settlement patterning for the Ledbetter Phase in the Western Valley physiographic province are also investigated, and some of the results of these studies are found to be suspect. The application of mortuary patterning analysis to determine the type of social organization at a site is discussed in general terms. It is hypothesized that the Ledbetter Landing site's Late Archaic, Stratum 2 burials should reflect an essentially egalitarian social organization. This is tested by examining the significant associations among the following three burial dimensions: 1) Biological dimension--composed of age, sex, and pathologies; 2) Burial character dimension--composed of form of disposal, individuality, and cremation; and, 3) Grave good dimension. The mortuary patterning for an egalitarian social system should reflect only those distinctions of the above burial dimensions that are based upon age and sex. Due to a small sample, the Ledbetter Stratum 2 burials are compared to two other Late Archaic Ledbetter Phase sites--the Big Sandy component (Eva III) at the Eva site, and the Cherry site. A previous mortuary patterning study of the Eva and Cherry sites used factor analysis, but since this statistical method should not be used with nominal data, the results of this study are suspect. Another statistical method utilizing bivariate comparisons of phi coefficients is better suited for use with nominal data and so is used to re-examine the Late Archaic Eva and Cherry burials and also to examine the Late Archaic Ledbetter burials. No significant associations between the aforementioned burial dimensions are found that cannot be explained by distinctions based upon age and sex. This supports the idea that these sites all had an essentially egalitarian social system.