During his recent field work in south-central Canada, Professor A. Irving Hallowell obtained from Mr. W. H. Rand, Keeper of the Manitoba Museum, Winnipeg, a sample series of potsherds from several localities in the valley of the lower Red River, north of the city of Winnipeg. This material is said to have been collected on the surface and in one instance, at Lockport, in presumably archaeological (occupational?) deposits. Through the kindness of Dr. Hallowell I have examined the sherds from the standpoint of technology.

The principal aim of archaeology is the reconstruction of history. How archaeology plays this part is usually not very clearly thought out, although Rouse has made a good attempt. In the reconstruction of history, we deal with human social units. These social units are composed of animals which reproduce their kind, inherit biological traits, mutate, evolve, take in food, give off waste products, react to their environment, die, and, in so doing, behave fundamentally like other animals. Moreover, the animals have a language, form part of a social pattern, have ideas of the supernatural and what we can call religion, and can manufacture certain objects in a certain way. These animals are grouped into families composed of mother, father, and children. They are further grouped into extended families, sibs, or clans made up of real or fancied relatives. A number of extended families under the leadership of one man or a group of men forms a political group.

A hypothesis incorrectly reported in the Current Research section of the April, 1971, American Antiquity is clarified. The methods and results of preliminary testing of this hypothesis are described. A high correlation obtains between the 2 variables, which leads to the construction of a regression equation. By use of this equation, the access volume of a facility may be predicted from knowledge of the diversity of contents.

A recently discovered stela in Guerrero represents the north-westernmost extension of monolithic sculpture in the Olmec style yet known in Mesoamerica. The stela depicts a standing human figure wearing a cloak and bird mask and holding a staff-like object. It is suggested that the theme is ceremonial or one of rank or rulership. The style of the carving and its association with Olmec style pottery confirms its colonial Olmec identity. The nature of the stela confirms our impression that Olmec presence in Guerrero and the central highlands represents more than a diffused art style. A tentative model for interpreting Olmec diffusion takes into account economic as well as socio-political factors, including possible motives bringing the Olmec into the highlands and the nature and pattern of relationships established with local culture groups. Trade and status borrowing are the basis of this model.

The pillaging of archaeological sites throughout the world for salable items is increasing at an alarming rate. Recent information on looting in Mesoamerica, North America, and the Mediterranean area is summarized, and the weaknesses of the UNESCO and U.S.-Mexico treaties are outlined. Also described is a new and extremely destructive form of looting in Mesoamerica. It involves amassing many thousands of dollars from private investors for a project to decimate a chosen site, using explosives and power equipment, and then subdividing the loot among the sponsors. It is time for the SAA to act to stop the wanton destruction of the prehistoric record.

Although large-scale canal irrigation technology is commonly associated with the prehistoric Hohokam (A.D. 200–1450) of south-central Arizona, earthen reservoirs were essential for domestic water storage in areas of the Sonoran Desert away from perennial streams. Interpretations of seasonal water storage in prehistoric Hohokam reservoirs are often based on direct analogy with the historic Tohono O'odham (formerly called the Papago). This assumption of seasonal water storage is a hypothesis that should be tested rather than uncritically accepted by archaeologists. Sediments recovered with a hand-driven bucket auger from an earthen reservoir at a large Classic-period (ca. A.D. 1200–1450) Hohokam site (AZ AA:3:32 [ASM]) yielded uncarbonized seeds of an aquatic plant belonging to the genus Lemna (duckweed). The high number of Lemna seeds indicates that water may have been stored on a long-term, perhaps perennial, basis. Analyses of sediments from other reservoirs should generate further discoveries of uncarbonized seeds or other biological remains (e.g., pollen, phytoliths, diatoms, snails) and refine our understanding of prehistoric water storage facilities throughout the world.

Techniques are described for obtaining thin sections of charcoal and ancient woods for identification. Materials are embedded in epoxy resins and sectioned either with a sliding microtome or by grinding and polishing on silicon carbide or papers.

Quebec City (Canada) is well-known for its unique wild environments and its protected cultural heritage, which have attracted tourists to the area for centuries. Often taken for granted or overlooked, the interactions between its natural and cultural landscape have been scantly investigated in a diachronic perspective in archaeology. This article explores the relationship between Quebec City's colonists/inhabitants and their surrounding territory, through the study of food plants for the period between 1535 and 1900. It contrasts visitors’ accounts and official discourses with daily experience using a combination of historical and archaeobotanical evidence to unravel how changing historical, social, and political contingencies impacted past perceptions of “wilderness” as manifested in food choices. In this process, the consumption of local indigenous plants has been interpreted as a form of incorporation of local environments that can enlighten us about popular attitudes toward the New World's natural features.

Recently, researchers investigating the origins of domestication have debated the significance of resource intensification in the shift from foraging to food production. In eastern North America, one of several independent centers of domestication, this question remains open. To determine whether initial domestication may have been preceded by intensification in eastern North America at approximately 5000 cal BP, I evaluated the archaeofaunal assemblages from six sites in the middle Tennessee River valley. Analyses of these data suggest that overall foraging efficiency gradually declined prior to initial domestication, but patch-specific declines in foraging efficiency occurred in wetland habitats and not terrestrial ones. Climatic warming and drying during the Middle Holocene, growing human populations, and oak-hickory forest expansion were the likely drivers of these changes in foraging efficiency. These results support the hypothesis that initial domestication in eastern North America was an outcome of intensification driven by environmental change and human population increases. Finally, while the debate concerning the relationship of intensification to domestication has been framed in terms of a conflict between niche construction theory and optimal foraging theory, these perspectives are compatible and should be integrated to understand domestication more fully.

During the 1948 summer field session of the University of Arizona Archaeological Field School, located at Point of Pines, Arizona, two painted stone slabs were excavated in a late Pueblo ruin designated as Arizona: W:10:47.

Arizona: W: 10:47 was believed to be a small single-phase pueblo occupied during the Point of Pines horizon, ca. 1350 to 1400 A.D. It was decided during the course of the summer's work to investigate this ruin, in an attempt to locate wood specimens for dating purposes and to gather information concerning the architecture, ceramics, etc., of this late horizon. The task of sinking the te.st trenches necessary for the investigation fell to the author and to R. E. Gerald of the University of Arizona.

Nearly sixty years ago, the wife of a territorial governor of New Mexico was among the first to recognize that ruins of the Southwest represented, not a vanished and mysterious race, but the ancestors of the living Pueblo Indians, and added: .“from the sameness of the remains I infer that no important facts are to reward the search of dreaming pilgrim or patient student.”

In the half-century since, patient students have ferreted out many facts of interest and possibly of importance, and have found that the sameness of the remains is not complete. The gradual recognition of successive periods of sequential development, their confirmation through stratigraphic studies, and the working out of temporal classification or horizontal segmentation, culminating in the Pecos-Roberts classification, is a familiar story.

In their recent description of Machalilla culture Meggers and Evans deny that Machalilla is related to any other known ceramic complexes. It is suggested that Machalilla may be related to Late Tutishcainyo and may have entered coastal Ecuador from the western Amazon basin.

The article, “The Typological Concept,” recently published by Alex D. Krieger1 is an encouraging sign that interest in methodology, hitherto confined largely to field work, is now turning as well to the study of specimens in the laboratory. Krieger is to be congratulated for outlining clearly his method of forming types and for a penetrating comparison of that method with other archaeological procedures of classification.

It may be questioned, however, whether the article contributes as much to an understanding of the typological concept as it does to the typological method. In emphasizing the formation of types, Krieger fails to explain what he means by the term “type.” As the present writer understands his remarks, the term “type” is used variously to refer to the categories formed by classifying artifacts (pp. 271-272), to the specimens classified within each category (bottom of pp. 277, 281), and to the pattern of characters used to define each category (pp. 278, 280).

Smoking pipes discovered in archaeological contexts demonstrate that Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of North America have practiced smoking for over 4,500 years. Archaeometry and ancient residue metabolomics provide evidence for the association of particular plants with these artifacts. In this article, we synthesize recent research on ancient smoking and present current knowledge on the spatiotemporal distribution of smoking in the past. The presence of stone smoking pipes in the archaeological record is paired with our understanding of past plant use based on chemical residue analyses to create a picture of precontact smoking practices. Archaeological pipe data demonstrate that smoking was a widely distributed practice in the inland Northwest over the past several thousand years, but not on the coast. Distributional data—including positive and negative evidence from chemical residue studies—show that tobacco was an important smoke plant in the region as early as around 1,410 years ago and as far north as the mid-Columbia region. Ancient residue metabolomics contributes to a richer understanding of past use of specific plants through the identification of tobacco species and other indigenous plants, including Rhus glabra, Cornus sericia, and Salvia sp., as contributing to the chemical residues in ancient pipes.

Many archaeologists have ignored the complexities of preservation treatments and have proceeded alone, often with unsatisfactory results. Now that new legislation can provide conservation funding, archaeologists involved in federally funded research should have little reason to ignore professional standards in the areas of conservation, preservation, and collection interpretation and maintenance. Specific advantages of professional conservation input for the archaeologist are cited with reference to a case study in Maine.

Previous discussions of the exchange system of the prehistoric Maya have been based on the assumption that their uniform environment prevented inter-group exchange of local resources. The validity of this assumption is questioned and the stability of primitive exchange systems is examined.

Can Flecks of charcoal in soils and hearths be concentrated into a usable sample for radiocarbon dating? It is impracticable to ship large volumes of soil with low carbon content from distant sites, yet dating them may be most important. This question was informally discussed following the Wenner-Gren Conference on African Prehistory held at the University of Chicago in February, 1953, and as a result Robert J. Braidwood proposed that an experimental field laboratory be established that summer at an excavation where water and electricity were available if needed. The Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago and the Illinois State Museum were sponsoring the excavation of a rock shelter near Modoc, Illinois, and I was invited to conduct experiments there, trying out any technics that I wished. It was hoped that these experiments would result in establishing a simple procedure that could be used in many parts of the world for procuring radiocarbon samples.

Flints which were formed during different geological periods and which can be confused with Alibates flint occur in widely separated localities in west Texas and eastern New Mexico.

Use of the stratigraphic technique in American archaeology would seem to have been initiated by Manuel Gamio in 1911 at Atzcapotzalco, Mexico.

Proponents of the “type-variety” method of ceramic analysis are criticized for mixing analytical units and the rank hierarchies appropriate to synthesis, and for semantically substituting “type-variety” for “type” without actually changing the method of analysis.