Four north coast Peruvian stirrup-spout jars of the middle Moche period show every indication of having been cast from a single mold. Heretofore no more than two actual duplicates from one mold have been described for pre-Columbian north coast pottery. This mold-made product varies from cast to cast in spout form, hue, paint distribution, polish, general surface texture, quality of mold-impressed lines, diameter measurements, and sharpness of relief. A second series of four similar Moche jars which were not from the same mold indicates that duplicates cannot be posivitely identified without careful firsthand examination of the specimens.

Probably the study of petroglyphs and pictographs has been the most neglected field of archaeology. This disregard has prevailed despite the fact that both types of drawings exist in almost every state. Few attempts have been made to study the relations between different sites or between petroglyphs and other remains. Petroglyphs are regarded with little concern because little is known about them and detailed descriptions will not help to solve the problems confronting the investigator.

Giovanna Vitelli (this volume) offers interesting perspectives on the archaeological study of Indigenous people in colonial contexts. She does so through a commentary on my recently published (Silliman 2009) article in which I outlined a perspective on practice and memory that has helped me interpret the ways that Indigenous communities can persist between the dichotomies of change and continuity. I offer here some clarifications and engagements with her comments.

Since its inception the Society for American Archaeology has been concerned about "encourag[ing] a rational public appreciation of the aims… of archaeological research," and aiding in the conservation of archaeological data. The Society has acted on these concerns by becoming involved in the development of legislation intending to regulate the management of the archaeological resource base. During the recent campaign to amend the National Historic Preservation Act, a statement of "Basic Principles of Archaeological Resource Management" was drafted and accepted by the SAA Executive Committee. This position paper was useful in developing new congressional guidelines for the National Historic Preservation Act Amendments of 1980 (P.L. 95-515), and will serve as a basis for evaluating future international, federal, state, and local legislation and management programs.

The astronomy of the ancient Maya is an impressive achievement. Without the use of optical instruments, the Maya of the Classic period observed and recorded recurrent eclipse periods as well as the synodic orbit of Venus. Early work on the Maya hieroglyphs interpreted the chronological and calendric systems of the Classic period inscriptions and demonstrated the existence of a lunar synodic calendar. Many of the Lunar Series hieroglyphs that record the lunar synodic calendar have been interpreted, but the meaning of Glyph X has remained unknown. This report offers the explanation that Glyph X records positions in an eighteen-month lunar calendar. The Classic period Maya may have used this eighteen-month calendar to establish an average length for the lunar synodic month.

In the October, 1954, issue of American Antiquity (Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 174-5), A. McL. Howard called attention to a type of cruciform artifact which occurs sporadically through northwestern Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The writer would like to make note of a similar find from a site in west-central Sonora.

This cross (Fig. 135) was found on an extensive village midden in the vicinity of the pueblo of San Jose de Guaymas, approximately 3.7 km. northeast from the Guaymas airport. The site has temporarily been designated 53:F-71. The object was but one of many obsidian and basalt artifacts found scattered over the site area. It is possible that this cultural occupation represents the predecessors of the surviving Guaymefias Indians whom Father Kino encountered in 1687.

The artifact is of polished obsidian, with fine secondary chipping along the arms. It measures 39 and 41 mm. tip to tip, and 8 mm. in thickness. This cross supports the highland-coastal relationship already suggested by Ekholm's finds at Guasave and Topolobampo, Sinaloa.

Analysis of two separate assemblages of lithic debris from Archaic sites in the Pecos River Drainage (New Mexico) has led to the discovery of what appears to be a noncultural bias affecting flake size, which is believed to be caused by the inherent properties of the flaking material. Graphs of the flake length/thickness ratio versus frequency of ratio occurrence coincide remarkably in their curve characteristics, indicating a nonrandom causal factor. This factor is attributed to the wave pattern created by the blow of the flaking implement and is governed by the physical properties of the medium through which it is passing.

Charlton (1973) argues that Parsons' (1969, 1970) explanation for the abandonment of the central Texcoco region, Mexico, during the Early Toltec period, is misleading because Parsons considered only “non-ecological” factors. Specifically, Parsons suggested that this zone was not occupied because it was the boundary between the political spheres of two competing regional centers, Tula and Cholula. Charlton argues instead, that the region was abandoned due to “ecological” factors. Namely, he argues, the Early Toltec period was a period of low population density, when only the most suitable agricultural land was occupied; thus the central Texcoco region was not utilized because it is agriculturally marginal. Charlton’s emphasis on the use of “ecological” factors to explain the distribution of Early Toltec settlements is misleading because it does not allow prediction of the locations of other known Early Toltec settlements in the Valley of Mexico. Abandonment of large portions of the Valley of Mexico was a general pattern during this period, due to “Balkanization” and competition between local centers.

The need to teach archaeological field techniques and the obligation to conserve the resources of the past often involve conflicting priorities. On-site instruction ought to be compatible with the accountability of archaeologists under recent provisions for public archaeology and historic preservation. The author presents a viable tested alternative to the indiscriminate exploitation of archaeological sites for the purpose of student practice in field methodology.

Two distinctive types of wooden drinking vessels, known as keros and pacchas, were manufactured in Peru both before and after the Spanish conquest. Thus they exemplify the transition from archaeology to history and ethnology. Each has counterparts in pottery, metal, or stone, but the majority are of wood, usually decorated with colored motifs produced by paint with a lacquer base. This also was used on a few unique vessels of eccentric shapes (Fig. 64 b). Keros are fairly common; pacchas exceedingly rare. Little has been written about either group.

The vast program of highway construction which our country has undertaken creates an urgent problem for all archaeologists, for the construction of these new highways will result in major changes in the roadways of every state and the inevitable destruction of great sections of our archaeological resources. This destruction need not result in the loss of scientific data, however, for the Eighty-fourth Congress included archaeological salvage as an integral part of the expanded highway program.

Numerous reports of trace element analyses contain defects which severely limit their utility. These defects are, on the whole, inexcusable and serve only to hamper the comparison and replication of such studies by other researchers.

Patterson (1994) offers a history of the development of Social Archaeology and five points that, according to him, constitute its theoretical ground. Oyuela-Caycedo et al. (1997) provide significant new evidence that questions the actual importance of the intellectual current and theory described by Patterson. While the former gives an inflated perspective of Social Archaeology, the latter leads the reader into a post-Social Archaeology limbo. Providing facts ignored by both Patterson and Oyuela-Caycedo et al., I elaborate a third argument, centered in Peru, which recognizes National Archaeology as a response to the failures of Social Archaeology. Taking into account the century-long search for identity—key to any understanding of twentieth-century Peru—the concept of National Archaeology, as developed in four national institutions, laid the ideological and political ground for the end of the terrorism in Peru.

Since the analysis by R. F. Heizer and R. K. Beardsley (1943) of 7 fired clay figurines from 3 localities in California, archaeological investigations in the central and northern areas of the state have produced more knowledge of the types and occurrence of this form.

The 25 figurines discussed here include 3 from site 4-Son-299, 4 from site 4-Mrn-168, sites excavated by the University of California Archaeological Survey, and 18 from Gunther Island, site 4-Hum-67, of which 10 are in the private collection of H. H. Stuart of Eureka, California, and the remainder in the State Indian Museum at Sacramento.

The specimens here reported on, which represent more than 3 times the number available for analysis in 1943, provide additional data on design motifs and distribution, and in addition possess much more clearly definable cultural associations than do the original 7 specimens.

The origin and culture of the older archaeological material taken from Ludlow Cave, Cave Hills, Harding County, South Dakota, in July, 1920, has been subjected to some discussion and speculation. The cave was named after William Ludlow, Chief Army Engineer of the Department of Dakota, who visited it in 1874 while accompanying the Custer Expedition from Fort Abraham Lincoln to the Black Hills.

The cave is located in the northeast quarter of section 12, township 21, range 5 W, in the extreme northwest corner of the state in the Sioux Forest Reserve. Geologically, it is in the Ludlow Division of the Laramie formation, Upper Cretaceous Period. It is irregular in shape, extends back thirty-nine feet, and is sixteen feet wide and ten feet high. The entrance was partially blocked by rocks, each weighing several tons, which had fallen from above.

Human culture signifies the emergence of an entirely new domain of existence: an event in natural history that is paralleled only by the Cambrian Explosion in terms of creativity and scope. The question of how human culture—as opposed to its animal counterparts—came to become open-endedly creative and cumulative is therefore one of wide and general scientific importance. Several causal factors have been proposed to date to explain this unique quality, including population size, transmission fidelity, pedagogy, and creativity. Inquiries, however, tend to focus exclusively on one factor at a time, leaving us blind to important issues regarding their relative roles and combined action. We here combine two models, one focusing on population size and the other on imitation fidelity, as constraints and enablers of evolutionary cumulativity. We explore how these factors interact to promote and inhibit evolutionary cumulativity and how the synthetic model compares to the original models individually and to empirical and experimental data. We report several findings that do not emerge in the models that we combine individually. For example, group size is found to be important for small but not for larger groups, an observation that moreover substantially improves agreement with data.