Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Reassessing The Use Of Kelly’S Mobility Index In Examining Late Archaic Assemblage Variability In Southern Idaho, Shawn Elizabeth Roberts

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

During the past two decades North American archaeologists have attempted to document levels of prehistoric aboriginal mobility. Robert Kelly has developed a fourteen variable index for assessing mobility based upon the technological organization of chipped stone assemblages. Each variable has a binary outcome of high or low residential mobility reflecting Lewis Binford’s expedient versus curated technologies. Kelly’s index has been used to individually evaluate levels mobility of a number of Late Holocene age sites in southwestern Idaho. This thesis reanalyzes seven previously assessed sites as well as sixteen additional Late Holocene/Archaic open site assemblages along the Snake River in southern …