To introduce papers presented at a celebration of the 25th annual meeting of The Society for American Archaeology the development of New World archaeology is very broadly and briefly summarized. Expanding knowledge of culture areas and taxonomic systems is traced. The development of salvage archaeology in reservoir areas, along roads and oil pipelines is mentioned. There is an account of the development of various types of relative chronologies in the several areas and comment upon the significance of the introduction of radiocarbon dates. Special mention is made of the possible solution of the question of correlating Mayan and Julian calendars.

Archaeological activities in the North American Arctic are reviewed in terms of the sequences and cultures which have been identified in three major culture areas: the coastal zone from St. Lawrence Island to eastern Greenland, the central area around Hudson Bay with extensions to northern Greenland and Newfoundland, and southwestern Alaska including the Aleutian Islands. Three broad culture horizons are suggested for organizing the data for the first two of these areas. The earliest horizon which cannot be surely identified as either Pre-Eskimo or Proto-Eskimo is tentatively called the Denbigh Flint horizon. It is characterized by fine chipping, micro-cores, micro-blades, burins, and the absence of pottery. These traits occur in the Denbigh Flint and New Mountain complexes and in other assemblages perhaps as far east as the Sarqaq of Greenland. The second or Paleo-Eskimo horizon which also emphasized fine chipping is found in two forms, one with pottery, such as the Choris, Norton, Near Ipiutak, and related cultures in northwestern Canada, and the other without pottery represented by Ipiutak and Dorset. The latest or Neo-Eskimo horizon is the northern maritime tradition of the Okvik to Inugsuk range of cultures. Other approaches to the interpretation of northern archaeology are summarized.

Archaeological research in the Eastern United States is reviewed from the period of large-scale excavations sponsored by federal relief agencies to the present period of trend toward interdisciplinary approaches. An early interest was the identification of the archaeological ancestors of historically and ethnographically known tribes. The need for objective and descriptive classifications led to the development of the McKern or Midwestern Taxonomic Method. Recent developments include the use of functional and evolutionary concepts experimentation with statistics to validate analytical and classificatory techniques, discovery of stratigraphic evidence and the perfection of seriational techniques, emphasis on the value of geological and biological data and the combination of these with archaeological information to produce an ecological approach, and attempts at broad culture-historical synthesis. The introduction of radiocarbon dating, which exposed the extremely conservative time estimates of Eastern archaeologists by greatly lengthening the chronologies, is seen as the major contribution of the past 25 years.

A review of archaeological research in the short-grass Plains and adjacent Prairie regions shows that although early travelers observed evidences of the prehistoric occupation of the area, no systematic archaeological work was undertaken until very recently. The publication of Strong's Introduction to Nebraska Archeology in 1935 opened the quarter-century of growth which was at first characterized by intensive surveys and testing, then by the excavations sponsored by the federal relief agencies, and since World War II by the large-scale salvage work connected with federal water-control programs, especially the Missouri Basin Project. These salvage operations have produced an enormous body of new data on all major time horizons and from all parts of the Plains, as well as an awareness of the rich potential of Plains pre-history. The scope of these operations has required a high degree of cooperation between research organizations and has led to the development of new excavation techniques, especially those involving heavy earth-moving machinery. Efforts to organize these new data have resulted in a uniform method of site designation and broadly applicable artifact classifications, but no scheme for culture classification to replace the Midwestern Taxonomic System which has been the conventional method of expressing cultural similarities. The direct historical approach to the problem of the ethnic identification of archaeological complexes, settlement pattern studies, and the relationship between man and environment, which have long been major interests of Plains archaeologists, continue to dominate the interpretive scene.

Archaeological research in the Far West of North America is reviewed in terms of the contributions to methodology and theory. The generally simple level of culture in an area in which functioning native cultures survived until recent times has led to the perfection of analytical techniques for non-ceramic evidence, the development of ingenuity in deriving conclusions, and a considerable use of the direct-historical approach. New methodological approaches have been developed in analysis of physical components of sites, determination of food resources, estimation of population density, establishment of functional typologies, testing of the value of chemical and other changes for chronological control, and experimentation with statistical techniques of seriation. Theoretical trends include a lack of culture classification systems comparable to those in other North American areas, a dependence on classificatory units on the level of the complex or assemblage, and a tendency toward the development of a classificatory system based on an ecological framework.

Archaeological research in the Southwestern United States is reviewed in terms of advances in interpretation and in method and theory during the past quarter-century. Interpretative advances include the clearer understanding of the early Big Game Hunters, the filling of the gap between the early hunters and the sedentary villagers with manifestations of gatherers and collectors such as the Cochise and Desert cultures, the demonstration that the Desert culture has an antiquity comparable to that of the Big Game Hunters, the definition of the Anasazi, Hohokam, Mogollon, Sinagua, and Patayan variants of the sedentary, pottery-making agriculturalists, and the delineation of the connections between the Southwest and the northern Mexican portion of Nuclear America. Advances in method and theory have been most evident in the control over chronological problems, the development of interdisciplinary approaches, the establishment of culture classifications and pottery taxonomy, and the attempt to achieve problem-oriented archaeology in large salvage projects. The Southwest has long been characterized by long-term excavation at single sites or in small areas and by local development of academic and field training programs in archaeology.

Archaeological developments in the zone extending from Mesoamerica to the Andes are summarized in terms of the following topics: early man, the origins of agriculture, the interrelationships of the Nuclear American cultures, the ethnic identification of archaeological complexes, horizonal and tradition formulations, the place of Nuclear America in the hemisphere, relationships between the New World and the Old World, the rise of native American civilizations, and main trends since 1935. These trends include increasing chronological control, greater awareness of context, growing interest in culture process, and more clarity and precision in definitions.

Archaeological research in those parts of South America not included in Nuclear America is reviewed with an emphasis on Amazonia and the Caribbean area. Southern South America is primarily important at present for the well documented series of Early Man sites which indicate that American Indians had reached the farthest periphery of the hemisphere by as early as 7000 B.C. There have been three main developments and one shortcoming in the archaeology of Amazonia and the Caribbean area during the past 25 years. The developments are the discovery and formulation of new cultural complexes or phases, the establishment of chronological control which has been most successful in the Caribbean area, and the introduction and archaeological testing of Steward's concept of evolutionary levels correlated with environment, especially in Amazonia. The shortcoming is the lack of interest in reconstructing the culture of the excavated sites.

A review of problems in American archaeology is organized around the Lithic, Archaic, Formative, Classic, and Postclassic stages of Willey and Phillips. Among the problems raised and discussed are: the inadequacy of the Early Lithic or generalized gathering tool stage, the need for a better definition of the Archaic concept, the difficulty in extending the Archaic stage into South America, the dating and interpretation of the Peruvian Preceramic period, the origin of New World cotton, the possibility of trans-Pacific contacts and the feasibility of ocean travel, the Mesoamerican origin of the Formative stage, the dating of Valdivia culture and the Formative in general in South America, the relationship between Chavin and the comparable cultures in south coastal Peru, the inappropriateness of identifying most of the Mesoamerican centers as cities, the Aztec state as an empire, and the Classic stage as essentially urban, and the possibility of yet finding a Siberian origin for the pressure-flaked bifacial projectile points of the paleo-Indians.

The following hypothesis is proposed: that the distribution in time and space of Desert culture(s) and Hokaltecan languages imply a connection, that at one time there was a continuous band of Hokaltecan people practicing Desert culture from the Great Basin to the Texas and Tamaulipecan coasts, that this continuity was disrupted by an incursion of Utaztecan highlanders moving along the cordillera into Mexico, that proto-Shoshoneans entered the Great Basin from the northeast, that the Yuman peoples are a remnant block and not a disrupting wedge of Mexican origin, and that some of the similarities between cultures in California, the American Southwest, and Mexico are survivals of the basic proto-Utaztecan or Macro-Penutian culture, while still others are the result of interchange through a relatively homogeneous cultural medium made up of Utaztecan highlanders living along the western cordillera from central Mexico to the American Southwest.

Microlithic cultures of the steppe and desert zone of Asia include the Kel'teminar of the Aral Sea region and comparable cultures in Kazakhstan, Turkmenia, Trans-Baikal, Mongolia and China. This microlithic industry is characterized not by the size of the tools, but by the use of blades rather than flakes for the manufacture of stone tools. The prismatic core, often small and pencil-shaped, is very common; bifacial retouch is rare. The microliths are consistently found in association with pottery and bifacially worked projectile points of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of the third and second millennia B.C. The tendency of Soviet archaeologists to seek the ethnic affiliations of archaeological complexes may explain the considerable regional variation in pottery and stone tool inventories, but adjustment to environment is a more likely explanation for the wide-spread occurrence of the basic features of the microlithic industry. A way of life based on migratory hunting of small game and collecting developed as a result of refinements in missile weapons which included the bow and arrow. These developments can be correlated with the introduction of the microlithic blade technology. This way of life and the use of microliths survived in the steppe and desert areas, but in the regions to the south where farming developed the microliths were rapidly replaced by heavy tools such as hoes and pestles, and in the northern forests harpoons, fishhooks, and heavy wood-working tools indicate a shift to a more sedentary life based on intensive fishing. The widespread microlithic survivals in northern Asia demonstrate similar subsistence patterns in similar ecological zones rather than basic ethnic unity. Suggestions concerning origins, historical and cultural ties, and possible population movements are gradually emerging from detailed studies of the boundaries between the microlithic zone and the pottery and forest areas as well as from broader comparative analyses.

Recently discovered paleo-Indian sites on the shores of Salar de San Martin in Chile and Laguna Colorada and Laguna Hedionda in Bolivia are described. A cave at Laguna Hedionda is stratified. Comparisons are made with Ayampitin in Argentina and Le Paige's sequence for sites around Salar de Atacama in Chile. Pottery from the Hedionda sites is compared with post-Tiahuanaco to Inca styles in nearby areas of Bolivia. Le Paige's sequence (Puripica, Tulan-Cebollar, Tambillo) is criticized and a revision (Puripica-Tulan, Tambillo-Cebollar) proposed.

Five new radiocarbon dates from an Archaic midden at the Palmer site on the Florida Gulf coast confirm the previous estimate of 2000 B.C. for the beginning of pottery making in the Southeast. Correlations over hundreds of miles give extremely close results between archaeological subperiods and radiocarbon dates.

Work at this Classic-Postclassic site, begun by George W. Brainerd and interrupted by his untimely death, is being completed by Nicholson and Hicks. While analysis of much of the archaeological material is well underway, work on the ceramic typology has not yet proceeded to the point where “functional” interpretations can be made. Certain misunderstandings in the use of Cerro Portezuelo material by Mayer-Oakes are noted.

An engraved human bone whistle, from a burial mound near Bourneville, Ross County, Ohio, described for the first time as part of the Hopewellian complex, was probably used in elaborate burial ceremonies.

The development and use of a radio-direction finder system for site location in areas where other methods may fail has been successfully accomplished by the National Park Service's Wetherill Mesa Archeological Project. A brief, non-technical statement concerning the equipment and its use is given.