In a recent article Borhegyi identifies certain stone objects as part of special gear worn by players in Mesoamerican ball games. He cites descriptions by early Spanish observers of the game as well as archaeological representations of ball-game gear. Borhegyi's interpretation is not supported by either the historical documents or the archaeological evidence cited.

One type of evidence which Sanders has used to show the excessive nature of the population estimates proposed for central Mexico by Borah, Cook, and Simpson is an estimation of the agricultural productivity of the Teotihuacan Valley. This estimation assumes an equivalence of contemporary with preconquest agricultural productivity, but such an assumption may be too optimistic since sixteenth-century crop yields from tribute fields in five towns in the Valley of Mexico indicate a curiously low level of maize productivity. These yields are presented and discussed, and Sanders’ population estimates are seen to be more accurate than those of Borah, Cook, and Simpson.

There's a popular meme that my archaeology friends have been circulating on social media lately: a picture of Giorgio Tsoukalos, a producer of the popular History Channel show Ancient Aliens, overlaid with the caption “I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.” The caption is a play on Tsoukalos's and others’ claims that the archaeological and historical record contains ample evidence for alien visits to earth in antiquity. To wit, past episodes of the show have suggested that Kachinas, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and indigenous rock art depict aliens; that much of the monumental art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica, South America, Near East, Easter Island (of course), Malta, and elsewhere represents the genius of extraterrestrial visitors; that Mayan kings were not really people but alien overlords; that extraterrestrials were responsible for the demise of many civilizations—if not the dinosaurs, too—and so on.

Denis Williams writes to comment on my article on Archaic shell mound pottery in eastern South America (Roosevelt 1995). He states that he will “correct” my article by putting on record “new facts.” Rather than correct my article, Williams"s comment misstates both the content of my article and that of earlier literature on Guyanese archaeology, and it merely repeats the data included in my article. In addition, Williams's comment presents some interesting but internally contradictory elaborations of his earlier interpretations of Guyanese archaeology but still without supplying the basic data on which his interpretations are based. In essence, contrary to my article, Williams states that there is no such thing as a Guyanese Archaic shell mound pottery occupation, known in earlier literature as the Alaka Incipient Ceramic phase (Evans and Meggers 1960:25-64). Williams presents this conclusion as “fact,” but it contradicts the existing data from stratigraphy, pottery distribution, and radiocarbon dates in the shell mounds, and he furnishes no other specific data that support it. In my comment on his comment, I will document these various aspects of his comment and define the type of data that he needs to present to allow empirical evaluation of his assertions.

There are several hundred known shell heaps, along the coast of Maine, some of which have been hardly dug into while others have been completely excavated. Except for their size, they appear much alike both on the surface and in their internal structure.

It is not possible to say with certainty that one tribe or group of Indians inhabited each shell heap from the time of its beginning until the heap reached its present size. It is probable that many of the shell heaps were not, in many instances, occupied year after year, while others show a continual growth without any marked indication of periods when the areas were not in use.

Toad bones, sometimes occurring in great numbers in pit features and other contexts in Native American village and mound sites in the Appalachian Summit, have been interpreted as evidence that toads were consumed, used for their purportedly hallucinogenic toad venom, placed as ritual deposits, or naturally entrapped/intrusive. A paucity or lack of bones of the head in some contexts is suggestive of decapitation and consumption of toads. Alternatively, bones of the head may be less preservable, recoverable, or identifiable. This study examines toad remains on Appalachian Summit late precontact and contact period sites, reviews previous experimentation, and presents a new experimental study undertaken to identify agencies of accumulation. We propose that toads were regularly consumed and possibly as part of ritualized events associated with village and mound construction. The temporal and geographic restriction of this practice to the Pisgah and Qualla phases of the Appalachian Summit suggests subsistence ethnicity as alluded to in historical accounts.

Discussions of polydactyly in the U.S. Southwest describe rock art and skeletal material confirming the presence of six-toed individuals at a variety of sites and in a variety of time periods. A review of Pueblo Bonito collections and archives reveals both skeletal and footprint evidence for six-toed individuals and a large and diverse assemblage of cultural material exhibiting foot-related imagery, including ornaments, sandals, ceramic effigies, and sandal-shaped ground stone. The reiterative nature of these foot-related images, reproduced in a wide range of media, and their frequent associations with highly structured and ritualized contexts, indicates that both five- and six-toed feet had symbolic importance. The evidence also suggests six-toed individuals were accorded special status within Chacoan society.

Two sites, Kogruk (at the summit of Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska) and Engigstciak (at the head of the Firth River delta, Yukon Territory, Canada), have recently yielded flake-tool assemblages which show striking resemblances to a Eurasiatic flake-blade tradition based on a Levallois-Mousterian stone-chipping technique, and to the Clovis flake-blade tradition of America which appears to be based on a similar chipping technique. It is suggested that these traditions are historically related and that the Arctic sites provide a possible link between the two. The presence of incipient fluting in Siberia and at Engigstciak may prove significant. Dating is discussed in terms of the ecology and geology of the sites and is correlated with the probable periods of availability of the Bering land bridge. An upland-foothills zone is seen to be essentially continuous from central Asia to central North America. It is suggested that this zone provided the only environmentally compatible link between the two continents, and that it was therefore the most probable route of early hunting peoples into the New World.

Pedoturbation by moles at archaeological sites in the Upper Galilee of Israel is offered to supplement data published by Bocek (1986).

The role of scavengers, especially dogs, with reference to archaeological faunal remains is not always clear. While distortion admittedly results from the activities of these animals, total destruction of all such evidence is questioned. Emphasis is placed upon fish remains in the examples and both ethnographic and archaeological data are used. It is argued that a more thorough knowledge of the nature of the food items themselves will greatly aid in assessing both their potential archaeological visibility and the information they may yield.

One of the first aspects of Middle American culture which strikes an amateur as interesting and possibly significant is the ordered arrangement of the buildings in almost all sites. Like those of Egypt—and unlike those of Greece and Rome —the sites seem to have been planned on a large pattern. The individual buildings are arranged according to a scheme which gives them space and which orients them on a common axis. They are not dropped in helter-skelter, crowded cheek-by-jowl, and set at odd angles to one another. Further, the city plans of Middle America seemollow fhe another and larger pattern. This is the pattern of the north and south axis of each site and each building. This orientation almost invariably follows one of three schemes. I t is sometimes true north, sometimes about 7 degrees east of north, sometimes about 17 degrees east of north, but practically never west of north. There are some sites which have no general pattern, and therefore no orientation.

The usually accepted earliest date for metal objects in Mesoamerica is the 8th century A.D. (Copan and Tazumal). There are, however, two occurrences reported in the literature which seem to have been ignored despite apparent ages much before this.

One is reported found by Cummings at Cuicuilco in 1924-25. In part his account reads, “… resting upon the top of the horseshoe-shaped walls were the fragments of a copper wand that had been made of thin copper plate hammered around a wooden core and held together by copper nails. Some of the charred remains of the wooden core still clung to the copper plate.” The stratigraphy is somewhat difficult to follow in the account, but it appears that the find dates between the last stone construction and the volcanic action which partly covered the site. The spot was overlain by a uniform layer of yellow sand and clay and above this, “surface loam with traces of ashes and carbonized material at the bottom,” a total of at least 7 feet of soil. Cummings speaks of the copper as “crude.” It is uncertain whether the term was used in a metallurgical sense. If the object can now be located, a metallographic examination should be made.

The suggestion of Brecher and Haag that the Poverty Point, Louisiana, earthwork structure possesses solar alignments is shown to be incorrect. The existence of other astronomical markers is problematical.

Blanton ’s use of a hypothesis of warfare among Early Post- Teotihuacan sociocultural entities of the Basin of Mexico to account for selective reoccupation following the end of Teotihuacan is based ultimately on a conceptualization of a dichotomy between a peaceful Classic period and a warlike Postclassic period. Except for unoccupied areas between local concentrations of Early Toltec sites there are no data to support the warfare hypothesis. Through a presentation of available Early Toltec settlement pattern data from the Basin of Mexico and a consideration of the sociocultural connections between Teotihuacan and the Early Toltec epi-Teotihuacan states, I support my earlier model which utilizes a tightly reasoned cultural ecological (sociocultural factors pais environmental features) framework to account for and predict the locations of concentrations of Early Toltec period sites. Continuity between Teotihuacan and the Early Toltec period sites is stressed.

A sound cultural chronology is the primary step in discovering the prehistory of any region. The chronology of the northwest coast of Florida and the adjacent Mobile Bay region of Alabama was first outlined by Willey (1949), utilizing his own surface and excavated collections, as well as the extensive but unsystematic work of Clarence B. Moore. Later Ford (1952) incorporated a portion of Willey's data into a chronological comparison of the Gulf Coast region and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Recently Sears (1956), in a most thorough report on the excavations at the Kolomoki site in southern Georgia, has called certain details of the ceramic chronology developed by Willey into question; notably the time position of the abundant check-stamped ware.