At its April 10, 1996, meeting the Society for American Archaeology Executive Board adopted the Principles of Archaeological Ethics, reproduced below, as proposed by the SAA Ethics in Archaeology Committee. The adoption of these principles represents the culmination of an effort begun in 1991 with the formation of the ad hoc Ethics in Archaeology Committee. The committee was charged with considering the need for revising the society's existing statements on ethics. A 1993 workshop on ethics, held in Reno, resulted in draft principles that were presented at a public forum at the 1994 annual meeting in Anaheim, California. SAA published the draft principles with position papers from the forum and historical commentaries in a special report distributed to all members, Ethics in American Archaeology: Challenges for the 1990s, edited by Mark J. Lynott and Alison Wylie (1995). Member comments were solicited in this special report, through a notice in SAA Bulletin, and at two sessions held at the SAA booth during the 1995 annual meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The final principles presented here are revised from the original draft based on comments from members and the Executive Board.

This paper continues the discussion of objectivity, subjectivity, and the place of evidence in archaeological argument begun by Wylie (1992a), Little (1994), and Fotiadis (1994). First, it describes my expectations concerning Indian women’s resistance to tribute cloth extraction in Aztec and colonial Mexico. Then, it explains how I tested my expectations against several bodies of archaeological data. Finally, it analyzes how I did and did not alter my initial beliefs in the face of a gap between the expected and the actual data. This study supports earlier conclusions by Trigger (1989) and Wylie (1992b) that data are somewhat independent of the archaeologists who collect them and that data have some impact on the larger edifice of assumptions that archaeologists bring to their research.

We know a great deal about how prehistoric pots were made and used but surprisingly little about how long they lasted in service. Vessel use life, however, is an important component of ceramic assemblage formation. A growing body of ethnoarchaeological data shows that the directly measurable “primitive property” of vessel size—in its various dimensions—is positively related to use life and that height and weight are the most reliable predictors of use life. Results offer the provisional prospect of estimating use life of archaeological vessels from their size.

Because the landscape on which prehistoric people lived was dynamic and continually changed, the record of prehistoric activities across the landscape has been differentially preserved and destroyed. Insightful reconstructions of human organizational (settlement) systems from the archaeological record require a full understanding of the geological forces and history that have shaped that record. The landscape histories of the North Dakota Badlands and the stream systems of southern Arizona illustrate these points and the importance of geoarchaeological investigations to properly interpret the archaeological record.

Research on natural processes that cause erosion and, in particular, studies of wave action, sediment transport, and ice movement offers guidance for understanding and predicting what can happen to archaeological remains exposed in the shoreline fluctuation zones of impounded water bodies. A field experiment to examine the effects of wave action and ice movement on stone artifacts placed in a fluctuation zone demonstrates that archaeological materials can be moved considerable distances over a single season. The experiment suggests that caution is necessary for accurately interpreting the meaning of archaeological specimens found on the shores of artificially impounded water bodies.

Systematic quantitative analysis of desiccated human paleofeces from two rockshelters in eastern Kentucky has yielded new evidence for early agricultural diet in eastern North America. Results indicate that native cultigens (including sumpweed, sunflower, and chenopod) were sometimes significant dietary constituents as early as ca. 1000 B.C., at least a millennium before agricultural economies became widespread across the region. However, variability in the quantity and frequency of cultigen remains suggests a dietary role that was somewhat limited compared to the practices of later Woodland period farmers. The predictions of foraging theory suggest that the utilization of cultigens would have been most advantageous in spring and summer (when many other foods were scarce) or in years of poor production by nut-bearing trees. The causal link between food storage and the development of food production in eastern Kentucky receives some empirical support and warrants further investigation.

Despite the central role that kinship plays in key anthropological arguments, recent archaeological efforts to detect kinship have been notably scarce. Here, age and sex distributions and dental morphology traits that reflect genetic affinity are used to argue that specific kin groups were buried in formal, spatially discrete cemeteries in the ancestral Zuni settlement of Hawikku. The inferred kin groups are then used to investigate Hawikku political structure. Results show that community leaders, identified on the basis of mortuary treatments and grave offerings, were selected from a small number of kin groups, suggesting an ascriptive element to leadership selection.

Neutron activation analysis of Mississippian sherds from 21 regions across the Southeast has revealed the existence of distinctive chemical groups that are associated with four large geographical areas. One such group is associated with sites along the Mississippi River and its western tributaries, a second is associated with sites on the Appalachian Rim in Tennessee, a third is associated with sites on the Piedmont and associated drainages, and a fourth is associated with sites in Alabama. This pattern reflects the existence of several large, clay-mineral provinces in the Southeast that now can be recognized as sources in future studies of long-distance exchange.

Archaeologists, especially those doing regional surveys, generally assume that there is a correlation between the areal extent of a habitation site and the number of people living at that site. This paper uses a combination of archaeological and historical data from the Peruvian Andes to examine this assumption. We find that, in this case, only a weak correlation holds between these two factors. However, a consideration of site function and topography may render the apparent ambiguities understandable.

Kuhn (1994) argues that small lithic tools provide an optimal means of reducing the weight of mobile tool kits while maximizing potential utility. This assertion contradicts much of the current thinking about mobility and the organization of lithic technology and is at odds with the archaeological record. A flaw in Kuhn's equation for calculating the utility/mass ratio of retouched tools leads him to this erroneous conclusion. Problems with Kuhn's utility/mass ratio equation are described and an alternative formula is offered. The corrected formula indicates that larger stone tools maximize utility at a lower transport cost. Experimental evidence for additional advantages of larger stone tools is also provided.

Toby Morrow argues that I (Kuhn 1994) made an error in calculating the utility/mass ratio of retouched tools, and he proposes an “alternative” formula. Unfortunately, Morrow confounds utility per se with ratio of utility to weight, and, as a result, his alternative approach is erroneous. This response to Morrow examines the central issue of how artifact utility is assessed. The main message of my original paper is reaffirmed. Utility/mass ratios eventually begin to decline as artifacts get large, and optimal size ranges can be estimated based on a few simplifying assumptions.

We attempt to clarify the role of demographic factors (size, density, history, and trajectory) in aggregation in the ancestral Puebloan Southwest, which we found obscure in Leonard and Reed (1993). In addition, we question one of the case studies from Chaco Canyon that they used to support their model, and we suggest that data from the Mesa Verde region between A.D. 700 and 1300 argue against the generality of their explanation for aggregation.

We believe that most of Kohler and Sebastian’s concerns regarding our research are attributable to differences in how we perceive the relations between theory, models, explanation, and the archaeological record. Other differences we attribute to misunderstandings of both our work and selectionist theory in general. We finally conclude that differences in our opinions on these issues represent broader problems in our discipline.