Howell and Kintigh (1996) argue for ascribed leadership at Hawikku based on biological kinship within cemetery areas and nonrandom distribution of higher-diversity burials. Their statistical evidence could be questioned based on principles of two-tailed null hypotheses, the Bonferroni principle, and other aspects. Especially when taking the bioanthropological literature more adequately into account, alternate conclusions somewhat at variance with Howell and Kintigh's concerning biological and social patterning according to gender could be envisioned.

A survey of the central San Joaquin Valley has demonstrated a threefold cultural sequence north of Stockton, upsetting the earlier view that central California archaeology lacked evidence of change; south of Tulare Lake are indications of similar cultural stratification. Before the survey the 160 miles between Stockton and Tulare Lake was known only from scattered specimens and occasional correspondence with local collectors.

The area of the 1939 reconnaissance is bounded on the north by the southern limit of Schenck and Dawson's 1929 report, the Mount Diablo Base Line; on the south, by Gifford and Schenck's northern limit, the southern end of Tulare Lake; on the east and west, by the Valley drainage limits. This territory includes the basin of the second largest river in California, and was formerly occupied by the bulk of the Yokutsspeaking peoples, and by some of the Miwok and Mono.

Charles Di Peso (1920-1982) was an active field archaeologist and museum director whose provocative interpretations of prehistory and ethnohistory influenced several generations of southwestern scholars. His intellectual breadth transcended the conventional structures of academia, and his original ideas remain at the forefront of American archaeology.

Burins have recently been discovered in several Texas sites, in Central Texas, associated with Angostura points and in the Trans-Pecos area, in a Desert Culture context. A few parallels are seen with Alaskan burins. The data indicate that in Texas, burins are part of the paleo-Indian and Archaic complexes. There is also a possibility that they were made as late as the 16th century along the Rio Grande.

Burins have been considered a significant trait of many early lithic complexes in northern North America ever since Giddings (1951) discovered them at Cape Denbigh. Within the past year burins have also been recognized in the Archaic and paleo-Indian cultures in the Trans-Pecos and Central parts of Texas.

In 1939, the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan continued the survey of the Manitoulin District of Ontario, begun in 1938. Two sites were found on abandoned beaches of Lake Huron, both bearing cultural material in such positions as to enable dating of the material. The first site to be found (KB1) is two miles east of Killarney, on the mainland to the northeast of Manitoulin Island; the second site (CHI) is six miles east of Killarney. The present paper is a preliminary statement of the points of chief interest concerning these two sites. Site KB1 is at about the same level as another, on Great Cloche Island twenty-four miles west, which was excavated in 1938.

During the 1956 Pecos Conference at the Museum of Northern Arizona at Flagstaff, a group active in the study of archaeological remains in the western Southwest met to perform one of the original functions of the Conference. Participants agreed upon some standard concepts with which to order existing knowledge of this western area and to clarify the tasks of future research there. Agreement was reached on the basic cultural content of a prehistoric cultural unit and its geographic distribution and name.

A new and significant element was added to the archaeological inventory of California by the discovery, in 1940, of two unique objects of baked clay. These seemed to be fragmentary female figurines but several considerations at the time of discovery called for reserve in this interpretation. Although a well developed baked clay complex is known archaeologically in the Central Valley of California, it had not been evidenced before this time to the west of this stoneless region. Moreover, none of the figurines occurring in this Valley complex represents any part of the human figure; it has been noted, in fact, that aboriginal California in general lacked a tradition of human representation. In addition, these two pieces were fragmentary.

Although it has been considered possible that certain elements originating in the Olmec culture of Mexico were added to older Peruvian traditions to produce the Chavin civilization, the radiocarbon dates on Olmec and Chavin make them approximately coeval. A black-ware bottle found at Kotosh, in the central Peruvian highlands, bears a design of an ear of maize, a motif of probable Olmec origin. Since this vessel was from a phase immediately preceding the Chavin horizon, it is suggested that the Olmec culture began earlier than did Chavin and, in fact, could have been the progenitor for civilization in the Andean Area.

Due to excessive adherence to theoretical "first principles" and consequent erroneous superficial textual analyses, Carrasco overstates political control over land and labor and understates the importance of marketing and forces of supply and demand in Aztec economies. The lack of evidence for price regulation and for the enforcement of sumptuary laws is exposed, while other evidence which indicates that the Texcocan (and other) tribute systems depended in many ways on Mesoamerican marketing systems is pointed out. The inadequacies in Carrasco's comments on the scale of Texcocan tribute income are evaluated along with the lack of diachronic depth in his analyses.

In their article, Cordell et al. (1987:571) assert that the Grasshopper Pueblo skeletal series is an "obviously biased sample." This paper criticizes that position as an incorrect interpretation of the Coale and Demeny (1983) model life tables. An alternative interpretation is offered using a modeling procedure based on the Coale and Demeny regressions and pattern-fitting-by-maximum-likelihood techniques. The present author agrees with Cordell et al.'s theoretical position; uniformitarian assumptions should play an important role in archaeological interpretation, especially where the questions addressed are rooted in human biology. The analysis presented, however, indicates that they overestimate problems with the Grasshopper series, and supports the validity of studies based upon it.

Amick and Mauldin (1989) claim that our approach to describing debitage assemblage variation is unproductive because our typology is free of interpretation. They suggest that our method for assigning meaning to archaeological data is sterile because it is based solely on observations of the archaeological record. Their views seem to be based on inattention to key analytic concepts, an unfamiliarity with the full range of factors affecting lithic assemblage content, and an empirically unsupported position about how knowledge of the past may be obtained from the archaeological record. Experimental studies are useful for developing generalizations about how technological factors may influence debitage assemblage characteristics, but sound description of those characteristics is an essential prerequisite to reliable interpretations.

This paper consolidates and summarizes the mass of radiocarbon determinations that has accumulated in various books, journals, newsletters, and manuscripts between 1951 and the spring of 1965. The dates are derived from Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Early Ceramic, and Late Prehistoric occupations in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and the Plains areas of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. Included are 195 radiocarbon dates attesting to the presence of man on the Plains for the last 12,000 years.

This is a plea for caution in using recent and important radiocarbon results as controls in correlating the Classic Maya Long Count with our own chronology. A final choice among alternative day-for-day hypotheses must condition one's view of the meaning of the calendar and of astronomy in Mesoamerican cultures generally. More is at stake than the firm dating of archaeological periods, important as that is, and in our desire for a decision there is danger of oversimplifying the problem. Already there has been a press report that the Spinden 12.9.0.0.0 correlation has been established, though equal support in the new evidence can be claimed for an alternative 12.9.0.0.0 hypothesis of Makemson. Nonspecialists wishing to form opinions as to specific correlations must still study the evidence as a whole. Three excellent summaries, well-spaced in time, have been published by Thompson (1935, 1950) and Andrews (1940).

Data and observations are presented which refute the contention of Payen et al. (1978) that soil stratigraphy, artifacts, and dating techniques of the Yuha burial preclude a Pleistocene age assignment.

Data from the United States General Land Office Surveys are frequently used to reconstruct the vegetation existing at the time of European settlement as a basis for biotic models. The vegetation recorded in those surveys had been influenced not only by climatic conditions considerably colder and more moist than the present, but by frequent, widespread burning as well. The effect of such burning on the distribution and composition of forest vegetation was as great as the climatic effects and must be taken into account when building prehistoric vegetational models in the Midwest.

A new technique for the measurement of artifact angles is presented. A clay impression of an edge is made, the angle of the edge is then measured with a 6X comparator equipped with an angle measuring reticle. The technique is compared with other angle measuring techniques currently in use. Additional measurement capabilities of the comparator are also presented.

The 1960s and 1970s excavations at Owl Cave (10BV30) recovered mammoth bone and Folsom-like points from the same strata, suggesting evidence for a post-Clovis mammoth kill. However, a synthesis of the excavation data was never published, and the locality has since been purged from the roster of sites with human/extinct megafauna associations. Here, we present dates on bone from the oldest stratum, review provenience data, conduct a bone-surface modification study, and present the results of a protein-residue analysis. Our study fails to make the case for mammoth hunting by Folsom peoples. Although two of the point fragments tested positive for horse or elephant protein, recent AMS dates indicate that all of the mammoth remains predate Folsom, and horse remains are absent from the Owl Cave collection. Further, no unambiguously cultural surface modifications were identified on any of the mammoth remains. Given the available data, the Owl Cave deposits are most parsimoniously read as containing a Folsom-age occupation in a buried context, the first of its kind in the desert West, but one nonetheless part of a palimpsest of terminal Pleistocene materials.

Recent investigations on the Pajarito Plateau, north-central New Mexico, have established a sequential picture of changing levels of competition over resource territories. Acuity of competition is inferred through measurement of relative sizes of territories routinely exploited for wild food resources. Village-level territories are determined through an accounting of the raw materials used to make flaked stone tools, which materials are argued to have been gathered during routine food collecting activities. Three distinct raw material options were available on the Plateau, in the form of tool-grade obsidian, chert, and basalt. Because these raw material types come from mutually exclusive locations over the Plateau, it is possible to inferentially measure resource collection areas for individual sites through assessment of raw material diversity. Chronological differences among sites allow for reconstruction of differing levels in the acuity of prehistoric competition. It is found that Classic Period (A. D. 1325-historic period) aggregation on the Plateau was preceded by several generations of escalating territorial competition. This finding represents a subtle but important departure form the current characterization of the Pajarito Classic Period as a “competition stage”, and suggests instead that aggregation fundamentally alleviated resource competition from the perspective of the individual or individual household.

No archaeological remains which the majority of specialists will accept as Archaic have been found in the Mississippi Valley from the mouth of Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico. Despite this, the literature reflects a general acceptance of the belief that the Archaic stage is well represented in the Lower Valley. The presence of concentrated Archaic populations in northern Alabama and western Tennessee and Kentucky has given comparative support to these expectations and has provided part of the source for some of the hypothetical statements in the literature of what the Lower Valley Archaic ought to be like. Although the failure of writers to agree on a definition of Archaic which will satisfy the evidence in all of the areas of Eastern United States has contributed to the problem of identifying Archaic materials in the Lower Valley, the lack of these remains can best be explained by the geology of the region. The cutting and filling of the Alluvial Valley during the Pleistocene changes in sea level have removed or buried all of the surfaces that might have been occupied by Archaic peoples. The surface of the Alluvial Valley is everywhere less than 5000 years old. Possible Late Archaic sites are located on old stable beach ridges or near enough to the Pleistocene terraces not to have been included in the general pattern of Recent coastal subsidence. It is concluded that Archaic or earlier materials are absent in the Lower Alluvial Valley of the Mississippi River. Neither Tchefuncte nor Copell are accepted as Archaic; Poverty Point is viewed as transitional from an Upper Archaic tradition to some phase of the Formative stage. Poverty Point materials may not be expected to be found in quantity along the Gulf Coast of the Mississippi Delta region.