The Solutrean techno-complex of southern France and the Iberian Peninsula is an impossible candidate as the “source” for either pre-Clovis or Clovis traditions in North America. Primarily this is because the Solutrean ended ca. 16,500-18,000 B.P. (at least 5,000 years before Clovis appeared) and was separated from the U.S. eastern seaboard by 5,000 km of ocean. In addition, there are major differences between the Solutrean and Clovis (and even more between it and “pre-Clovis”) in terms of the composition of lithic and osseous technologies and with regard to evidence of artistic activity. Nor is there any evidence that Solutrean people had navigation, deep-sea fishing, or marine mammal hunting capacities which could have made a transatlantic crossing even conceivable. Furthermore, there is no evidence that people lived above about 48° N latitude in western Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum, making a “jumping-off” point from the (then largely glaciated) area of the current British Isles unlikely. The peopling of the Americas, even if the result of several “migrations,” was from Asia.

The recent Science Wars have brought into sharp focus, in a public forum, contentious questions about the authority of science and what counts as properly scientific practice that have long structured archaeological debate. As in the larger debate, localized disputes in archaeology often presuppose a conception of science as a unified enterprise defined by common goals, standards, and research programs; specific forms of inquiry are advocated (or condemned) by claiming affiliation with science so conceived. This pattern of argument obscures much that is most creative in archaeological practice. Archaeologists routinely exploit both integrating and fragmenting relations among the sciences, especially in establishing evidential claims. I will argue that the credibility of these claims is a function, not of scientific status acquired by corporate affiliation, but of the substantive trade in tools and techniques, empirical insights, models, and theories that is made possible by local interactions between archaeology and a wide range of other disciplines. There is much more to be gained by developing a rich critical understanding of the interfield relations that make this trade possible than by appealing to generic ideals of science.

Archaeologists today are being urged from within and outside their profession to incorporate aboriginal oral traditions in reconstructing culture histories. Such challenges usually ignore or at least drastically underestimate the difficulties in doing so. Not least among those difficulties is that of attempting to reconcile inherently and profoundly different ways of conceptualizing the past without violating the integrity of one or the other or both. The pro and con arguments are examined theoretically and as actually employed in discrete instances. These raise such problems of incommensurability as to severely limit the fruitfulness and even desirability of making the attempt.

Oral traditions provide a viable source of information about historical settings dating back far in time—a fact that has gained increasing recognition in North America, although archaeologists and other scholars typically give minimal attention to this data. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) lists oral traditions as a source of evidence that must be considered by museum and federal agency officials in making findings of cultural affiliation between ancient and modern Native American communities. This paper sets forth the NAGPRA standards and presents an analytical framework under which scholars can proceed with evaluation of historicity in verbal records of the ancient past. The author focuses on an Arikara narrative and argues that it presents a summary of human history in the New World from initial settlement up to the founding of the Arikara homeland in North Dakota. Oral records and the archaeological record describe a shared past and should be viewed as natural partners in post-NAGPRA America. In conceptual terms, scholarship on the past should revisit the bibliocentric assumptions of “prehistory,” and pursue, instead, the study of “ancient American history”-an approach that treats oral documents as respectable siblings of written documents.

The nearly-complete, well-preserved skeleton of a Paleoamerican male was found by chance near Kennewick, Washington, in 1996. Although analysis was quickly suspended by the U.S. government, initial osteological, archaeological, and geological studies provide a glimpse into the age and life of this individual. A radiocarbon age of 8410 ± 60 B.P., stratigraphic position in a widely-dated alluvial terrace, and an early-Cascade style projectile point healed into the pelvis date the find to the late Early Holocene. Initial osteological analysis describes the man as middle-aged, standing 173.1 ± 3.6 cm tall and weighing approximately 70-75 kg. Healthy as a child, he later suffered repeatedly from injuries to his skull, left arm, chest, and hip, in addition to minor osteoarthritis and periodontal disease. His physical features, teeth, and skeletal measurements show him to be an outlier relative to modern human populations, but place him closer to Pacific Islanders and Ainu than to Late Prehistoric Amerinds or any other modern group. Despite his uniqueness relative to modern peoples, he is not significantly different from other Paleoamerican males in most characteristics.

A shift in Archaic foraging to a largely logistic collector strategy by the middle Holocene is indicated by the presence of rock-filled middens in the U.S. southern Midwest. This change has usually been attributed to the development of super-rich wetland habitats in large river valleys. Analysis of a well-preserved faunal assemblage from the Bluegrass site, a late Middle Archaic base camp/mortuary occupation, located in an interior upland drainage basin of southwestern Indiana, suggests that small-bodied terrestrial mammals and reptiles were substituted for aquatic animal foods. Comparisons with faunal assemblages from other base camps in a diverse set of habitats in the southern Midwest indicates that white-tailed deer and hickory nuts were the basis for the logistical foraging strategy rather than aquatic resources. It is proposed that a change in forest composition from a mesic closed canopy to an open oak-hickory association by the middle Holocene increased the abundance of deer and nut mast leading to a coarse-grain use of the landscape.

Mississippian sites are generally believed to fall into one of three categories: paramount political center, local political center, and farmstead. Elites lived at paramount and local centers while the rest of a polity’s population lived in scattered farmsteads. Archaeologists identify paramount and local centers by the presence of earthen mounds and usually classify all small sites without mounds as farmsteads. In this examination of rural settlement in the Moundville chiefdom, I argue that there was more variation in Mississippian landscapes than the traditional tripartite site classification scheme allows. The vessel assemblage from 1TU66, a small site in the Black Warrior Valley, does not reflect domestic activities, but rather suggests that this site was a place where neighbors gathered to share food as a community.

It has been claimed that many Native American skeletons from the King site in Georgia show evidence of wounds from sharp-edged metal weapons that were wielded by members of the sixteenth-century de Soto expedition (Blakely and Mathews 1990). The supposed massacre of these villagers has caught the attention of the public and scholars alike. But we failed to find any evidence of damage caused by sixteenth-century Spanish weapons in our examination of the King site skeletons. Our finding-there is no evidence for a massacre-eliminates a major discrepancy between historical and archaeological information used in reconstructions of the de Soto route.

Recent research on trench kilns from the Mesa Verde region of the northern American Southwest (Blinman and Swink 1997) suggests that trench kilns represent collaborative firings by groups of potters. This study presents a method for estimating the sizes of these proposed kiln firing groups. A comparative analysis between firing group sizes and the size of other contemporaneous social units provides insights into socioeconomic relationships between Mesa Verde households in both dispersed and aggregated settlement contexts. This study demonstrates that different stages of a production process may involve different production groups and highlights the utility of examining each production stage individually. It further suggests the importance of searching for archaeological evidence of production beyond residential areas to other production contexts, such as firing features, if the organization of all stages of production is to be understood.

Archaeological data indicates that socially and politically complex hunter-gatherer societies had become well established on the southern California coast by A.D. 1300. Major developmental changes in sociopolitical complexity are generally considered to have taken place rapidly between AD 1150 and 1300. Recently, two hypotheses have been proposed to account for this rapid cultural evolution, both invoking stressful climatic conditions as an important trigger for cultural change. One suggests that the sociopolitical development was stimulated, in part, by multiple marine and terrestrial subsistence stresses, particularly low marine productivity resulting from regional warming. The other suggests that these developments were largely driven by decreases in terrestrial productivity and water availability linked to drought. Resolution of this debate has been hampered by insufficient paleoclimatic and archaeological data. We present a well-dated, relatively high resolution (25-year intervals) oxygen isotopic marine climate record and new archaeological data from the Northern Channel Islands for the last 3,000 years. These data strongly suggest that changes in human behavior associated with increasing cultural complexity: 1) accelerated after A.D. 500 and became dominant by A.D. 1300, 2) occurred during one of the coldest and most unstable marine climatic intervals of the Holocene (A.D. 450-1300), and 3) coincided with cool, dry terrestrial conditions. Incipient cultural complexity emerged during an interval marked by inferred high marine productivity, reduced terrestrial food and water availability, and large, unpredictable variations in terrestrial resource availability. Our records suggest a strong relationship during this time between climatically induced changes in environmental conditions and social, political, and economic responses, including the emergence of more intensified fishing, and increased sedentism, violence, and trade.

The original authors of Billman et al. (2000) are joined by three other analysts from the Cowboy Wash research team to respond to the critique of this article by Dongoske et al. (2000). Dongoske and his coauthors state that Billman et al. (2000) failed to test alternative hypotheses or to consider alternative explanations for the findings at 5MT10010 and similar sites. The original authors point out that alternative hypotheses were examined and rejected, leaving a violent episode of cannibalism as the most plausible explanation for the remains found at 5MT10010. Dongoske et al. also question many aspects of the osteological, archaeological, coprolite, and biochemical analyses that were presented in the 5MT10010 study. Our response addresses issues of data collection, procedure, and interpretation, and attempts to clarify some points that were not fully developed in the original text due to length restrictions.

Mason et al. (1998) argue in a recent article that weight as a form of data quantification in the analysis of shellfish remains should be replaced with estimates of the Minimum Number of Individuals (MNI) based on identification of “nonrepetitive” elements (NRE) such as the hinge of a bivalve. Their comparisons of the two forms of shell data quantification lack relevance, and they fail to recognize difficulties in identifying nonrepetitive elements on many kinds of shells. Although weight of shells has its shortcomings, it is still the most appropriate form of quantification in many contexts. A more fruitful viewpoint would be to consider ways in which weight and MNI (or NRE) might complement each other in addressing research questions.

Mason et al. recently revived a debate as to the suitability of shell weights or shell MNI, with several interesting points. Among the points they raised are two with which I take exception: that MNI is always better than weight, and that relative percentages are the analytical tool of choice.