In addition to archaeologists who make stone tools for experimental purposes, there is a growing number of flintknappers who make lithic artifacts for fun and for profit. The scale of non-academic knapping is little known to archaeologists, and is connected to a flourishing market for antiquities, fakes, replicas, and modern lithic art. Modern stone tools are being produced in vast numbers, and are inevitably muddling the prehistoric record. Modern knappers exploit some material sources heavily, and their debitage creates new sites and contaminates old quarry areas. Modern knapping is, however, a potential source of archaeological insights, and a bridge between the professional community and the interested public. Modern knapping also is creating a “twentieth-century stone age,” and archaeologists working with lithic artifacts need to be aware of the problems and potentials.

A prehispanic Maya dam is reported in the Copan Valley of Honduras. The dam is situated in the foothills above the river bottom at the headwaters of a small tributary, the Quebrada Petapilla. Constructed of cut stone and mortar, the dam was built immediately downstream from a spring and once created a small, flowing pond. The function of the dam is uncertain, although the creation of a greater head of water for the irrigation of the quality farmlands in the foothill zone is a possibility. The dam probably dates no later than the Late Classic period [A.D. 650-800].

A satisfactory and explicit definition of the Fremont has not been produced in over 50 years of research—a failure which suggests that no comprehensive entity exists. Attempts to define a Fremont through the use of trait lists have failed, although such lists have provided the basis for three apparently conflicting theories of origin. Analyses of subsistence economies and settlement patterns suggest that no comprehensive entity exists and that all three origin theories may possibly be valid. A Sevier "culture," based on marsh collecting and supplemented by corn agriculture, can be defined in the eastern Great Basin. A Fremont "culture," based on corn agriculture and supplemented by hunting, can be defined on the Colorado Plateau. A third unnamed, but possibly Plains-related, culture may be defined to the north of these. These "cultures" are distinctive enough to be separated on the same taxonomic level as are the Anasazi and the Sinagua.

Spatially and temporally unpredictable rainfall patterns presented food production challenges to small-scale agricultural communities, requiring multiple risk-mitigating strategies to increase food security. Although site-based investigations of the relationship between climate and agricultural production offer insights into how individual communities may have created long-term adaptations to manage risk, the inherent spatial variability of climate-driven risk makes a landscape-scale perspective valuable. In this article, we model risk by evaluating how the spatial structure of ancient climate conditions may have affected the reliability of three major strategies used to reduce risk: drawing upon social networks in time of need, hunting and gathering of wild resources, and storing surplus food. We then explore how climate-driven changes to this reliability may relate to archaeologically observed social transformations. We demonstrate the utility of this methodology by comparing the Salinas and Cibola regions in the prehispanic U.S. Southwest to understand the complex relationship among climate-driven threats to food security, risk-mitigation strategies, and social transformations. Our results suggest key differences in how communities buffered against risk in the Cibola and Salinas study regions, with the structure of precipitation influencing the range of strategies to which communities had access through time.

Because the most abundant and finest quality Classic Mimbres Black-on-white ceramics are associated with large pueblos located in the Mimbres Valley, archaeologists have subscribed to a center-periphery model of exchange to explain the occurrence of these ceramics outside of the “heartland.” Recent instrumental neutron-activation analysis based on 117 samples from six sites and supported by petrographic analyses demonstrates that separable production groups can be distinguished outside of, as well as within, the valley proper. Widely distributed production locales do not support a model of centralized control over production and distribution. The analyses thus raise questions about the purposes of such visually distinct pottery and the nature of its exchange.

The Medicine Creek Valley of south-central Nebraska has for many years been known to contain within its limits important archaeological materials representing various periods of man's occupancy in the Central Plains. The region is climatically near the western limits of successful general farming. While the yearly precipitation averages about 23 inches, records show a variation in total from 11 to 38 inches. (Bason and others, 1939, pp. 4–6). This wide fluctuation in precipitation, often combined with extremely high temperatures during the growing season, makes the area one of agricultural uncertainty. Early White settlement in the valley was often retarded and in some instances completely checked as a result of severe but usually short-period droughts. Prehistoric horticultural groups subsisting in this region were undoubtedly subjected to the same unfavorable conditions. They, like the early- White settlers who were to follow, may have been forced at times to abandon the area temporarily and withdraw to a more favorable one.

The role of the New Archaeology of the 1960s is recognized as decisive in the history of archaeology: an awakening from the “long sleep of archaeological theory” from about 1880 to 1960. But at the same time, limitations in the New Archaeology are responsible for corresponding defects in the present scene. The first of these is the lack of clear policy for the handling and especially the publication of data. It is argued that the outstanding defect of Cultural Resource Management, especially in the United States, is the failure to promote a clear policy that all survey work and all excavations should be adequately published. Accompanying this is the inadequate provision for the effective retrieval, at a national level, of the information which does emerge from CRM projects. The responsibility for this lies at the door of the academic archaeologists.

The second defect is the failure to recognize that the New Archaeology primarily offered new and interesting problems, not ready solutions. The widespread misconception that processual archaeology has become “normal science” is partly responsible for the lack of steam in the current theoretical scene in the United States. Some alternative approaches are indicated, and it is suggested that cognitive archaeology may, in the 1980s and 1990s, take its place alongside the social archaeology of the past two decades as a significant growth area.

Because people conceptualize the land on which they live metaphorically, it is suggested that metaphor theory is an important component of landscape theory. One kind of metaphorically charged landscape is the hunting landscape, a type of gendered landscape that embodies hunting and animal metaphors related to gender categories and provides a field on which to perform and establish maleness. Two archaeological examples of hunting landscapes in the American Southwest are explored to show how hunting and its associated landscapes facilitate the creation and substantiation of the male persona through metaphorical linkages between humans and animals, hunting and warfare, and game animals and women.

The problem of the age of the pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacán is considered in the light of evidence from an extensive and hitherto unreported Tzacualli or Teotihuacán I occupation to the northwest of the Pyramid of the Moon. Material from a small excavation in this new zone is commented upon briefly. Previous analyses of the age of the pyramids are discussed in the context of the new evidence, the conclusion being that the Pyramid of the Sun and probably also the Pyramid of the Moon were built in the earliest phase of the occupation of Teotihuacán rather than later as commonly assumed. The relationships of the Tzacualli phase to other sites in the Valley of Mexico are discussed and it is concluded that the pyramids were probably built in about the last century before Christ or earlier. Since the building of these enormous pyramids implies a relatively complex level of social integration, this new level must have come into being some several hundred years or more before the building of the pyramids unless a large-scale migration was involved. For this it is contended there is no good evidence. Linné's new chronological placement of Tlamimilolpa before Xolalpan rather than after is discussed. Comments are made on the significance of this reversal of chronology for the growth of the city and for the expansion of its “influence” to other parts of Mesoamerica.

An attempt to employ probabilistic subsampling in a wooded study area is reviewed. Errors committed in attempts to test hypotheses about statistical associations are identified, and more suitable procedures are suggested. The site-location potential of regional subsampling is considered. On theoretical grounds it is concluded that regional subsampling employing small subunits in areas of low site density is probably inefficient and biased when used as a search procedure.

Gila Polychrome pottery has been recognized since the time of the earliest archaeological work in the Southwest. Cushing, in 1887–88, recognized in the polychromes at Los Muertos and other Classic period sites of the Hohokam area the pottery type we now call Gila Polychrome. As more of the Southwest became known this type (W. and H. S. Gladwin 1930: 6) was found to be one of the most widespread, with a range extending from the Mogollon Rim on the north into northern Chihuahua and Sonora on the south and sporadically from Texas on the east through New Mexico to Gila Bend, Arizona, on the west (Haury 1945: 63).

The origin and dating of the bow and arrow in the Great Basin has been a key issue in a recent debate concerning a cultural hiatus between Archaic and Fremont. New stratigraphic and chronometric data from Dry Creek Rockshelter are presented to support previous evidence for an Archaic rather than a Fremont origin for this new weapon.

Environmental data are often compiled for archaeological sites; however, the natural distributions of environmental variables are seldom investigated. A study of Ceramic Period coastal settlements in the Boothbay region of Maine used a simulated site distribution of random locations to obtain an unbiased representation of the available physical environment. The site locational data were then compared to the random locational data to test specific hypotheses. Examples show the importance of non-site environmental data in evaluating cultural hypotheses.

In the chapter on the Mazatec language of his “Zentral-Amerika” Dr. Walther Lehmann mentions the fact that Dr. Wilhelm Baur had found the tonalamatl among the Mazatec Indians, but he did not give the names of the twenty days.

During the months of January and February, 1936, while in Usila, a western Chinantec town, the junior author obtained information regarding a Mazatec calendar from Adalberto Gonzalez, a native ( Mazatec from Huautla Jimenez. This informant remembered names of twelve months, and meanings of some.

Archaeologists rely upon the sherd count to quantify creamic data. A simple method for counting rim sherds uses the percentage of a vessel's orifice represented by each sherd. This technique can be used to estimate the minimum number of vessels represented by the sherds in any specific category.

Under the classic Bryan-Antevs model the climatic history of the Southwest has been divided into (1) pluvial, (2) early postpluvial or Anathermal, (3) mid-postpluvial or Altithermal, (4) late postpluvial or Medithermal. Pollen analysis of radiocarbon-dated pluvial deposits shows that the desert grassland of southern Arizona and the short grassland of the Texas High Plains were invaded by a pine forest or pine savanna during the last pluvial period. Sulphur Spring-age alluvial deposits at Double Adobe, dated as pluvial in age by Sayles and Antevs, do not contain the pine-pollen record associated with pluvial conditions elsewhere; six radiocarbon dates from deep alluvial deposits at Double Adobe range from 7756 to 9350 years B.P. On the basis of pollen content and radiocarbon-age estimates, the beds are of early postpluvial rather than pluvial age, and thus the Sulphur Spring-stage artifacts found there are also early postpluvial in age.

Under the Bryan-Antevs model the Altithermal, 7500-4000 B.P., is considered an especially hot, dry period. Sediments associated with three radiocarbon dates within this interval contain slightly more pollen of mesic and hygric indicators than do sediments postdating the Altithermal. Interpreting the results literally, the Altithermal was wetter, not hotter and drier, than at present. The limitations of pollen analysis are not fully understood. But the traditional view of a hot, dry Altithermal in southern Arizona cannot be verified from fossil pollen evidence available to date.

Sampling biases in archaeological research may inadvertently lead to unsubstantiated assumptions about the relationship between various site features. The majority of radiometric dates from the Poverty Point site have been recovered from excavations in the large, earthen ridges. While archaeological investigations have previously been undertaken in the Poverty Point mounds, few of these excavations have yielded radiometric dates. As a result of the almost complete absence of chronometric data from Poverty Point's mounds, the construction of these features is generally assumed to have occurred during the same time span as construction of the ridges. New radiometric dates from the Poverty Point mounds reveal information about the timing and pace of their construction. These new chronological data provide the basis for a more detailed developmental sequence, and may allow for the development of new hypotheses about population size, the organization of labor, architectural relationships, and the degree of social complexity at Poverty Point. Examining the development of cultural landscapes, such as the chronology of earthwork construction at Poverty Point, also provides a better understanding of the ways prehistoric societies interacted with and modified the environments in which they lived.

Small blades, blade tools, and cores recently found at the Cahokia site, Illinois, represent a microblade industry probably affiliated with the Old Village stage of Middle Mississippian. The artifacts are described, and attempts to assess their probable functions are discussed. The available comparative evidence is insufficient to demonstrate the degree of historical relationship, if any, between this newly defined industry and such other blade industries in the eastern United States as Poverty Point and Hopewell.

The field-processing model (FPM) relates degree of resource processing at procurement site to round-trip travel distance. Typically applied to food getting, its extension to stone tools is part of a larger trend to broaden the scope and strengthen the theoretical foundation of inference from lithic data. This trend guided the FPM's application at the Modena obsidian quarry in the Great Basin, which follows earlier analyses by comparing the proportion by reduction stage of biface preforms between quarry and outlying sites and the technological characteristics of debris assemblages. It also uses two ratio-scale methods, slope of the regression of preform weight upon the first principal-component of linear dimensions, which declines with reduction, and slope of cumulative-count of flakes upon flake size, which increases with reduction. Results support the FPM and previous studies that document early-stage reduction at quarries vs. later-stage reduction across the landscape. The essential next step in FPM testing requires data on pattern and extent of biface reduction as a continuous function of distance from source. As useful as are existing measures and approaches, newly defined ratio-scale measures can particularly expedite testing of the FPM in its continuous terms.

Nearly all writers on the antiquity of man in America assume that the oldest archaeological sites contain chipped-stone projectile points and therefore cannot exceed an age of some 12,000 to 15,000 years, the estimates usually given to such projectile-point types as Sandia and Clovis. Suggestions of older sites, with radiocarbon dates ranging from some 21,000 years to as much as “greater than 37,000 years,” with simpler artifacts and an absence of stone projectile points, are generally viewed with suspicion if not abhorrence.

A recent paper by E. H. Sellards considers seven localities in the western United States and Baja California which, because of geological position and radiocarbon dates, are probably too old to contain stone projectile points. The writer agrees with Sellards that these localities are archaeological (except for that at Texas Street in San Diego, California), but disagrees that those in coastal locations are different from those in inland locations for “ecological” reasons such as food supply and availability of stone. The differences may be explained in that those sites on the shores of extinct lakes were never covered by overburden, whereas those which were covered by alluvium or sand are known to us now only by varying amounts of exposure by erosion or excavation (or both).