An iron-nickel bead from Mound 9 at Havana, Illinois is distinctly different from samples from the Hopewell and Turner Mounds in Ohio. Whereas the source of the Ohio material appears to have been the Brenham, Kansas meteorite, there is no known North American meteorite having a composition closely similar to that of the Havana bead.

In a recent statistical study of settlement patterns at Tikal, Guatemala, Arnold and Ford failed to find evidence for the concentric zonation model which specifies that high-ranking persons generally lived closer to the site center than persons of lesser rank. However, their conclusions are invalidated by their exclusion from consideration of the houses occupied by the wealthy and powerful members of Tikal society. Attention is called to other deranging factors which need to be considered before a valid test of the concentric zonation model can be carried out Tikal, or at any other large and complex site.

Valdivia-related ceramics found near Lake San Pablo (Imbabura) demonstrate that this area was in contact with coastal Ecuador prior to 2000 B.C. The interaction between the coast and highlands is attributed to the existence of trade routes which probably originated in preceramic times. It is suggested that coca was among the scarce resources which attracted trade to the northern highlands.

Split-twig figurines, willow branches bent to resemble miniature animals and dating between 2900 B.C. and 1250 B.C., have been found at 30 Late Archaic period archaeological sites in the Greater American Southwest. Two different and geographically distinct construction styles, Grand Canyon and Green River, have been identified for split-twig figurines. Application of ethnographic analogy to the current split-twig figurine archaeological record supports the postulate that the two different styles of split-twig figurines served two different functions. The Grand Canyon-style figurines generally functioned as increase totems whereas the Green River-style functioned as social totems. This is the first example of increase totemism reported for the region. Ritual and social attitudes toward the animal and totem eventually ended and the last split-twig figurine was discarded around 1250 B.C.

Emerson and colleagues (2020) provide new isotopic evidence on directly dated human bone from the Greater Cahokia region. They conclude that maize was not adopted in the region prior to AD 900. Placing this result within the larger context of maize histories in northeastern North America, they suggest that evidence from the lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River valley for earlier maize is “enigmatic” and “perplexing.” Here, we review that evidence, accumulated over the course of several decades, and question why Emerson and colleagues felt the need to offer opinions on that evidence without providing any new contradictory empirical evidence for the region.

Compositional analyses were undertaken to evaluate the hypothesis that Shivwits Ware pottery found in southern Nevada was not produced in that area but, instead, manufactured on the Shivwits Plateau. The evidence supports this hypothesis and indicates that large quantities of Shivwits Ware jars moved through a distribution system linking the upland areas of the western Arizona Strip with the lowlands of southeastern Nevada. This long-distance movement of utilitarian pottery is unusual for precontact North America, in that it occurred in the apparent absence of any centralized distribution mechanisms and between what would have been small, kin-based communities. The nature and the causes for the development of this distribution system are discussed.

This article presents results of a multi-sensor drone survey at an ancestral Wichita archaeological site in southeastern Kansas, originally recorded in the 1930s and believed by some scholars to be the location of historical “Etzanoa,” a major settlement reportedly encountered by Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate in 1601. We used high-resolution, drone-acquired thermal and multispectral (color and near-infrared) imagery, alongside publicly available lidar data and satellite imagery, to prospect for archaeological features across a relatively undisturbed 18 ha area of the site. Results reveal a feature that is best interpreted as the remains of a large, circular earthwork, similar to so-called council circles documented at five other contemporary sites of the Great Bend aspect cultural assemblage. We also located several features that may be remains of house basins, the size and configuration of which conform with historical evidence. These findings point to major investment in the construction of large-scale ritual, elite, or defensive structures, lending support to the interpretation of the cluster of Great Bend aspect sites in the lower Walnut River as a single, sprawling population center, as well as demonstrating the potential for thermal and multispectral surveys to reveal archaeological landscape features in the Great Plains and beyond.

This paper deals with the. archaeology of the northeastern region of Lower California and the southeastern portion of California. Evidence derived from these aboriginal remains indicates two possible cultural horizons, late prehistoric Yuman pottery making groups and an earlier non-ceramic group.

Most of the data have been derived from Baja California, because the area north of the International Boundary line has been so severely pot-hunted that sites fail to yield data in sufficient quantities for analysis. The area covered in this report comprises some nine hundred square miles, bounded by the Coast or Peninsular Ranges, the Superstition Mountains, and the Sierra de los Cocopas, and including the southwestern part of Imperial Valley and the northern half of Laguna Salada in Baja California.

I Suppose every digger has at one time or another yearned for a potoscope or dreamed of an archaeologicallyrendowed hazel bush whose twigs would tug and dip to well-stocked graves. But if such sure-fire indicators existed, I doubt if fieldwork would be as much fun as it is. Would fishing have quite the same lure if every cast brought a strike? For better or worse, archaeology is a great gamble; each new site offers unlimited possibilities of surprise. So although the introductions to our reports often let it be inferred that our finds have been the result of keen scientific foresight, very few excavations, I imagine, turn out as we expect them to. It was certainly that way at Kaminaljuyu.

Hitherto unrecognized Middle Archaic cultures of southern New England are defined and dated on the basis of a preliminary analysis of an excavated collection from the Neville site in southern New Hampshire. The Neville and Stark complexes show significant relationships to the Stanly and Morrow Mountain complexes of North Carolina, and are shown to be of equivalent ages. Some implications of these new data and of the Late Archaic sequence from the site are suggested.

For more than 40 years archaeologists have been engaged in a self-conscious appraisal of the factors influencing the development of archaeological theory. The importance of external social and political forces has been widely acknowledged; however, less attention has been paid to the ways in which routine disciplinary practices authorize and reproduce particular theoretical standpoints. To illustrate how the growth of archaeological theory is intertwined with the practice of archaeological research, the goals and structure of one of the nation's first large-scale public archaeology projects, the River Basin Surveys' Missouri Basin Project (MBP), are considered and their effects on contemporary theory in Plains archaeology are evaluated. Today, theory in Plains archaeology remains implicit and for many projects culture history remains the central focus. The persistence of this research tradition can be traced in part to the success of the MBP in establishing new standards of practice for the region. Throughout the 1950s, MBP archaeologists pursued a distinctive research agenda that institutionalized inductive, culture-historical investigations. However, by the late 1960s many American archaeologists had adopted a new model of preservation, one that necessitated a new set of research practices. Because the MBP was not replaced by a new exemplar of practice, the culture historical research it championed continues to influence theory in Plains archaeology today.

The debate regarding the underlying motivations for large game hunting in western North America has ensued in American Antiquity for over a decade. Empirical support for the original argument for costly signaling hunting by Hildebrandt and McGuire partly derived from a regional synthesis of faunal data from southeastern California that demonstrated a spike in artiodactyl hunting during the Middle Archaic. This spike is primarily driven by the faunal assemblage from a single, highelevation site located in the White Mountains of southeastern California. It was suspected that this anomaly was a reflection of analytical differences in taxonomic identifications among faunal analysts. Contrary to expectations, it was discovered that taxonomic identifications were conservative. Instead, the previously reported number of identified specimens for artiodactyls was calculated in a manner inconsistent with other analyses in the region. When corrected, the regional data show a pattern of faunal exploitation that is consistent with expectations derived from optimal foraging theory.

Despite increasing concern with the effects of archaeological data recovery methods on the types and quantity of objects extracted from the material record, archaeologists rarely discuss recovery biases attributable to the most basic excavation procedures. In this study I examine how several factors, including variable artifact identification skills, can affect artifact recovery rates in the field. Data from household-level investigations at the Stó:lō (Coast Salish) village of Welqámex (DiRi 15) are presented to show how interobserver variation can compromise interpretations of past behavior when opportunities for artifact recovery are limited to observations at the excavation unit and single-episode (field-only) sieving. Laboratory sorting of screen residue retained in 3.2-mm (one-eighth-inch) mesh sieves is shown to account for the recovery of as much as 87.5 percent of lithic artifacts and nearly 90 percent of archaeofaunal remains. Rates of artifact recovery in the field are highly variable among excavation crews working at Welqámex, and I argue that the application of correction factors is inappropriate unless the magnitude of recovery bias can be measured for specific excavation teams and particular depositional contexts. The results of this study further highlight the importance of documenting and mitigating the unintended effects of methodological decisions on archaeological assemblages.

Explanations for the use of pots as practical domestic tools permeate the literature of technological adoption and change. While many arguments focus on the economic merits of pots, few have attempted to trace the conditions that promote or deter the adoption of pottery. This is especially true for the use of pottery by mobile peoples. We adapt an established model of technological investment to draw attention to three key variables affecting pottery adoption: manufacturing time, utility, and use time. We use the logic of this model to examine how social and environmental contexts, specifically residential mobility in marginal environments, impacts use of and investment in ceramic technology. We further illustrate how the model can be used to reveal seasonal patterns of behavior from the spatial distribution of pottery discarded by mobile foragers and herders.

The discovery and development of metal as a tool medium is a topic of global interest. A fundamental research goal involves establishing the timing of human experimentation with naturally occurring copper ore, which is commonly associated with sedentary, agrarian-based societies. However, in North America, there is well-documented millennia-scale exploitation of copper as tool media by small, seasonally mobile hunter-gatherer groups in the western Great Lakes. Archaeologists have suggested that Late Paleoindian groups may have begun using copper as a tool medium almost immediately after they entered the Lake Superior basin. However, only a few radiocarbon dates support such early use of copper. Here, we use optimal linear estimation modeling to infer the origin date for copper tool production in North America. Our results show that the invention of copper as a tool media likely occurred shortly after the first pioneering populations encountered copper ore during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The origin dates modeled here (ca. 8100 RCYBP) reveal several important features about the behavior of pioneering hunter-gatherer populations. Moreover, our results suggest that this phenomenon represents the earliest known use of metal for utilitarian copper tool production.

Relative chronology is found in the paintings in twelve Texas rock shelters which have Pecos Style pictographs. Three periods are defined within the Pecos Style. The earliest period comprises large-scale polychrome paintings emphasizing fishing subjects, suggesting a rivercentered life. The second period comprises slightly smaller-scale polychrome paintings in which deer first appear and become progressively more common. Fishermen still appear but tend to be smaller and more geometrically elaborate. The last period shows fewer paintings. They are very small, monochrome, and concentrate on deer and new figure types. These periods merge into each other. They appear to reflect an Archaic Desert Culture whose art began as the expression of a riverine ceremonial cult and changed toward a personal expression centered on deerhunting.

Trailed and incised drawings on the mud-covered walls of an East Tennessee cave have been identified as the artwork of Mississippian Indians who visited this sanctuary about 800 years ago. These unique drawings, called “mud glyphs” because of their similarity to certain petroglyphs found in the southeastern United States, include abstract designs, symbols, zoomorphic forms and anthropomorphic figures. Symbols such as the forked eye and the “bird-man” anthropomorphic representation correlate with six radiocarbon dates on torch charcoal that range between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries A.D. The occurrence of thousands of superimposed elements on the walls indicates that Mud Glyph cave was a Mississippian period sanctuary and further suggests that certain southeastern caves during this period were used for ritual activities rather than for mining as they were during earlier Woodland and Archaic times.

Burial mounds, with their contained structures, artifacts, burials, and the patterns of relationship between these concrete items, represent the largest recoverable body of data in the eastern United States which bears directly on problems concerned with prehistoric religion and ceremonialism. These data in turn are directly applicable, with varying levels of reliability, to problems of prehistoric social and political structure. This is possible through the predictably intimate relationship between supernatural and social controls which obtains in primitive societies.

Although archaeologists have experimented with computers since the early 1960s, with a few exceptions, the concept of an archaeological data bank has not been readily accepted. The authors believe that data banks can be usable tools, but that they will be used only if they are designed to satisfy realistic and precisely defined needs, and only if adequate consideration is given to data structures, human problems, and theoretical issues. Just finding the right computer system is not enough.

I examine how a cognitive archaeology may best be advanced by focusing on Intentionality, the mental property that acts as the causal interface in the human-world interaction. I call this approach symbolic pragmatics. The argument is that, through style as the symbolic medium, material culture is endowed by its users with a form of derived Intentionality that is expressively imposed on it in the moment of usage. The central heuristic is the notion of the legal warrant as a pragmatic symbol that transforms behavioral interventions into the types of social activities (intended) they are. In the same way, material cultural style symbolically endows its users with pragmatic or action-constitutive powers that transform their material interventions into the social activities they (intend) are. I apply the warranting model to interpreting the Old Copper Culture Complex, arguing that its copper/stone duality manifests a structuring of the material activities of this society into two complementary water and land ecological spheres.