It has long been believed that maize (Zea mays spp. mays) was introduced in Quebec at around A.D. 1000, at the very beginning of the Late Woodland period. The identification and dating of maize phytoliths extracted from the carbonized encrustations on the interior surfaces of Native American ceramic vessels from three sites located in the St. Lawrence River valley, namely the Hector-Trudel, Station-4, and Place-Royale sites, indicate that this cultigen was rather introduced in that area during the Early Middle Woodland period, ca.400 to 200 B.C. These sites provide the northernmost and possibly the oldest evidence of maize consumption in northeastern North America. More samples of maize phytoliths from the same two sites were dated to the late Middle Woodland period, between A.D. 600 and 800, suggesting an increase in the ubiquity and importance of this new crop in the subsistence strategies. Moreover, the identification of an unknown variety of maize points toward the possibility that a new local variety of maize appeared during the process. This process might have been accompanied by a more intensive and complementary collecting of wild rice. Finally, the results support the hypothesis of an in situ origin of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians.

Systems of human settlement serve as primary sources of evidence for investigating variability in the evolution of complex societies. In particular, the existence of and nature of cities reveals much about the nature and direction of sociopolitical changes characteristic of prehistoric states. The present study places the analysis of prehistoric urbanism within the context of settlement system analyses and applies this approach to the protohistoric Tarascan state of western Mexico. This first synthesis of our knowledge of major Tarascan settlements evaluates the protohistoric communities at Tzintzuntzan, Ihuatzio, Pátzcuaro, and Erongarícuaro (within the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin) and considers those outside the Tarascan core, especially Zacapu. This study suggests that the Tarascan state did not participate in the Central Mexican urban tradition, and that the historic capital, Tzintzuntzan, may have been unique in its urban status. Rather, the state was characterized by a complex and overlapping network of central places and specialized places. To the extent that this pattern diverges from other prehistoric systems it constitutes one source for understanding the diversity in the protohistoric Mesoamerican world.

Gender analyses have provided useful insights into the social organization of the people anthropologists study. Here we demonstrate how Casas Grandes gender roles influenced other aspects of Casas Grandes worldview and social life. Medio period (A.D. 1200–1450) iconography depicts differences between males and females. Gender roles were not only defined by their proximity to males and females but to birds and serpents. Furthermore, Casas Grandes cosmology was based on gender complementarity that combined the productive, reproductive, and ritual activities of men and women within a single system. The development of social differentiation was tied to this system, indicating that gender complementarity and the accumulation of productive and ritual power into a limited group of women and men may have been an important factor in the development of social hierarchies in many Middle Range societies.

A cache of flint artifacts has been discovered near Anadarko in southwestern Oklahoma. It is made up of 4 core chopping tools, 2 discoidal chopping tools, and 26 prismatic blades. Two of the core chopping tools were used to produce blades. One of the discoidal chopping tools and one of the core chopping tools are made of alibates flint, common to the Panhandle area of Texas; the remaining tools are made of grey-white flint. The cache provides interesting insights into prehistoric blade manufacturing. On the basis of similar blades found in dated deposits at Clovis, New Mexico, it is suggested that the cache is of the Paleo-Indian period. However, the manufacture of blades is by no means confined to the Paleo-Indian period. The association of prismatic blades with chopping tools of various sizes leads one to the suggestion that the whole assemblage was intended for use as a butchering kit for large animals.

Although it is now commonplace for archaeologists to study use-alteration patterns on ceramics, the same cannot be said of one of the most ubiquitous classes of hunter-gatherer artifacts, fire-cracked rocks (FCR). It can be shown, however, that many of the same methods and theories applied to the study of cooking ceramics are also relevant to the investigation of rocks used as heating elements. Because use alteration analyses of FCR are so scarce, I describe a range of attributes with the goal of helping researchers identify use alterations (e.g., sooting, reddening, various fracturing patterns) on lithic artifacts from sites worldwide and evaluate their potential function in various cultural practices. These attributes are also outlined in order to create a standardized terminology for describing FCR use-alteration patterns. I discuss my analysis of FCR from three Late Archaic sites (Duck Lake, 913, and 914) on Grand Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, followed by an interpretation of their cooking contexts, as a case study. The results indicate great intersite variability among FCR characteristics, cooking methods, and cooking facilities (earth oven, stone boiling, and rock griddle). This use alteration analysis can be applied in archaeological contexts worldwide where similar materials are recovered.

Seasonality of site occupation has been an important issue in the archaeology of precolumbian coastal populations in the U.S. Southeast. Sclerochronological oxygen isotope measurements to estimate season of capture were performed on marsh clam (Rangia cuneata) and oyster (Crassostrea virginica) shells from a Late Woodland platform mound in coastal Mississippi. This study is the first oxygen isotope analysis of archaeological Rangia cuneata. The results of the study, supported by vertebrate faunal and plant seasonal indicators and depositional circumstances, indicate that mound trash deposits were generated by short-term activities during the spring and summer months. Factors that could reduce the precision of the seasonal estimates are identified.

Operations research is the systematic study of resource utilization through the manipulation of conceptual models. Used most often by engineers and managers, these models also have potential application in archaeology. Event tree analysis, which models multipart systems with a number of potential consequences resulting from a series of events, makes it possible to analyze artifact-production processes or the operation of complex economic activities such as hunting. Fault tree analysis models the interactions of factors that can cause a technological system to fail. It offers a framework for the interpretation of archaeological remains such as flintlock firearm parts at Indian and Euroamerican sites of the Great Plains.

The development of corporate groups and social differentiation has long been studied by scholars interested in the historic development of Puebloan societies in the American Southwest. Recent discussions of these issues have suggested that corporate group organization and differentiation were formalized during the transition from pithouse to pueblo architecture from A.D. 700 to 1000. In this article, I examine the history and process of the pithouse-to-pueblo transition in the northern San Juan region from A.D. 700 to 900. Unlike in most parts of the ancient Southwest, the architectural transition in this area was accompanied by a significant settlement change resulting in the founding of large, permanent villages housing hundreds of residents. I present an analysis of architectural differences within McPhee Village, one of the largest of these settlements, that documents variability in corporate group organization and socioeconomic power near the end of this transitional period. This study contributes to a growing body of archaeological literature that highlights the importance of internal social dynamics and corporate strategies within early village societies.

Unnotched triangular arrowpoínts and point fragments are sometimes found in large numbers on village sites in the Midwest and East. The possible reason or reasons for this are rarely considered. These points were used for both warfare and hunting. An attack on a village with a volley of arrows provides the most obvious explanation for large numbers of points and point fragments. Alternatively, using arrowpoints that detached within their target prey would have resulted in points and point fragments being brought back to a village in meat. These possibilities are considered in explaining the large number of points from an iroquoian village site in western New York.

The type-variety system of ceramic taxonomy is widely accepted, but some difficulties exist in the identification and interpretation of "wares" in the study of Maya pottery. Although the ware concept was formulated to incorporate technological data, such as paste composition, into the classificatory scheme, in practice ware definitions are frequently limited to variables of surface treatment. A redefinition of the ware concept and the creation of a new unit of paste composition analysis which crosscuts types is suggested. This will realign theory closer to what is current practice and will enhance the potential and actual contributions of the type-variety system to the anthropological study of pottery.

The pithouse-to-pueblo transition in the southwestern United States is widely viewed as a period combining increasing sedentism and agricultural dependence. This paper argues that sedentarization and degree of agricultural dependence need not be directly linked across the transition, and that two kinds of preservational biases influence the appearance of a linkage. First, sample size effects result from better archaeobotanical preservation at large, relatively sedentary pueblos, compared to pithouse settlements that are often smaller and less intensively occupied. Second, differences in storage technology increase the likelihood of carbonization of domesticates at pueblos. Quantitative paleoethno-botanical data from the Dunlap-Salazar pithouse site and Robinson site pueblo in south-central New Mexico illustrate these problems. Dunlap-Salazar has lower quantities of domesticates in its flotation samples than Robinson pueblo. When preservational differences are taken into account using ratios or ubiquity counts, however, the contrast between the sites disappears. These findings have methodological implications, suggesting that casual qualitative or even quantitative comparisons between pueblo and pithouse sites in the Southwest (or analogous sites in other parts of the world) may be misleading. The results also suggest that the commonly accepted direct association between lower mobility and higher dependence on crops in pueblos in contrast to pithouse sites requires reevaluation.

In the past year through excavations of sites and examination of various collections, there have appeared elements in a late context that do not follow or conform to the archaeological traditions known for Florida up to this time. On the east coast the collections of material excavated by W. J. Winter gave us new data on the late period around St. Augustine and its cultural affiliations to the Georgia coast. This has been named the St. Augustine Period. In the excavation of a Spanish mission site3 in Jefferson County by the Archaeological Survey of the Florida Park Service there appeared elements sufficiently different in time and content to name a new period the Leon-Jefferson.

Here follows a discussion and summary of the characteristics of the two periods.

When did the League of the Five Nations Iroquois originate? This study presents a new approach to answering this age-old question. Compositional data were collected on ceramics (pottery and smoking pipes) from Seneca and Mohawk sites in an attempt to identify and reconstruct exchange and interaction patterns between these two widely separated League members. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) spectrometry were employed to collect data on 15 elements. Using pottery as a baseline for each area, pipe data were utilized in a discriminant-function analysis to identify exotic pipes in Seneca assemblages from different time periods. The investigation focused on pipes because they were a probable item of exchange and because the symbolism of pipes and tobacco made smoking an important part of Iroquoian political protocol. Results showed that Mohawk pipes first occurred in Seneca assemblages sometime between A.D. 1590 and A.D. 1605. This is considered likely to reflect the inception of peaceful political relations between these two groups brought about by the final coalescence of the Iroquois Five Nations Confederacy. The approach developed for this study employed nondestructive analytical techniques applied to common classes of ceramic artifacts. As such, the methodology should be broadly applicable to other studies of interaction and exchange in this and other regions.

The use of factor analysis in archaeology has increased considerably in recent years as archaeologists have recognized the advantages of using a statistical technique that can elicit otherwise unrecognizable patterns in a set of data. But there are several questions relating to scaling transformations and reliability assessments that must be answered within the context of specific research designs before reliable results can be obtained. A re-analysis of pottery type distributions at Broken K Pueblo is used to illustrate these questions. The factor solutions produced by the re-analysis exhibit relatively low reliability levels, indicating that the ratio of specific and error variance to common variance in the data is somewhat high.

Recent excavation by the Museum of Northern Arizona has provided a basis for a review of the prehistory of the poorly known region of the central Little Colorado basin of northeastern Arizona. A regional sequence of considerable complexity is established beginning with a Clovis-Folsom horizon and culminating in Pueblo IV (see Table 1). An amalgam of Anasazi and Mogollon traditions with a dominant Kayenta base is apparent as early as Basketmaker III. The introduction of Little Colorado White ware, beginning about A.D. 1075, signals the beginning of the Winslow branch, a distinguishable regional Anasazi variant, lasting until the abandonment of much of this desert region in the mid-13th century. The archaeological distinctiveness of the region is apparently due to its location between the Anasazi and Mogollon area and the necessary adaptations to the arid, basin environment.

Anangula is an island 1.6 miles long and .5 mile wide, lying on the north side of Nikolski Bay about 4.5 miles northwest of Nikolski village, Umnak Island, in the eastern Aleutians. The designation of this island on United States Coast and Geodetic Survey charts is Ananiuliak, a transliteration of the Russianized form “Ananyulyakh” of the original Aleut name “Anangulagh” (from which we have subtracted the ending -gh to give “Anangula”). In current Umnak usage this island is called in Aleut “Anagulagh,” and in English “Rabbit Island” from the numerous rabbits there, descendants of two pairs of domestic Belgian hares introduced onto the island in 1936 by one of the Aleuts as food for foxes which have since been removed, when the island became a bird sanctuary. The change in the Aleut form of the name for this island from “Anangulagh” to “Anagulagh” undoubtedly accompanied the shift in the dialect spoken on Umnak subsequent to the first arrival of Russians in the Fox Islands in the early 1750's.

How early human populations in North America maintained reproductive viability is a question that has shaped our research for over a decade. The concept of staging areas, mechanisms for band-macroband interaction, and an examination of how interaction networks could have formed and evolved over the course of the Paleoindian era are all solutions that we have presented.

A recent paper by Truncer (2004) perpetuates the recalcitrant misconception that soapstone vessel technology uniformly predates the inception of pottery across eastern North America. Whereas soapstone vessels indeed preceded the local adoption of pottery in limited areas, the bulk of stratigraphic and independent radiometric data supports the conclusion that soapstone vessels either accompanied or postdated the inception of pottery in many parts of the Eastern Woodlands. I reiterate here my criticism of benchmark studies that have been uncritically accepted to support the greater antiquity of soapstone. Given the coincidence of pottery and soapstone in many areas of the Eastern Woodlands, any explanation for the use of soapstone vessels must consider the relative costs and benefits of alternative container technology. Moreover, evidence for use of soapstone vessels in mortuary contexts, caches, and in locations far from geological sources of soapstone suggests that their significance resided not simply in the domestic economy of nut processing, as suggested by Truncer, but in the political economy of group formation and alliance.

Population estimated for the Late Classic period at the Lowland Maya site of Tikal, Guatemala, is reviewed. Linear programming is described and suggested as a method for simulating the agricultural carrying capacity of the sustaining area of the site, thereby inferring its potential population. Archaeological data on the estimated size of the Tikal sustaining area is presented along with modern agricultural production and caloric output figures for maize, root crops, and ramon seeds. These data are used in the computation of a linear program. The results of the computer runs calculating the maximum population supportable by different combinations of milpa, intensive farming, and aboriculture are discussed. These results suggest that a mixed subsistence strategy in which ramon seed aboriculture and intensive root cropping were combined and were supplemented by kitchen gardening, hunting, gathering, and trade might have supported a population as high as 69,705 to 76,699 people within the boundaries of the site of Tikal during the Late Classic period.

Although the conventional design appearing on aboriginal American ceramics has been used successfully as a diagnostic feature in archaeological pottery classification, there has been little analytical and comparative work done on this mass of material. Much of the design, despite the simplicity and wide distribution of its elements, is complicated and richly variable. This apparent complexity has been a stumbling clock in the way of its study.

The purpose of this paper is to present a generally applicable, objective terminology for a classification of conventional design. The terminology is based on symmetry of arrangement, which we have found more useful than any other scheme in elucidating complex designs.