The contention by Donn T. Bayard that anthropology is not rigorous enough to be a science or to formulate scientific laws is challenged, and an example is presented of a regularity in cultural evolution with a claim to being considered a statistical law.

The system of ceramic taxonomy presented by Phillips for use in the Southeast is considered to be too formal and rigid. While it attempts to serve the same functions as the currently used concepts of type and variety, the proposed new system would be considerably more complex in its application. The ceramic type, as currently defined and used, is well adapted for establishing skeletal chronicle. Any modification would lessen its usefulness. A greater emphasis on including descriptive classes in reports is offered as more valuable than the adoption of a formal taxonomy. The content of the classes cannot be determined prior to description, whereas the formal taxonomy prescribes the content of each taxonomic unit. These classes would increase the utility of sherd collections by making available data which can be applied to problems, such as those of process, for which neither the type nor the proposed new varieties are suitable.

A basic problem in archaeological research is determining site size and structure. In this paper we develop an approach that sequentially employs several survey techniques, including aerial photography, magnetic gradiometry, magnetic susceptibility, and shovel testing in the context of the Wildcat site (33My499), a Fort Ancient habitation site located near Dayton, Ohio. Defining site size and structure was a challenge at Wildcat since it is located in an agricultural field that has not been plowed for many years. Magnetic susceptibility and close-interval shovel testing worked well to define the basic site structure, and magnetic gradiometry and targeted magnetic anomaly excavations efficiently revealed a series of features. Alone, each of the methods produced somewhat misleading data regarding site size and structure, but together they revealed a much smaller site than originally anticipated.

The study of faunal remains from archaeological sites has been described using a variety of terms including: zooarchaeology, archaeozoology, osteoarchaeology, and ethnozoology. With such a broad spectrum of terms in current usage, we feel that the contradictions and errors inherent in some of this nomenclature need to be corrected. We prefer the term zooarchaeology, as a contraction of the word zoologico-archaeology proposed by Lubbock in 1865, to define the study of animal remains from archaeological sites and their relationship to humans.

For many years a Chalchihuites type of culture has been designated for a number of archaeological sites in the western parts of the states of Durango and Zacatecas, Mexico (Hrdlička 1903; Gamio 1910; Noguera 1930; Mason 1937; Brand 1939). The culture takes its name from the early-studied and partiallytested site of the same name located in northwestern Zacatecas.

Chalchihuites culture has been noted by Mason to extend as far south as the great site of La Quemada, or Chicomostoc as it is also called, some 35 miles southwest of Zacatecas, Zacatecas (Mason 1937). It is prevalent in southern Durango in the vicinity of the city of Durango, and Mason and Brand believe that at Zape, Durango, 150 miles to the north, it had reached its northern limit. At Zape it had become peripheral and attenuated, having lost much of its fine quality. As more information is obtained, it is possible that the culture may be extended to a group of sites in northern Jalisco.

Grimstead (2010) develops a transport model that appears to demonstrate that distant patch hunting is energetically efficient at distances of well over 350 km. However, a close examination of her assumptions raises questions concerning the validity of her approach. Here, we examine the effects of using more ecologically justifiable parameters and consider the cost of time spent away from camp on her model’s outcomes. We find that under revised constraints the model yields much shorter maximum transport distances and argue, therefore, that distant patch hunting may be calorically economical in some cases, but not in others.

In recent years, there has been much interest in the use of ethnographic data derived from modern Maya groups for the interpretation of Classic Maya civilization. It has been suggested by some that civil and religious positions in Classic Maya society were filled by a system of rotation such as exists today among some Maya groups. Such a system would have served as a powerful force for the integration of both priest and peasant in Classic Maya society. This proposition is examined here in the light of recent data which show a relation between such existing "cargo" systems and population size. On the basis of settlement data from Tikal, Guatemala, it is concluded that such a system of rotation would not have been an effective force for social integration at large sites of the Classic period, and that other possible factors must be considered in this respect.

At the Ambo site, chips, splinters, cores, and broken or unfinished implements were spread along a terrace of the Huallaga River near the city of Ambo, Department of Huanuco, Peru. Most of the finds are obviously rejects abandoned near the source of the material from which they were made. Projectile points are abundant and were made by the percussion method, although some were retouched by the pressure method. Many of these resemble projectile points of Lauricocha II and Canario in Peru and of Ayampitin and Intihuasi in the Argentine sierra region, which are dated between 6000 and 4000 B.C.

This paper is concerned with the prehistory of the Bahama Islands, British West Indies, an archipelago stretching in a 600-mile arc from the southeast Florida coast opposite West Palm Beach to within 60 miles of the northern coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola (Fig. 1). The Turks and Caicos groups, although politically administered from Jamaica, belong both geologically and archaeologically in the archipelago and are therefore included in this report.

The purpose of the present survey is to clarify the relationships of pre-Columbian Bahamian culture to neighboring regions. Before any clarification can be made, however, it is first necessary to outline briefly the archaeological findings in the islands, for no complete survey has yet been published.

Previous publications have called attention to the problem of flint decomposition or alteration in artifact and workshop materials from Archaic horizons in coastal Georgia. On the Macon Plateau, Georgia, there are stratigraphic indications of a prepottery horizon characterized by an old artifact assemblage of stemmed and concave-based projectiles, a wide range of cutting tools, both scraper and knife categories, all exhibiting partial or complete chemical alteration of the material (Kelly 1938). Related sites showing similar phenomena of altered flint, in contexts implying Archaic quarries or workshops, have been found in archaeological surveys at Lane Springs in northern Decatur County, Georgia, and in Kinchafoonee, in a Highway 19 road profile on the outskirts of Albany, Georgia (Kelly 1950). Recently, Kelly summarized these and other occurrences indicative of the widespread distribution of such materials over the entire coastal plain of Georgia (Kelly 1954). The difficulties of utilizing decomposed flint for chronometric studies were also summarized (Kelly 1953).

Burned rock features that were used for heat, light, the processing of resources, cooking, roasting, ceremonial purposes, and other functions are encountered all over the world. Over 200 prehistoric fire-altered rock (FAR) features have been documented at Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, an area ethnographically occupied by the Kumeyaay Indians along the central coast of San Diego County in southern California. These features are more densely concentrated at sites within the boundaries of the reserve than at other nearby coastal locations, suggesting an association with a specific resource in the area. Although many FAR features found in southern California and the Southwest are often interpreted as Agave deserti or Yucca whipplei roasting pits, these species are rare at the reserve; the few that exist there today are believed to be modem introductions. We propose that the FAR features in the project area were probably used to process Torrey pine nuts, a high-ranked resource that was valued by the Kumeyaay.

Towers have long been an important and integral feature of architecture. The earliest record of towers is in Mesopotamia with the Statue of Gudea at a date of approximately 2700 B.C. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1948, p. 330). From there they may be found ranging over the entire world. They have met numerous demands, but from their very beginning towers have served two principal functions: military and religious.

A focal area of tower building was in the southwestern United States. Here towers have presented numerous problems which, despite comment and work, still remain largely unanswered. Their intriguing possibilities, however, early attracted the attention of writers. A brief history would include such men as Jackson (1876), Holmes (1879), and Morgan (1881), who first called public attention to these towers. Their accounts were descriptive and mention ruins of the Hovenweep, Mesa Verde, and McElmo areas. Moorehead, in a series of six articles entitled “In Search of a Lost Race” for Illustrated American of 1892, discussed ruins of the McElmo.

Archaeological remains from the southern Californian desert region, spanning a period from 7000 B.C. to historic times, are segregated into four broad cultural horizons. The earliest certain evidences of human occupation consist of stone tools and weapons from the shore line of ancient Lake Mohave. The Lake Mohave artifacts comprise types designed primarily for hunting and related activities. Next in sequence are the lithic materials from Pinto Basin and other localities that demonstrate a mixed hunting-gathering economy. The third or Amargosa period is inadequately known. Triangular arrowpoints, pottery, and numerous seed-grinding implements distinguish the closing aboriginal phase. The major research needs are indicated.

Despite a firm conviction that statistical analyses have a definite place in archaeological interpretations, I want to register a protest against the Coefficient of Agreement proposed by W. S. Robinson (American Antiquity, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 293-301, 1951). Robinson's coefficient is offered as a measure of the degree of similarity between two collections of sherd material. It is arrived at by adding the differences between the percentages of each type of sherd in the two collections and subtracting this sum from 200.

I examine how our capacity to produce accurate culture-historical reconstructions changes as more archaeological sites are discovered, dated, and added to a data set. More precisely, I describe, using simulated data sets, how increases in the number of known sites impact the accuracy and precision of our estimations of (1) the earliest and (2) latest date of a cultural tradition, (3) the date and (4) magnitude of its peak popularity, as well as (5) its rate of spread and (6) disappearance in a population. I show that the accuracy and precision of inferences about these six historical processes are not affected in the same fashion by changes in the number of known sites. I also consider the impact of two simple taphonomic site destruction scenarios on the results. Overall, the results presented in this paper indicate that unless we are in possession of near-total samples of sites, and can be certain that there are no taphonomic biases in the universe of sites to be sampled, we will make inferences of varying precision and accuracy depending on the aspect of a cultural trait’s history in question.

The neutral model of stone procurement developed by Brantingham (2003, 2006) provides a formal means to investigate the formation of lithic discard patterning under changing forager mobility conditions. This study modifies Brantingham's (2006) Lévy walk model to examine the influence of discard probability on the spatial distribution of raw material abundance. The model outcome shows that forager movement and tool discard probability have similar effects on the simulated patterns of raw material transport, so it is difficult—if not impossible—to differentiate the respective influence of the two factors from distance to source distributions alone. This finding of equifinality complicates the task of interpretating hominin mobility from archaeological distance to source data, particularly in settings such as the Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition, which is marked by an important reorganization in hominin lithic technology that may have affected stone tool discard probability.

Since the creation of the National Register of Historic Places, determining eligibility for listing on it has become the fundamental process driving archaeology in the United States. This process affects how archaeological sites are identified, recorded, evaluated, and ultimately how they are protected. Yet less than 6% of properties on the National Register are archaeological sites. Although scholars often lament the rigidity of the National Register and its eligibility criteria, notable revisions in National Park Service guidance pave the way for important changes. One of the National Register's most pervasive and fundamental concepts—the historic context—remains deeply undertheorized when compared to more familiar terms like “significance” and “integrity.” In this article, we argue that archaeologists are well positioned to reinvigorate the National Register by using historic contexts as a mechanism for recognizing layered relationships to places. Using an example from the multivocal nomination of the Inscription Rock Archaeological District as a case study, we argue that the oft-neglected concept of the historic context can be used to commemorate multivocality, moving from one national history to the production of multivocal national histories.

Archaeological investigations were carried on by the Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, from June 19 to August 20, 1948, in the Kanopolis Reservoir area on the Smoky Hill River in Ellsworth County and also along the Little Arkansas River in Rice County, Kansas. The River Basin Surveys of the Smithsonian Institution had undertaken the preliminary reconnaissance and had found more than twenty sites in the area of the Reservoir. William O. Leuty of Ellsworth was helpful in guiding the field parties of both institutions to most of the sites; also he gathered surface collections which were turned over to us.

The Kanopolis Reservoir is situated in the highly dissected terrain which marks the Plains border along the 98th meridian of longitude in central Kansas. The Smoky Hill River meanders eastward, fed by many tributary streams and canyons. Outcrops of Dakota sandstone are common on the bluffs bordering the valley and trees are limited to the edges of the streams.

It is now over half a century since Carnot (1893) published his pioneer work dealing with the chemical analysis of fossil bone. In the intervening decades the problem has been investigated by occasional students who have approached the field from different directions. Recently interest in chemical methods has been intensified and the attention of archaeologists has been brought to a focus by the attempt of Oakley (1951) to utilize the fluorine content of human bones as a criterion of age. Also during the past few years a joint project has been pursued by the Departments of Anthropology and Physiology at the University of California (Berkeley) through the generosity of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Thus a considerable effort has been expended, and a reasonable volume of results are on record, with reference to the chemical changes which occur in fossil bone. At the present time it appears that a general survey of this work is in order, together with an appraisal of its value as a tool for the archaeologist and palaeontologist. Fairly comprehensive listings of published works on the subject of bone fossilization occur in Heizer (1950, 1952).

Polished “stone gorgets” may have had the same function as contemporary ceramic tools.