Recent papers by Michelle Hegmon (2003) and Joe Watkins (2003) purport to “map the terrain” of North American archaeology. Yet these two metaphorical maps present very different views of the contours of North American archaeology. Taken together, the two papers highlight problematic divisions between (1) theory and practice in North American archaeology, and (2) academic archaeology and cultural resource management. What are the roles archaeological theory plays in the contemporary practice of archaeology? Why do discussions of archaeological theory have so little to offer stakeholders other than academic archaeologists? Although Hegmon has shown many areas of convergence in archaeological theory, her depiction of “processual-plus” archaeologies dulls the edge of postprocessual critiques of the processual status quo. I argue that feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial archaeologies cannot be subsumed by this label because some of their practitioners aspire to contribute to social change beyond the realm of archaeology itself. These practitioners realize that the practice of archaeology always has political consequences, not just for academic archaeologists, but for a diverse set of stakeholders.

Recent developments in American archaeological theory are criticized with regard to inaccuracies in the use of the concepts of science, theory, and reality. The author argues that archaeology (like anthropology) is a discipline rather than a "hard" science dealing with large amounts of rigorously quantifiable, replicable data; thus attempts to "prove laws" through the use of statistical methods and models borrowed from the physical sciences are often spurious. He believes that theory is primarily explanatory rather than methodological, and hence should be presented as an explanation of a number of cases rather than of one or two selected examples. In addition, rigorous methods of data collection should not be sacrificed in the search for more "rigorous" theory, a search which too often seems to stem from a defensive desire to make archaeology a "hard" science. The author argues that objective reality is too commonly confused with both logical constructs abstracted from this reality and with constructs such as "cultural reality" which are in turn abstracted from these constructs. He feels models describing objective reality are simply utilitarian, explanatory abstractions not related to such concepts as absolute truth and absolute reality. Little is offered in the way of constructive conclusions save for the suggestions that there may be no need for a set of specifically archaeological theory, and that archaeological knowledge is neither power nor defensive justification but merely its own reward.

A tendency for many precolumbian buildings to align east of north is examined for possible astronomical motives. Stellar and solar phenomena are suggested as possible influences. The importance of clearly establishing the relative positions of observer and point of reference in any archaeo-astronomical analysis is emphasized. Certain misconceptions concerning chronological correlations of alignments and a new dimension in establishing orientations are discussed.

Recent research has resolved problems surrounding the chronology and archeobotanical record of the Salts Cave Vestibule. Formerly, widely disparate radiocarbon dates made assignment of the site to either the Late Archaic or Early Woodland period equally problematic. Eight new radiocarbon determinations from Vestibule charcoal indicate an occupation in the first millennium B.C., confirming an assignment to the Early Woodland period. Previous analyses of carbonized plant remains from stratified deposits in the Vestibule indicated that the domestication of two native plants, sumpweed and sunflower, preceded the introduction of cucurbits into this part of the Eastern Woodlands. Data from other Midwestern sites have contradicted this generalization. A recent analysis of a second series of archeobotanical samples indicates that cucurbits were present at Salts Cave as early as the domesticated native annuals. These new data render the archeobotanical record of Salts Cave less anomalous than previously, and support the currently accepted reconstructions of prehistoric subsistence change in the Eastern Woodlands.

There is an apparent discrepancy in the reported data from Meadowcroft Rockshelter. Radiocarbon dates from Stratum IIa appear to indicate a Wisconsinan full-glacial occupation by man in the shelter. The recovered fauna and flora are discordant with other local Wisconsinan-age fossils.

This study revisits an earlier publication in this journal (Wills and Windes 1989) in which a settlement model involving seasonal mobility and limited household autonomy was outlined for Shabik’eschee Village, a Basketmaker III period (ca. A.D. 400–750) site in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. We return to that work for three reasons. First, the original interpretation has been challenged and an alternative view offered in the form of a large sedentary village. Second, the issue of Basketmaker III sedentism is central to recent efforts to identify and understand a Neolithic Demographic Transition in the northern Southwest. And third, we have obtained new field data from Shabik’eschee and Chaco that contributes to this debate. We conclude that our understanding of Shabik’ eschee’s history is improved by both new data and the ongoing consideration of alternative models, but the site does not contain evidence for a sedentary village.

Archaeologists have long sought to understand the relationships between the quantity and diversity of material that accumulates at a site and the variables of community size and occupation duration. This paper examines these relationships through an analysis of mobility and settlement population in the late precontact and early colonial Chesapeake region of the eastern U.S. Drawing on previous accumulations research and two “strong” archaeological cases that provide critical values, the study develops measures of relative sedentariness and ceramic-discard behavior that can be used to model behavior at sites without stratified deposits or well-preserved architecture. Application of this model to the James River Valley of Virginia produces more reliable dates for the inception of village communities, several centuries following the adoption of maize-based horticulture in the region. The analysis also suggests that the fundamental nature of residential settlement changed dramatically in the study area after A.D. 1200 with the emergence of a settlement hierarchy including relatively large communities with lengthy occupation durations. The creation of a new cultural landscape containing substantial villages, combined with related changes in household and community organization, is central to the origins and development of the Powhatan paramountcy, one of North America's archetypal complex chiefdoms.

Despite almost 100 yr of research on the Yucatan peninsula, including several major archaeological and ethnohistoric projects, an organized synthesis of the pre-Late Postclassic culture history of this region has yet to appear. In the present paper, a trial coordination of the accumulated archaeological and ethnohistoric materials dealing with the eighth through twelfth centuries A.D. is presented, and a culture historic framework for this period is suggested.

The Chicama-Moche Intervalley Canal never carried water as a functioning canal due to uplift slope errors made by unsophisticated Chimu engineers. There is no evidence of tectonic uplift directly affecting the Intervalley Canal, either during or after its construction, to create the numerous uphill sections along its entire length. The hydrological calculations of Ortloff et al. (1982) are based on preliminary survey data which do not conform with more detailed excavation and survey data. Thus, in this commentary the Intervalley Canal is reinterpreted as an impressive manifestation of the political and organizational power of the Chimu rulers, but not as a great hydraulic engineering feat.

This special section of American Antiquity contains 9 papers that address the organization of production in Chaco Canyon during the height of the "Chaco Phenomenon," a regional system that covered the northern part of the American Southwest between A.D. 900 and 1150. These papers are part of an effort to synthesize the National Park Service's Chaco Project, a large-scale research project undertaken during the 1970s and early 1980s. Our introductory paper provides a brief history of research in Chaco Canyon, an overview of the Chaco phenomenon, a summary of the Chaco synthesis project, and a synopsis of the other papers. The first four papers in this issue were written by experts on prehistoric economic systems who developed models of the operation of production and distribution in Chaco Canyon. The following four papers, by Chaco scholars, use data from the Chaco Project to evaluate the models presented in the initial papers. There is general agreement that Chaco was a place where people from the surrounding region gathered for participation in communal ceremonial events, including the building of the most striking element of the Chaco phenomenon--great houses. Production is seen as household-based, serving to finance these communal gatherings.

Just before the archaeological party of the University of Chicago moved camp to the extreme southeastern part of Fulton County, Illinois, during the summer of 1933, the writer visited the aboriginal site (designated Fv896 by the archaeological survey) on the Norman Crable farm located on the high Illinois River bluff about two miles north of Bluff City. Here for several years Mr. Glenn McGirr, a local collector, had opened a large number of graves to secure artifacts, and on that afternoon had opened six of them. The burials were extended on the back with the arms to the sides and accompanied by typical Middle Mississippi pottery and other artifacts that were assigned to the Spoon River focus of the Monk's Mound aspect after excavations had been carried on by the field party.

The present weight of evidence indicates that the Sierra Pinacate, Sonora, was an enclave occupied continuously from the end of the Altithermal period by people of the Amargosa complex, who, as Areneños, spoke a dialect of Papago in historic times. It is proposed that the Amargosans spoke an ancestral Piman tongue and that the present range of Piman speakers, from the Gila River to the Río Santiago in Jalisco, represents the extent of the Amargosan occupation. At the extreme southern end of the range, Amargosans were in contact with Mesoamerican culture, and they acquired pottery making, canal irrigation, and other specialized traits from this contact. Given the corridor of Piman speakers from south to north, a group of these southern people is thought to have brought the Vahki phase of the Hohokam, en bloc, to Snaketown on the Gila River, about 300 B.C. There the culture developed and expanded until A.D. 1400, with varying rates of accretions of traits and immigrants from the homeland. At that time, Piman-speaking Sobaipuri from the east, belonging to the Sonoran Brownware tradition, invaded the Hohokam territory and conquered it. Descendants of captive Hohokam survive as the Buzzard and Red Ant moieties of the Papago and Pima. Yuman entry into the South-west is thought to be late, opposing Schroeder's Hakatayan theory. A redefinition of the term "Hohokam" is proposed. It is suggested that this term be confined to the culture pattern which developed in the Gila Valley and thus to separate the Hohokam from those Amargosans who developed in the Sonoran Brownware tradition, who might be called the "Ootam."

“Significance” is evaluated from the perspective of federal agency land management practices and compared with the perspective of significance as a measure of research value.

In northeastern Bolivia, on savanna lands subject to seasonal inundation, there are many thousands of pre-Spanish earthworks including drained fields, causeways, mounds, canals, and circular ditches. Additional information is presented here on the nature, quantity, distribution, purposes, and antiquity of these only recently described earthworks, along with a brief review of similar features in South America and elsewhere.

A simple graphical method is presented for the seriation or ordering of archaeological assemblages or types. Like most seriation methods, it requires the tabulation of coefficients of similarity between the units in question. By a consideration, restricted to the most similar neighbors of each unit in turn, a uniquely determined structure usually emerges within a few minutes. When the archaeological material is such that it may be seriated well, this structure compares closely with computer seriations of the same data. The method is illustrated by the reexamination of seriations by other workers and is exemplified by graphical and computer seriation of the Cycladic cemeteries of the Aegean Early Bronze age.

The inability to control for variables which affect protein decay is the major problem limiting the use of nitrogen as a chemical method of dating archaeological bone specimens. Of these variables, soil pH, ground water, and temperature are the major factors. In laboratory simulation experiments, we determined the effect of temperature on the time dependent decay rate of bone protein. In this research, 100 mg samples of ground cow bone were sealed in test tubes containing 5 ml of water and heated at temperatures varying from 100 degrees C to 140 degrees C for time periods up to 5 hr. Nitrogen concentration for each sample was determined using a modified micro-Kjeldahl method developed in our laboratory. Using standard regression analysis, we determined the decay rates of nitrogen for each temperature. By extrapolation from these data, we were able to show that differences in mean annual temperature between archaeological sites can have a substantial effect on the decay rate of bone protein.

New methodologies are needed to address multiple componentcy and short reuse episodes that are characteristic of mobile group residential and logistical strategies. Chronometric results are often misinterpreted when evaluated within a framework suited to long-term sedentary occupations. The standard practices of age-averaging, eliminating apparent "anomalous" results, and relying on high profile diagnostic tools and vessels and the most visible features—along with the expectation for "contextual congruence"—mask multi-componentcy and episodic reuse. High incidences of site reuse have been detected by considering alternate site development models and looking specifically for evidence of distinct shorter term occupations.

Southwestern archaeologists have traditionally devoted much attention to inventory and description of material culture change between the Pithouse and Pueblo periods. Unfortunately, our understanding of the ecological, demographic, and organizational aspects of the Pithouse-to-Pueblo transition is much less advanced. The present study attempts to remedy this deficiency for at least one portion of the Southwest, relying largely on survey data from the Mogollon culture area of extreme western Texas. Three major aspects of Pithouse-to-Pueblo change are considered. These are demographic change, subsistence pattern change, and social-organizational change. Basically, the transition is seen as a fundamental adaptive reorientation in which a small-scale, extensive, generalized adaption is replaced by one which was larger in scale, more intensive, and more specialized in focus than ever before. Factors motivating this transition are considered, and the supra-local applicability of the resulting model is discussed.

In February of 1879, Dr. J. M. Toner, Professor Otis Mason, and Col. Garrick Mallery placed an advertisement in the Washington, D.C. newspapers that read, in part

Geomorphologic and sediment-stratigraphic study of the Koster site has been carried out in the broader context of the lower Illinois Valley. Accumulation of reworked loess in an overdeepened tributary valley began at Koster shortly after 10,000 B.P., and continued through Holocene times with major sedimentary breaks. The Illinois floodplain began to stabilize ca. 5000 B.P. after rapid aggradation, but remained a dynamic environment that developed its present patterns after 2500 B.P. Valley-margin hillside vegetation was considerably more xeric during the periods 1200-950 B.P., 2100–1900 B.P., and ca. 9700–5000 B.P., with hillside woodland reduced to hill prairie or parkland ca. 8500–7700 B.P. These dramatic Holocene environmental changes suggest that interpretative archaeological models for cultural adaptations through time must consider the environment as a critical variable, rather than as a constant.