In the first classification of the prehistoric cultures of Minnesota (Wilford 1941), no attempt was made to present a chronological sequence, though some temporal relationships were indicated. Since that time the efforts of archaeologists in all parts of the eastern United States in excavating sites and in reporting the results, in pooling their knowledge at regional conferences, and in constructing and publishing cultural sequences for regions and for the entire area, have crystallized in a framework in which the 3 major cultural groupings, the patterns, have been fitted into a chronological sequence of 4 periods. It is now possible to place the Minnesota cultures in this framework with a fair degree of confidence. Table 6 presents this placement in terms of the categories of the Midwestern Taxonomic System.

The Garbage Project has excavated eight sanitary landfulls from California to Florida and analyzed 6.71 metric tons of refuse deposited between 1952 and 1988. While the ultimate goal of this continuing endeavor is to collect archaeological data on contemporary discards using a methodology that will link our society to the past, this initial report relates Garbage Project data to three issues of current public concern. This first applied archaeology of landfills has identified: (1) the contents of specific landfills and possible refinements for "national" estimates of U.S. landfill contents; (2) a link between moisture level and rate of refuse decomposition; and (3) part of the pathway of migration for heavy metals.

While new data about drought cycles are informative, patterns of ill health and violence and the origins of sociopolitical complexity in southern California are best understood through a broad consideration of multiple conditions and processes. These include various kinds of environmental and demographic conditions, changes in social and economic strategies, and changes in the organization of labor.

Two recent publications offer stimulating generalizations about pottery analysis. Weaver (1963) considers how archaeologists can secure assistance in pottery analysis. Fontana and others (1962) question the cultural significance of temper. Advice in both studies is based on pottery from a simple level of technological development. A broader view of contemporary potters' techniques shows that paste composition may or may not have cultural significance. Simple rules of analysis are misleading because of the complexity of pottery and the varied role it has played in culture.

When sherd collections are enormous, it is extremely desirable to have procedures for discarding portions of the material which minimize risks of losing useful information and are easy to apply. It is suggested that sherd lots be made the sampling units. Lots from each provenience category relevant for a given problem can be listed, and then a random sample of lots from each category included in the sample. Since the value of a sample depends more on its absolute size than on the proportion of the population it represents, it is suggested that ceramic categories be roughly ranked according to their scarcity. A relatively small number of lots from each provenience category will provide an adequate sample of common ceramic categories, while a larger number of lots are needed for rare categories. This procedure insures that certain lots will be preserved in their entirety, while common sherd categories may be discarded from other lots if they do not add much to any sample of interest.

Some of the richest and most varied archaeological information in North America lies on desert surfaces of the Greater Southwest and Great Basin. Because these sites are erosional exposures, it has been common to discount them and to overlook the opportunities they afford. This article outlines procedures which have proved successful in studying an extensive area of Paleo-Indian sites at China Lake, California. These procedures may be adapted to similar desert regions elsewhere.

A recent report by Moholy-Nagy (1978) notes the frequency and wide distribution of the freshwater snails Pomacea flagellata and Pachychilus spp. in archaeological sites of the southern Maya Lowlands. The report suggests that these snails served as supplementary sources of protein. In this comment, the author describes the modern Lacandon Maya use of Pachychilus shells as lime for processing maize into tortillas and corn gruels and proposes that snail shells may also have served the ancient Maya as a source of lime.

Archaeology offers a unique opportunity to explore the ways humans have created, lived within, and changed their communities. Recent research indicates important theoretical distinctions in the way in which archaeologists conceive of community, and further development of nontraditional theoretical models is necessary to improve our ability to understand communities of the past. This study offers a reconsideration of community that focuses on the incorporation of multiple spatial scales with social dynamics. Through the use of ethnographic and ethnohistoric examples, the link between community and spatial relationships in longhouse-using tribal societies is examined. A case study of community from the Oneota tradition of the North American midcontinent is then reconsidered using insights into kinds of community situated at and affecting multiple spatial scales. The reanalysis emphasizes the way human relationships in multiple social contexts created a multitude of spatially situated community links, and illustrates the importance of using alternative theoretical approaches.

Recent ethnographic work among the Tzotzil Indians in Highland Chiapas has revealed the presence of cosmological concepts and patterns of behavior that may have an important historical relationship to the ancient Lowland Maya. While these data offer exciting possibilities for inferences concerning the ancient Maya, we need to proceed with caution and to take account of a number of critical methodological problems before we project these patterns back into the prehistoric past. We know that all cultural systems are in a constant state of change; hence we should not assume that we are finding any exact survivals from the past, but rather hope that the trends of change in the Tzotzil area have been consistent enough to make inferences possible and productive. We also know that there is a great deal of variation among Tzotzil municipios (and even within municipios), so that statements about “Tzotzil cosmological concepts” need to be treated with caution. Finally, the hypotheses I have advanced in previous papers — such as the possible relationship between sacred mountains in contemporary Zinacantan and pyramids in ancient Maya archaeological sites, or the possibility that some system of rotation in priestly roles was functioning in the ancient Maya ceremonial centers — should be treated strictly as hypotheses and not converted into statements or propositions as Holland did in his recent paper.

No one who has seen the fortified villages and inaccessible cliff dwellings of the Pueblo III period of Anasazi culture can fail to have been impressed by the amount of labor expended in their construction or by the inconvenience entailed in living in them. It is clear that they reflect an urgent need for defense; it is less clear against whom their builders had to defend themselves. Southwestern archaeologists have been prone to dismiss this problem with somewhat vague statements about nomad invasions which compelled the agricultural Anasazi to draw together into large groups and build strongholds. This theory was a dyanced very early in the history of Southwestern research, when most of our present information on this region was lacking, and it may be profitable to re-examine it at this time.

David I. Bushnell, Jr., first aroused wide interest in the fluted points found in Virginia. He accomplished this primarily by an article in the June 9, 1934 issue of the Literary Digest, in which he announced the discovery of “two Folsom points” in Virginia. This article and subsequent references to these two “points of recognized Folsom type” (Bushnell, 1935, pp. 35-6, 56) called special attention to the importance and possibilities of such finds in the East. In 1934, only one collector of Virginia projectile points, Arthur Robertson of Chase City, Virginia, could claim “five or more” of these fluted points (Wells, 1935, pp. 1, 14). However, the intense interest which Bushnell created stimulated a search in Virginia for this rare type of point, with the result that shortly after Bushnell's 1934 announcement, sporadic finds of fluted points having a resemblance to both the Folsom Fluted and the Clovis Fluted began to be noted in various parts of the State. Their occurrence seemed to indicate that there actually was a paleo-Indian in Virginia.

Recent work in the mountains of Honduras has disclosed four ceramic and ten preceramic sites all between altitudes of 5000 and 6500 feet. Fluted stemmed points, medium-sized scrapers, and very small side scrapers link the preceramic sites to late Paleo-Indian or early Archaic times. Stonework from the ceramic sites is typologically different. Migration routes at these altitudes are suggested.

Throughout the Holocene occupation of the North American continent, residential mobility declined while plant domestication increased. Direct results of these processes have been investigated through structural, paleobotanical and ceramic analyses, but have rarely been detected in assemblages of stone tools. This study involves intensive technological and use-wear analyses of lithic materials from five excavated sites in the Illinois Valley that span 7,500 years of the Holocene. Results of functional trends analyzed through time indicate that most of the specific activities and worked materials in which the tools were engaged are stochastic in nature. Nevertheless, certain trends, including increases in the proportion of chopping/percussion damage and the presence of hoeing wear in later components, are consistent with changes in mobility and plant manipulation. The presence of other coeval processes is indicated by increases in wear from drilling and projectile use. In addition, support is found for the contention that highly mobile foragers of the Early Holocene needed standardized, multi-functional implements such as bifaces. The decline in bifacial technologies throughout the Holocene provides a measure of increasing sedentism, as considerations of versatility and portability were eschewed in favor of more expedient technologies.

Were the ancient Coast Salish farmers? Conventional anthropological wisdom asserts that the ethnographically known communities of the Northwest Coast of North America were “complex hunter-fisher-gatherers” who lacked any form of concerted plant food cultivation and production. Despite decades of extensive ethnobotanical and paleoethnobotanical study throughout the Pacific Northwest demonstrating the contrary, this “classic anomaly” is still a cornerstone of anthropological and archaeological canons. The recent discovery of a spectacularly preserved wetland wapato (Indian potato, Sagittaria latifolia) garden, built 3,800 years ago in Katzie traditional territory near Vancouver, British Columbia, has helped recast this picture, alongside evidence for other forms of resource management practiced by Northwest Coast peoples. This article examines “origins of agriculture” stories from three distinctive perspectives: Coast Salish Katzie people who cultivated wapato for millennia; settlers who colonized the Fraser River Delta historically, bringing with them their own ideas about what constitutes farming; and archaeologists, who are challenged by these data to reevaluate their own understandings of these cultural constructs. These perspectives have critical bearing on the historical appropriation of lands and waterways by settler communities in British Columbia as well as contemporary questions of sovereignty and stewardship in this region and well beyond.

We present the recent results of a magnetometry survey of the Spring Lake Tract conducted during the summer of 2015 at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site located along the Mississippi River Floodplain in southern Illinois. This tract, located southeast of Woodhenge and west of the Grand Plaza, is situated north of two known borrow pits and includes an additional, previously unidentified borrow pit. Through comparing our gradiometer results with our subsequent test excavations, we argue that this area of Cahokia potentially demonstrates an increase in building density at the Spring Lake Tract during the transition between the Terminal Late Woodland and Lohmann phases. In addition, our survey and exaction results demonstrate that this area was densely occupied between the Lohmann and Stirling phases. During the Moorehead phase, we identify a possible increase in habitation based on hypothesized structure density using statistical analyses of length and width ratios (m) and structure area (m2). Our preliminary results suggest that the Spring Lake Tract saw an increase in habitation during the Moorehead phase, a new perspective on the density and use of domestic space during Cahokia's late occupational history.

A recent review by Lynch of late Pleistocene sites in South America is impaired by numerous errors and misrepresentations. Although Lynch omits several important sites and often selectively uses data to support his own position, this comment addresses his review of the Monte Verde site in Chile. Although Lynch has not visited Monte Verde and has inspected few artifacts from the site, he questions the Pleistocene association of artifacts and the “hand of humans” in the site. Lynch’s interpretations are refuted on the grounds that he is unfamiliar with the site, that he reviewed obsolete publications, and that he often misrepresented material in these publications. The archaeological evidence for late Pleistocene human activity at Monte Verde is reviewed in terms of the site stratigraphy, chronology, and artifacts.

The relationships between the social development in the upper Lurin valley and an expanding Early Intermediate period Lima state are examined. Internally, population growth and irrigation complexity progress together in the Lurin. Warfare, although not directly caused by population expansion, may function to regulate population. With irrigation and population expansion, a local social stratification originates but political control remains highly dispersed. A centralized control is only initiated by the external introduction of direct dominance by the Lima state.

In 1932 Haury described lead-glaze pottery from the Southwest. In view of his report, it appeared desirable to find out whether the makers of such pottery suffered from lead poisoning. A series of 46 bone specimens from Kinishba, where lead-glaze pottery was made, and a control series of 33 specimens from Point of Pines, where such pottery is not known to have been made, were screened by X-ray and by X-ray diffraction. The 11 most promising specimens were then analyzed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Lead was found in quantities believed to be below the toxic range; concentrations in the control series from Point of Pines were, with few exceptions, higher than in the experimental series from Kinishba.

Three major factors have influenced the classification of stone artifacts in Australia. The first is the presence in the country of a contemporary stone-using people, the Australian aborigines. Early, relatively complete, and ethnologically valid studies of their life (Spencer and Gillen 1899), have given Australian artifact studies a functional flavor; so much so, that descriptive classifications have been proposed, whose major categories were in completely functional terms (Kenyon and Stirling 1900). Quite properly, Australian workers have sought functional comparisons between implements in current use and those whose function could not be discovered by ethnological enquiry, either because their makers had become culturally disintegrated, as in southeast Australia, or because their function was unknown to the living aborigines in the area concerned (see, for instance, the discussion of the mounted elouera in Setzler and McCarthy 1950).

Evidence of human occupation has been found in Pleistocene river terrace strata near Lewisville, Texas, over the past 7 years. Noteworthy finds include a Clovis projectile point in place in the site, an extensive faunal collection, and charcoal which has produced 2 radiocarbon age determinations in excess of 37,000 years B.P. The following article is a condensation of a detailed account appearing in the Texas Archeological Society Bulletin for 1957.