A small ruin of presumed ancient Maya origin is described. This ruin is the only certain prehistoric structure discovered on the Mountain Pine Ridge of British Honduras, and it is associated with a natural granite outcrop of monumental appearance in such a way as to suggest that the two formed a shrine of a type not previously reported in Lowland Maya archaeology.

This article examines large-scale spatial and temporal patterns in the agricultural demographic transition (ADT) of Mesoamerica and southwestern North America (“the Southwest”). An analysis of published settlement and subsistence data suggests that the prolonged ADTs of these regions involved two successive eras of rapid population growth. Although both periods of growth were fueled by the introduction or development of more productive domesticates, they had distinctive demographic and social consequences. The first phase of the ADT occurred only in a scattering of favorable regions, between 1900 and 1000 BC in Mesoamerica and 1200 BC–AD 400 in the Southwest. Its demographic consequences were modest because it was underwritten by still rather unproductive maize. During this phase, increased population was confined mainly to a few agricultural heartlands, whereas surrounding regions remained sparsely populated. The second phase of the ADT was more dramatic in the spatial scale of its impact. This “high productivity” phase unfolded between 1000 and 200 BC in Mesoamerica and AD 500–1300 in the Southwest, and it was fueled by more productive maize varieties and improving agricultural technologies. It was accompanied by sweeping social, economic, and political changes in both regions.

This research seeks to understand the economic and social interaction patterns among dispersed Piedmont Village Tradition communities in the North American Southeast, AD 1200–1600. Piedmont Village Tradition communities lived adjacent to Mississippian societies and have been categorized as a peripheral society because of this spatial relationship. We examine economic behaviors by constructing fall-off curves of local versus nonlocal lithic material proportions at settlement sites and examining the reduction behaviors and tool types at sites. The results support a possible gateway model for the acquisition and distribution of nonlocal materials that linked spatially proximate communities. To examine social interaction patterns, we conducted a Brainerd-Robinson analysis of ceramic attributes from six sites and combined our results with work by Rogers (1993). The results show sites with stylistic similarities are not the same sites that share lithic resources. We conclude that these spatially non-overlapping artifact patterns result from a heterarchical social organization with a high degree of independence between economic and social interactions. Finally, we contextualize our results within the current knowledge of Mississippian and Piedmont Village Tradition societies in the region to broaden the discussion of gateways in reciprocity-based economies, societies traditionally thought of as peripheral to complex societies, and coalescence.

Owen’s (1964) brief comments on the Glen Annie Canyon site include some comments and criticisms that are in error, and the validity of his interpretation of the archaeology and archaeologists of the Southern California Coast may be challenged. Owen uses the term “Early horizon” where he should use “Milling Stone horizon”; his criticisms of Wallace’s 1955 paper are unjustified; what he claims to be the archaeologists’ description of the Oak Grove culture is inaccurate. His argument for a nomadic population during the Milling Stone horizon is based on a weak analogy, and his notion that the interpretation of a “more or less sedentary” settlement pattern for the Milling Stone horizon is a “convenient fiction agreed upon by some southern California archaeologists to facilitate the construction of artifact typologies” is in error. Data are presented to support the interpretation that the population of the Milling Stone horizon was a Central-Based Wandering people.

A series of Paleo-Indian and Archaic projectile points with burin facets at either the proximal or distal end is described. Most of the points come from Texas. The burin facets appear to be intentional products of the burin technique, used either for the production of burins and burin spalls, or for modifying the shape of the point itself. Paleo-Indian point types with burin facets include Clovis, Cumberland, Folsom, Plainview, Meserve, Angostura, and a number of variant forms. The data suggest that the burin or the burin technique may have been widespread throughout North America during early fluted-point times.

New data are presented on prehispanic ground drawings discovered and mapped during the 1979-1980 settlement-pattern research in the Santa Valley region, north coast of Peru. Among the drawings, which appear to date to the Early Suchimancillo/Gallinazo time period (ca. B.C./A.D. to A.D. 200), are a number of naturalistic figures-including humans, sierra-related llamas and condors, and a jungle-related (possible) cayman. These figures, and other lines of evidence such as rock-walled corral enclosures, suggest the existence of a strong ideological focus on sierra-related animals that probably reinforced intensive coast-sierra socioeconomic relations involving the use of llama pack trains.

The rock art of Writing-On-Stone has been the focus of detailed interpretation relying on concepts of group migration. Indeed, results of previous research at Writing-On-Stone have been pivotal in reconstructions of northwestern Plains group distributions. It is apparent that many anthropomorphic petroglyphs and pictographs contain elements and co-associations that allow chronological ordering from prehistoric through protohistoric and historic times. Cluster analyses described in this paper offer a more objective means of assessing changes in anthropomorph depictions through time, leading to a critical evaluation of prior concepts concerning stylistic changes and Native group distributions. In particular, the analyses demonstrate that rock-art anthropomorphs at Writing-On-Stone are more strongly interrelated than previously thought. We believe there is no need to invoke a Shoshonean presence in this area to account for differences in late prehistoric and historical-period rock-art anthropomorph styles.

The increasing incorporation of economic concepts into archaeological theory has led to an increased potential for misunderstanding through terminological sloppiness. Misuse of such terms as minimax, efficiency, risk, and maximization has already laid a solid foundation for confusion. These comments are intended to provide brief definitions for several key economic terms and to indicate how they can be used so that their meanings are clearly understood.

Excavations at the site of Pottery Mound, 40 mi. south and west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, give evidence that the first structure at the site was a large, flat-topped pyramid built in two terraces. Four Pueblo IV architectural levels are superimposed on top of this structure. Sixteen painted kivas in association with the Pueblo IV room tiers retained on their walls a number of multi-layered fresco paintings. These paintings show macaws, other varieties of parrots, jaguars, and possibly Mexican Indians. The flat-topped mound and the ceremonial implications of the frescoes seem Mexican-inspired. The mound may date in the late Pueblo III period. The superimposed architectural levels and the frescoes date in the early Pueblo IV period.

Evidences of prehistoric textiles are sporadically encountered in the course of archaeological investigations in the Mississippi drainage area. Because of their paucity, they have been given little or no place in the consideration of the archaeological problems of this region. Distinctions in weaving techniques have already proven of value in indicating the cultural connections of ethnic groups. Enough scattered textile materials have been accumulated to merit a study of their distinctive value in the complexes of traits of which they are a part. With this the major objective of the study, the development of terminology becomes a basic necessity, making the function of this work twofold.

A small rectangular house floor at the Gresham site, north of Kansas City is assigned on the basis of associated artifacts to the Steed-Kisker focus of Middle Mississippi. The house differs architecturally from the house at the Steed-Kisker site described by Wedel. These differences and other evidence point to the possibility of major cultural transitions in the area during Middle Mississippi time.

Large-scale excavation data are used to reconstruct some of the organizational features of a small village of the Early Formative period (ca. 1500–850 B.C.) in the southern Mexican highlands. Data from the community's residential and cemetery zones are analyzed in consideration of (1) the nature and number of village components; and (2) methods used to integrate these components. It is argued that the community was organized around some form of lineal descent group, which held corporate title to essential resources. Low-level redistribution of foodstuffs and the display of supralocal symbols are also suggested to have been aspects of community organization. The data and interpretations of this investigation are compared to the results of Early Formative studies in other areas of highland Mesoamerica.

Cultural resource management is often considered to end when endangered resources are collected or excavated. Actually, this is only an early step in the process. An increasing proportion of our preserved cultural heritage is being managed in museums, and it is in museums that much future archaeological research will have to be done. This brief essay reviews the role of museums in cultural resource management and points to the need for a careful evaluation of the adequacy of current archaeological curation systems.

The later evolution of Chumash polities in various subareas, including the Channel Islands, has attracted considerable scholarly attention. Most investigations on this topic during the past decade have focused on economic and political evolution through the use of residential data (e.g., Arnold 1992a; Arnold, ed. 2001; Kennett 1998). Earlier, and now again with the publication of Gamble et al. (2001), cemetery data are marshaled to examine cultural change. While we applaud this recent effort, the utility of the results is constrained ultimately by factors including the representativeness of the excavated Malibu cemetery data, Mission period disruption of Ventureño Chumash culture, and insufficient attention to the consequences of mourning ceremonies. The authors add to an understanding of later Ventureño mortuary behavior, but their discussion conflates social ranking and political evolution. The results do not, contrary to their expectations, alter extant interpretations of Island Chumash production, specialization, and trade, nor the timing of changes in islanders' labor organization and political integration. The ultimate logical implication of their discussion would be that a single Chumash chiefdom evolved before (within?) the Middle period and operated in lockstep throughout the region—joining the Ventureño and Island Chumash at the political hip, so to speak. We see no evidence to support any part of this proposition for either of the subregions in question.

The maritime fur trade caused the extirpation of sea otters from southeast Alaska. In the 1960s, sea otters were reintroduced, and their numbers have increased. Now, sea otters are competing with people for what have become commercially important invertebrates. After having been absent for more than a century, the reentry of this keystone species has unsettled people. Although some communities perceive sea otters as a threat to their livelihoods, others view their return as restoration of the marine ecosystem. The federal Marine Mammal Protection Act authorizes any Alaska Native to harvest sea otters for subsistence provided that the harvest is not wasteful. Some people are seeking to define “traditional” Tlingit use of sea otters as not only using their pelts but consuming them as food, but some Tlingit maintain they never ate sea otters. This project analyzes the largest precontact archaeological assemblage of sea otter bones in southeast Alaska, with the benefit of insights gained from observing a Tlingit hunter skin a sea otter to infer that Tlingit ancestors hunted sea otters primarily for pelts. The extent to which other Indigenous peoples of the North Pacific consumed sea otters as food deserves investigation, especially as sea otters recolonize their historic range.

Seven radiocarbon dates place the regional sequence from 3000 B.C. to A.D. 1000, validate partially the method determining complexes at the site, and date the beginning of maize agriculture in the area.

Suggestions that archaeologists cease their dalliance with inconsequential minutiae and concern themselves to some extent with conceptualization and problem have appeared a number of times in recent anthropological literature. This injunction is probably justified, and if archaeology is to contribute to our knowledge of the processes of culture and the historical interrelations of peoples it must broaden its scope of understanding and sharpen its tools of analysis. This is not as simple as might be hoped.

Pollen deposited on the ground surface is carried down into the soil by percolating groundwater. Such postdepositional pollen transport preserves the record of historical vegetation and land use in slowly or nonaggrading sediment profiles by separating the pollen spectra of successive ground covers. This is demonstrated at Great Meadows, Pennsylvania, where pollen spectra in hillside cores indicating a preagricultural-era forest are succeeded during the clearance and agricultural period by weed and cereal pollen during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These are, in turn, replaced by grass during the park period of the last 65 years. The preagricultural pollen spectra indicate that differences in historical ground cover across relatively short horizontal distances and elevations can be reconstructed with pollen analysis.

A recent report by Hull (1987) on the microdebitage analysis of soil samples from a stone-circle site in the Northern Plains indicates the utility of such analyses for the study of use and disposal in lithic-tool-manufacture areas. Its value could have been heightened through greater awareness of recent research on the ethnoarchaeology of tipi use and of site-formation studies in general. Various factors were overlooked in Hull's analysis, including the intentional disposal of refuse away from the place of use, the widespread distribution of secondary refuse as a result of smearing and blending, the distinction between occupation and abandonment refuse, and the effects of rodent disturbance within tipis. The fact that these factors were not considered weakens the applicability of Hull's site-formation model. Research among the Slavey Dene of the western Canadian Subarctic suggests that tipis are better viewed as generalized activity centers, embracing a variety of human activities and events, none of which have strict spatial definition. This helps to explain the weak or nonexistent patterning noted by Hull.