Coggins and Bricker have accepted my phonetic reading of one version of the north glyph as xaman, "north." Nevertheless, they maintain that the traditional north-south axis in Maya directional symbolism pertains more properly to a zenith-nadir axis. In my response I argue against that position and provide evidence that the cardinal directions played a fundamental role in mesoamerican cosmology. These directions are interpreted in a relatively loose sense as sectors on the horizon and not as cardinal points. In particular, the north direction is viewed as a sector on the horizon centered at a point which is approximately 14 degrees east of north. The evidence includes three independent proofs of the cardinal direction hypothesis. These proofs specifically implicate the four Maya directional glyphs as symbols of the four cardinal directions.

Beginning with Kathleen Deagan’s description of the St. Augustine Pattern, in which domestic relations between Spanish men and Native American women contributed to a pattern of mestizaje in Spanish colonies, gender has assumed a central role in archaeological perspectives on colonial encounters. This is especially true for those encounters that accompanied colonialism in the Americas during the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Gender relations were essential to the creation of new cultural identities during this time, as indigenous communities encountered immigrant, European settler groups often comprised mostly or entirely of adult men. Yet as significant as gender is for understanding how an encounter unfolded in time and space, it can be a challenge to identify and evaluate the archaeological correlates of such relations through material culture patterns. In this article, we use the related domains of food and foodways, particularly in the social context of provisioning, to evaluate how gender relations changed during the occupation of Fort San Juan de Joara (1566–1568), located at the Berry site in western North Carolina. Our research contributes to reappraisals of the St. Augustine Pattern, which posits well-defined roles for Native American women and Spanish men, by likewise situating the agency of Native American men.

Tainter and Lucas (1983) have given us a cogent and useful critique of the “significance concept” that is a fundamental part of historic preservation and “conservation archeology” as practiced in the United States. I have no real disagreement with their arguments or with their conclusions, although I am not sure they can be operationalized.

As we read the archaeological reports of recent years, many of us are becoming slightly appalled at the vast store of information that is coming to us each month ffpm the laboratories processing radiocarbon specimens. This material is rapidly being absorbed into the archaeological literature where, in its present form, it presents a slightly confusing picture. Most of us learned our archaeological chronologies in the old Gregorian calendrical system and to have, for example, a date of 8431 ± 475 B.P. suddenly thrown at us gives our delicate nervous systems quite a shock. Undoubtedly many archaeologists will confess that they must mentally subtract 1950 years from such a radiocarbon date to be able to fit it into their long-established chronological systems.

A more serious criticism is this: the literature is rapidly becoming flooded with radiocarbon dates, dating back at present from the years between 1948 and 1953. The physicists seem to feel that time stopped somewhere around the year 1950, and thus all historical dating in the future can be made from that date.

There are indications that future archaeological investigations of the Late Postclassic horizon of the central and eastern Gulf Coast will reveal the existence of several regional artistic subtraditions of the prevailing Mixteca-Puebla horizon style. This would discourage the current pan-"Mixtec" approach to the interpretation of Postclassic Mesoamerican culture. A consequence of this presently confusing practice is the provenience debate concerning the religious Borgia Group codices. An abstract method of costume analysis indicates that these pictorial manuscripts did not originate in the Mixteca because they do not display Mixtec ritual clothing patterns. Data from the costume analysis, together with internal clues from the codices and archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence, demonstrate that the Borgia Group codices had diverse origins. The general Puebla-Tlaxcala region is suggested as the probable homeland for codices Borgia, Cospi, and Vaticanus B. The stylistic twins, Fejervary-Mayer and Laud, are assigned to the eastern Gulf Coast.

During the past two years the field activities of the Nininger Laboratory (now the American Meteorite Laboratory, Inc.) have brought to light four new meteorites on old Indian camp sites in eastern Colorado (Plate 5) and western Kansas. The mere fact of these several associations strongly suggests that the aborigines recognized a special significance in these fallen stones. However, it must be admitted that, without additional evidence, these associations could be regarded as accidental.

Infant and child skeletal remains from the site of Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico, were examined for particular skeletal pathologies. The observed frequencies of those pathologies do not support a hypothesis of a temporal shift in subsistence patterns. A hypothesized change in settlement pattern is supported by the increase of a particular class of skeletal lesions.

In The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise of Charles Babbage, an English mathematician who lived over 100 years ago, is contained an appendix entitled “On the Age of Strata, as Inferred from the Rings of Trees Embedded in Them.“ The account is of particular interest since it defines the method of deriving chronology from treerings, and Babbage actually envisages the possibility of employing the method to secure archaeological dating.

One of the hallmarks of the new archaeology was a shift from “sites” to regions as the investigatory universe appropriate to most archaeological problems (e.g., Binford 1964). This new emphasis was accompanied by a call for multidisciplinary investigations. The precedents usually cited are studies such as MacNeish's Tehuacan Valley project (Byers 1967-1972) and Braidwood's Jarmo project (Braidwood and Howe 1960). Archaeological Survey in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940-1947 (Phillips, Ford, and Griffin 1951), which shares many of these features, is not commonly cited and is one of the more undervalued classics of its time.

Microcomputers are proposed as relatively inexpensive, portable substitutes for mainframe computers in processing archaeological data. Five types of software packages and an economical hardware system are described. These can facilitate cataloging and sorting data, create two-dimensional tables and graphs, carry out statistical tests, and do word processing.

For many years the Adena aspect has been one of the best known prehistoric cultures in the Ohio Valley. The type site was excavated by Dr. W. C. Mills of the Ohio State Museum at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time, however, it was thought to be a burial place of Fort Ancient peoples. This opinion was not outmoded until the publication of the results of the excavation of the Westenhaver mound by Dr. Mills in which he, for the first time, set forth the concept of an Adena culture as distinct from both Hopewell and Fort Ancient. A list of traits distinctive of the Adena culture was published by Mr. H. C. Shetrone in which no mention was made of the pottery associated with the culture. In a more comprehensive publication by the same author, little attention was paid to the ceramic remains because of the paucity of data. The last statement regarding the presence or absence of pottery in Adena is that of Dr. E. F. Greenman : complete pottery vessels and pottery sherds are here considered as separate cultural items and are placed in Table C, containing traits not characteristic of the Adena culture.

Two instances of birch-bark “scrolls” in archaeological contexts are reported from the Head-of-the-Lakes region of Ontario. One site in Rainy Lake yielded numerous examples; another in Quetico Park produced several other specimens. Archaeologists should be aware of the possibility of making such finds in the paper-birch area.

Mortuary rituals are compared and contrasted in order to better understand social interaction between the Tucson Basin Hohokam of southern Arizona and the Trincheras tradition populations of northern Sonora. This interaction is explored through the examination of ideas about personhood and embodiment, and their relationship to the biological profiles and posthumous treatments of individuals during the Hohokam Classic period (AD 1150–1450) and the occupation of Cerro de Trincheras (AD 1300–1450). In both areas, cremation was the main burial custom, and both groups had complex, multistage cremation rituals, in which burning of the body played only a small part. Examination of rich archaeological data and well-excavated contexts at these sites revealed remarkable similarities and differences in body treatment during the mortuary ritual. Tucson Basin Hohokam mortuary practices suggest a stronger connection to, and remembrance of, the deceased within smaller social groups. In contrast, mortuary practices at Cerro de Trincheras emphasize similarities among the various cremated individuals, with rituals directed more toward the broader social group. Results suggest that the two groups were fundamentally similar in how they treated the bodies of the dead during the cremation process, but different in how the dead were remembered and commemorated.

Studies in the sociopolitics of archaeology have shown patterns of inequality in publishing. Because this inequality affects the richness of perspectives on the past, the extent of unevenness requires continual documentation. This article explores gendered and institutionally based patterns of authorship in prominent archaeology journals, archaeology papers in general science journals, and Sapiens, a public-facing web magazine, from 2016 to 2021. We find that the representation of women is similar across these two types of journals, for authors both in the United States and abroad. Men still publish significantly more than women though the gap is narrowing due to the publication activity of recent PhDs. Using a large database of PhDs as a baseline for comparison, we find that women publish less in these venues than expected, resulting in an imbalance. Some archaeology programs have a larger presence in journal publishing than others, but this imbalance is not as pervasive as what has been observed in hiring practices. Archaeology journals exhibit healthier measures of diversity, compared to Science, in terms of the institutional affiliation of authors.

While much has been written concerning the aboriginal steatite (soapstone) bowl industry, it would seem that too little attention has been given to its cultural significance and the people who developed it. Whatever their traits, these stone bowl people, through initiative and persistent effort to raise their standard of living, became primitive industrialists of note. From soft steatite, which they quarried, they made stone bowls of various shapes and sizes, some of which were transported in trade to far-away regions devoid of steatite deposits.

That New England was the center from which quarry work methods spread to other localities, probably south, is the opinion held by some. However, it is not known whether the concept of utilizing the soft soapy stone for pots originated in New England. It may have started further north where steatite deposits occur with telltale pick scars of primitive workmen.

The comments by Reid and others demonstrate a continued failure to distinguish problems of a general theoretical nature from those concerns relating to specific interpretations of southwestern prehistory. We separate these issues here. We also suggest that confusion arises because there are important philosophical differences between our approaches.

The San Luis Rey River flows westward across northern San Diego County, California. The area from Henshaw dam down to and including the Bonsall post office can be described as the central San Luis Rey River basin. It includes a little less than half of the total watershed area but contains many tributary streams and probably accounts for more than half of the total runoff. The area is mountainous and wooded or brush covered and is dissected by numerous small streams, many of which originate in the higher elevations of the Agua Tibia and Palomar mountain ranges.

Ample water supplies and favorable thermal zones which belt the area, coupled with a heavy growth of forest cover along the streams, provided both vegetal and animal food supplies which in turn resulted in more than average aboriginal population. The heaviest concentrations of population were in the areas now known as Pauma Valley, Rincon, The Potrero, and the La Jolla area, all of which still have sizable Indian populations living on reservations. In historic times, the region was occupied by Indians of the Luisefio stock (Kroeber, 1925, p. 648).

A review of archaeological research in the short-grass Plains and adjacent Prairie regions shows that although early travelers observed evidences of the prehistoric occupation of the area, no systematic archaeological work was undertaken until very recently. The publication of Strong's Introduction to Nebraska Archeology in 1935 opened the quarter-century of growth which was at first characterized by intensive surveys and testing, then by the excavations sponsored by the federal relief agencies, and since World War II by the large-scale salvage work connected with federal water-control programs, especially the Missouri Basin Project. These salvage operations have produced an enormous body of new data on all major time horizons and from all parts of the Plains, as well as an awareness of the rich potential of Plains pre-history. The scope of these operations has required a high degree of cooperation between research organizations and has led to the development of new excavation techniques, especially those involving heavy earth-moving machinery. Efforts to organize these new data have resulted in a uniform method of site designation and broadly applicable artifact classifications, but no scheme for culture classification to replace the Midwestern Taxonomic System which has been the conventional method of expressing cultural similarities. The direct historical approach to the problem of the ethnic identification of archaeological complexes, settlement pattern studies, and the relationship between man and environment, which have long been major interests of Plains archaeologists, continue to dominate the interpretive scene.