Cougar Mountain Cave is located in Oregon's Fort Rock Basin. In 1958, avocationalist John Cowles excavated most of the cave's deposits and recovered abundant fiber, lithic, wood, and osseous artifacts. A crew from the University of California, Davis returned to the site in 1966 to evaluate the potential for further research, collecting additional lithic and fiber artifacts from disturbed deposits and in situ charcoal from apparently undisturbed deposits. Because Cowles took few notes or photographs, the Cougar Mountain Cave collection—most of which is housed at the Favell Museum in Klamath Falls, Oregon—has largely gone unstudied even though it contains diagnostic artifacts spanning the Holocene and, potentially, the terminal Pleistocene. We recently submitted charcoal and basketry from the site for radiocarbon dating, providing the first reliable sense of when Cougar Mountain Cave was first occupied. Our results indicate at least a Younger Dryas age for initial occupation. The directly dated basketry has provided new information about the age ranges and spatial distributions of diagnostic textile types in the northwestern Great Basin.

Chemical and microscopic examination of building materials from Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, and Labná demonstrate the presence of all the building elements previously identified at Comalcalco, Las Flores, and Palenque: mortar, plaster, stucco, wash coat, and lime-aggregate. The building elements at these Puuc sites differ from those at Comalcalco and Las Flores in the use of non-marine sources of lime, greater strength, and generally smoother composition. They differ from the Palenque building elements in the lack of multi-laminate structure and the absence of very smooth and highly worked outer surfaces. It is possible that some form of lime other than that obtained by burning limestone was used. An inclusion of gypsum found at Uxmal is the only such component identified at any of the Mesoamerican sites studied so far.

The precise definition of “floor” as a building unit involving a lime aggregate or mortar (usually called fill) covered by a plaster (usually what is called the floor) the surface of which is treated by a wash coat makes possible detailed study of techniques of floor construction and the correlation of these with various cultural changes. A preliminary study of floors in Structures A–V, A–XVIII, B–XII at Uaxactún indicates that (1) floors improved in quality from Chicanel to Tepeu times, (2) post-Chicanel plasters were treated with a wash coat, especially the painted ones, and (3) the use of many small chips in Tzakol and Tepeu plasters implies extensive stone carving, because it is unlikely that stone would have been broken into such small pieces just for floor construction.

Despite the much briefer period of research and many fewer archaeologists involved, there is now clear and incontrovertible evidence of human occupation in Australia at a period significantly earlier than can be documented with comparable evidence from the New World. An explanation of the differences in the present record between these two regions that relies on an insufficient study of situations favorable to the preservation of earlier material in the New World seems inadequate in light of the total accumulated evidence.

Forty-nine obsidian artifacts from a Classic period residential group at Nohmul, northern Belize, have been analyzed by neutron activation analysis. The majority of the samples originated from Ixtepeque, and the remainder from El Chayal. Increasing prominence of the Ixtepeque source from the Late Classic into the Terminal Classic (i.e., before and after ca. A.D. 800) suggests greater use of a coastal distribution route known to have originated in the Formative and to have remained in use through the colonial period.

Recent research on trench kilns from the Mesa Verde region of the northern American Southwest (Blinman and Swink 1997) suggests that trench kilns represent collaborative firings by groups of potters. This study presents a method for estimating the sizes of these proposed kiln firing groups. A comparative analysis between firing group sizes and the size of other contemporaneous social units provides insights into socioeconomic relationships between Mesa Verde households in both dispersed and aggregated settlement contexts. This study demonstrates that different stages of a production process may involve different production groups and highlights the utility of examining each production stage individually. It further suggests the importance of searching for archaeological evidence of production beyond residential areas to other production contexts, such as firing features, if the organization of all stages of production is to be understood.

For nearly 150 years Stallings Island, Georgia has figured prominently in the conceptualization of Late Archaic culture in the American Southeast, most notably in its namesake pottery series, the oldest in North America, and more recently, in models of economic change among hunter-gatherer societies broadly classified as the Shell Mound Archaic. Recent fieldwork resulting in new radiocarbon assays from secure contexts pushes back the onset of intensive shellfish gathering at Stallings Island several centuries; enables recognition of a hiatus in occupation that coincides with the regional advent of pottery making; and places abandonment at ca. 3500 B.P. Analysis of collections and unpublished field records from a 1929 Peabody expedition suggests that the final phase of occupation involved the construction of a circular village and plaza complex with household storage and a formalized cemetery, as well as technological innovations to meet the demands of increased settlement permanence. Although there are too few data to assess the degree to which more permanent settlement led to population-resource imbalance, several lines of evidence suggest that economic changes were stimulated by ritual intensification.

The dating of Casas Grandes is re-evaluated, and new relevant dates for southwestern New Mexico are presented. It is suggested that Casas Grandes dates from ca. A.D. 1150-A.D. 1300. This would make the site's florescence postdate the Bonito phase of Chaco Canyon and the Mimbres phase. Furthermore, it appears that Casas Grandes did not overlap the Civano phase of the Hohokam.

Accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) and carbon isotope analyses provide strong tandem methodologies used by archaeologists to evaluate and reevaluate the histories of maize use in the Midwest. In this article, we present newly obtained AMS dates and carbon isotope assays of alleged maize samples from the Icehouse Bottom (40MR23) and Edwin Harness sites (22RO33). Based on original studies, samples were thought to date to the Middle Woodland period (ca. 300 BC–AD 400). The results show that samples either were not maize or date to post-AD 900. As of this finding, there are no longer any securely dated Middle Woodland macrobotanical remains of maize from the Eastern Woodlands of North America.

Although the Great Basin of North America has produced some of the most robust and ancient fiber artifact assemblages in the world, many were recovered with poor chronological controls. Consequently, this class of artifacts has seldom been effectively incorporated into general discussions of early chronological and cultural patterns. In recent years, the Great Basin Textile Dating Project has accumulated direct AMS dates on textiles (bags, sandals, mats, cordage, and basketry) from dry caves in the Great Basin, particularly in the northern and western areas. We focus here on the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene, to identify chronological patterns in this class of artifacts and to evaluate Adovasio’s characterization of the region’s earliest basketry as simple and undecorated. New AMS dates now suggest that the region’s earliest people had sophisticated textile traditions that incorporated numerous decorative elaborations. Some distinctive structures, including Fort Rock sandals and weft-faced plaited textiles, have limited early temporal ranges and may serve as diagnostic indicators for terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene times. Other basketry forms and structures that appear by about 9000 cal B.P. persist into the historic period, suggesting a stronger thread of continuity (especially in the north) from this time than is apparent in lithic traditions

A chronological sequence for the introduction of the major categories of loom weaves in the Initial period and Early Horizon of prehistoric Peru reveals a process of experimentation that begins with primarily suprastructural and discontinuous decoration and culminates with the achievement of designs that are wedded materially to the weave. Three major innovations allowed for this dramatic advance: (1) the use of multiple heddles, which is found surprisingly early in the sequence; (2) the recognition of the full potential of the “cross” to vary the selection of the warps from the fixed order in the heddles, and (3) the related application of the complementary principle, in which one colored yarn is substituted for its partner in a contrasting hue. Through the elaboration of these truly revolutionary discoveries, the last limits to artistic freedom were removed and weaving technology rapidly advanced to include the full repertoire of loom-weave classes known in the Andes.

In a recent report, J. D. Nance, on the basis of a microwear analysis, proposed that serrated Stockton points were not projectile points but were used as sawing and whittling implements. The present note suggests that the microwear traces upon which Nance based his conclusions were the result of manufacturing techniques rather than utilization, and that his conclusions must, in any case, be regarded as doubtful since his approach was not firmly based on hypothesis testing and did not use adequate experimental controls. The writer stresses that these omissions by Nance are only too common in many recent microwear studies, and until a proper experimental approach has been developed the potential of microwear studies will not be realized.

A two-year mapping project at Fort Clark State Historic Site produced a 15-cm contour map of the Native American (Mandan and Arikara) earthlodge village and a planimetric map of that part of the historic district that lies above the Missouri River flood plain. Aerial photography and ground-level transit mapping detected more than 2,200 surface features at the site, including 86 earthlodges, 2 fur-trading posts, hundreds of storage and grave pits, and Euroamerican and Native American roads and trails. More than 80 percent of the site as mapped lies outside the fortification ditch of the Mandan/Arikara village. When we are trying to determine the potential impact on sites such as this one of such activities as nearby road construction, our recommendations must consider the broader context of the site, not simply the narrow spectrum provided by the settlement core area. A buffer zone as presently exists at Fort Clark is not only necessary to preserve its visual integrity but also to preserve the record of the activities that took place in its immediate vicinity.

This graphical technique utilizes only three types of artifacts from the collection to the seriated. The relationship between the three selected types is plotted on three-pole graph paper. The points on the graph are clustered along a line representing change through time; hence the archaeological materials are arranged in their correct temporal sequence. Data from Paragonah, Utah, and Pindi, New Mexico, two Southwestern sites for which the time sequence is known, are used for empirical tests of the seriational technique. In both cases there is close agreement between the results of the seriation and the time sequence revealed by field evidence.

Two models relating various measures of camp surface area to population size among !Kung Bushmen are examined. It is shown that though there does exist a significant, positive correlation between some areal measures and population size, neither of the previously published models correctly represents these relationships. Alternative regression models are presented for the !Kung Bushmen which describe surface area as a function of population size in an acceptably accurate and reasonably concise fashion.

Schillaci and Stojanowski employ an improper coding procedure in their reanalysis of Peregrine's (2001) finding that Chacoan societies practiced matrilocal residence, making their conclusions erroneous. Their finding that at least some apparent Chacoan descendants practice bilocal residence does not force a reassessment of matrilocality in the Chacoan world and, in fact, has been explained as the product of postcontact change.

The Dust Cave cultural chronology and radiocarbon sequence is one of the most important in southeastern North America. In their initial interpretation, the excavators were unable to separate the dates of the early and later strata in ways that facilitate their use for defining the associated cultural components. Here the sequence is reevaluated using Bayesian statistics, one additional date, and assessment of potential outliers. The results produce a useable sequence of non-overlapping cultural components (within the uncertainties of radiocarbon dating) that will improve our understanding the Paleoindian and Early and Middle Archaic cultural chronology in the Southeast.

Contemporaneity of people and the American mastodon (Mammut americanum) at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, has been extensively debated for more than two hundred years. Newly interpreted stratigraphic excavations and direct AMS ¹⁴C measurements on mastodon bones from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, indicate that the megafauna are a palimpsest of fossils spanning at least 1,200 calendar years (11,020 ± 30 to 12,210 ± 35 RC yr B.P.). The radiocarbon evidence indicates that mastodons and Clovis people overlapped in time; however, other than one fossil with a possible cut mark and Clovis artifacts that are physically associated with but dispersed within the bone-bearing deposits, there is no incontrovertible evidence that humans hunted Mammut americanum at the site.

A series of large structures termed great kivas has been excavated at Point of Pines, Arizona. To add to the sequence of these kivas a site was excavated in 1959 on one of the upper tributaries of Eagle Creek, 16 miles northeast of Point of Pines. The site complex included a great kiva and five attached rooms, a U-shaped masonry pueblo, scattered storage units, trash deposits, a reservoir, and agricultural terraces. The kiva was rectangular with an encircling bench, a stepped entrance, two possible floor resonators, and a post pattern suggesting a polygonal roof support. The ceramic content of the site places it late in the Reserve phase which is dated from A.D. 1000 to 1150.

This particular kiva type appeared during late Three Circle phase and had a distribution centered in the upper San Francisco and Blue River valleys. The antecedents for the structure seem to lie in the general Mogollon great kiva tradition. The surrounding areas were examined for possible contributions to the complex; ceramic evidence of contact was present but no definite source for the introduction was found. The presence of a number of Anasazi traits plus the direction of Reserve phase cultural change suggests a northern source for this kiva form.