The individual vessel, rather than the sherd, is the relevant unit of analysis in many kinds of behavioral studies. Economical methods for assigning the sherds of multiple vessels to their vessels of origin are introduced for household-made ceramics. The methods employ visible surface indicators of vessel individuality as well as radiographically detectable ones such as temper quantity, size distribution, spatial distribution, and material type, void spaces, and fracture systems. A hierarchical, sequential sorting strategy and certain radiographic methods, which are optimal for revealing the internal features of ceramics, make this application possible.

There is growing evidence for human use of geophytes long before the advent of agriculture. Rich in carbohydrates, geophytes were important in many coastal areas where protein-rich marine foods are abundant. On California's Channel Islands, scholars have long questioned how maritime peoples sustained themselves for millennia with limited plant resources. Recent research demonstrates that geophytes were heavily used on the islands for 10,000 years, and here we describe geophyte and other archaeobotanical remains from an approximately 11,500-year-old site on Santa Rosa Island. Currently the earliest evidence for geophyte consumption in North America, our data extend geophyte use on the Channel Islands by roughly 1,500 years and document a diverse and balanced economy for early Paleocoastal peoples. Experimental return rates for a key island geophyte support archaeological evidence that the corms of blue dicks (Dipterostemon capitatus) were a high-ranked staple resource throughout the Holocene.

This article is based on an address to the society for American Archaeology at its annual meeting on May 17, 1946 at Indianpolis. A following address by Dr. Waldo R. Wedel desalt with the chronology of central Plains cultures. As the two chronologies embraced a very considerable portion of the United States and were in rather remarkably close agreement, it was suggested by retiring editor Byers that they be published in this journal.

The process of evaluating archaeological significance is dynamic and constantly changing. Factors affecting the significance evaluation process are considered, and an example of how the evaluation of significance at a central Texas rockshelter has changed over the last thirty years is offered.

Shott's comments on Nance and Ball's article on test-pit sampling are off the mark. His comments reveal that Shott has misread the authors, that he generally has misinterpreted their intent, that he does not understand their research design and therefore does not know how to apply their findings, that he overlooks or avoids numerous important points made by the authors, and that he has his own unique view of archaeological data and survey methods.

Despite considerable activity during the last two decades our knowledge of the archaeology of Alaska is still rather scanty. Very few places have been thoroughly investigated, and almost all work has been confined to two areas, a northern including St. Lawrence Island and a southern including the Aleutian Islands. The intermediate area, from Wales to Port Möller, with a coast line of approximately 2000 miles, is virtually unknown from an archaeological point of view. If archaeological material from this area exists in museum collections, it is unpublished and thus useless to most students.

The need of information about the archaeology of this part of Alaska was felt very badly by the writer during his work on the analysis of the Ipiutak culture. When it became apparent that early Kachemak Bay culture must belong to the same Paleo-Eskimo complex as Ipiutak, it was natural to assume the former existence of the same complex in the intermediate area, an assumption which ethnological evidence seems to bear out.

The journal of the Philosophy of Science Association, Philosophy of Science, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, and in honor of this has reprinted the Table of Contents from its first issue as well as the lead article, “On the Character of Philosophic Problems” by Rudolf Carnap (1984). Carnap's object in this article is to determine just what philosophical problems in science are. He took this to be a question about what distinguishes the “standpoint” of a philosopher from that of the empirical investigator (1984:6). He begins with the observation that “philosophers have ever declared that their problems lie at a different level from the problems of the empirical sciences . . . the question is, however, where one should seek this level” (1984:5).

The case recently made by Madsen and Berry (1975) for human abandonment of the entire eastern Great Basin between approximately 3200 and 1500 B.P. is critically reviewed. The stratigraphic and radiocarbon data on which their argument is based are shown to be inadequate to support it.

The initial paper in this series (Littmann 1957, American Antiquity, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 135-40) presented a systematic approach to the study of ancient building elements such as mortars, plasters, and stuccos, and set forth the bases upon which the work was undertaken. It also included studies on steps of the prebrick period of Temple IV at Comalcalco, Tabasco, Mexico, in which it was demonstrated that a building unit comprising a monolithic limeaggregate structure covered with a thin, limebased wash coat followed by a thicker coat of plaster was used. Such a unit appeared to have been used in both the original structure and subsequent additions or modifications throughout the prebrick period.

Evidence of aboriginal contact between Mesoamerica and the Greater Antilles is hardly overwhelming and the little that has been gathered remains controversial. The problems surrounding the derivation of the Antillean ball game (for a brief summary, see Rouse 1953: 197) exemplify the need of caution in interpreting resemblances. A more generalized connection between the areas exists on the level of the sociopolitical organization developed in Classic Lowland Maya culture as well as in the Circumcaribbean and the Gulf Coast area of North America (Steward 1947: 104-5; Sears 1954).

Archaeological collections are foundational to the discipline. Yet, researchers who study curated assemblages can face challenges. Here, we show how experimental archaeology can play a vital role in the interpretation of old archaeological collections. The Welling site, in Coshocton County, Ohio, is a multicomponent, stratified site with a substantial Clovis component in its lower levels. Using experimental flaked stone replication, we create an analog model of a “pure” Clovis bifacial debitage assemblage, as might be found at a lithic workshop. We predicted that if the Welling Clovis debitage assemblage was representative of a lithic workshop, then it would be similar to the experimental model. If the debitage assemblage was representative of a base camp, however, then it would be significantly different from the model because Clovis people would have been using, transporting, resharpening, rejuvenating, and recycling the debitage—all activities that would modify a “pure” Clovis bifacial debitage assemblage. Our statistical analyses supported the latter prediction. Overall, our study illustrates how productive the integration of experimental and archaeological data can be, and it emphasizes how important the curation and accessibility of both archaeological and experimental collections are to the discipline.

In this study, an examination has been made of the leaf fibers from various species of the genera Agave, Yucca, Nolina and Dasylirion in order to establish a technique and to present a set of diagnostic characters which can be used in the identification of archaeological material suspected of containing such fibers.

The split leaves of various species belonging to these genera have been used widely by the aboriginal inhabitants of the American Southwest in the manufacture of sandals, mattings, and baskets. The fibers extracted from their leaves were made into cordage, which was employed in the manufacture of a great variety of articles.

Archaeologists are continually encountering this material and identifying it on the basis of its gross or external appearance, yet, so far as the authors have been able to ascertain, no one has described a convenient method of identification.

A permutation test for assessing intrasite patterning of artifact distributions in archaeological space is presented. This test requires none of the usual assumptions about the data; permits either exact locational or counts/grid data in one-, two-, or three-dimensional space; and provides an exact method for testing any hypothesis concerning the nonrandom allocation of artifacts into classes within a site.

Several years ago, the writer prepared a paper (Lothrop, 1941) on the gold objects of Chavin style found in two graves at Chongoyape near the north coast of Peru. At that time reference was made to a third group of Chavin gold work which the owner, the late Mr. Joseph Brummer, did not then wish to have published. (Five Brummer specimens were illustrated in Kelemen, 1944, seven in Larco Hoyle, 1941.) Since Mr. Brummer's death, the nineteen specimens in his collection have passed into the hands of the Hon. Robert Woods Bliss and Doctor Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, who have granted permission to publish their beautiful acquisitions and have most kindly provided photographs. I am also indebted to a friend in Lima for permission to illustrate a Chavin specimen from his collection and to Professor W. C. Root for analyses.

Comments are offered on heat treating experiments and archaeological studies by Schindler, Hatch, Hay and Bradt concerning Bald Eagle Jasper from central Pennsylvania. Their conclusions concerning aboriginal patterns of use of Bald Eagle Jasper are critiqued. Their explanations for the effects of thermal alteration on jasper fracture properties are also questioned.

Bison bones are found in Columbia Plateau archaeological sites from throughout the Holocene, yet no information on people's tactics for procuring them has yet been reported. The discovery of the Tsulim Site, a 2,100-year-old bison kill near the Columbia River in central Washington, has provided the opportunity to investigate those tactics. Despite the deteriorated state of the evidence, analysis of stone artifacts, faunal remains, and site geology revealed that at least eight animals were killed in the apex of a parabolic dune during the early to mid-winter by hunters using both atlatl and bow. Local topography and meteorology make it most likely that the herd was encountered in a low paleochannel, driven northward between the limbs of the dune, up the steep channel wall, and into the kill area, a sort of inverted buffalo jump. Results not only illuminate the large-game hunting practices of the Plateau peoples, but also point out how much can be learned from disturbed, low-density scatters of debris that are often dismissed as insignificant.

When Jimmy Griffin asked me to reflect upon the founding of the Society, I compared the assignment to beating a dead horse. Then it occurred to me that most of you here tonight were high school students or younger, when Vol. 1, No. 1 of American Antiquity was in press 32 years ago this month. Throughout your professional lives you have accepted the Society as the natural focus for archaeological contacts and interests. Yet there was a time when it was only a dream; when a number of us worked hard to make it become a reality.

In a recent issue of this journal (Vol. 17, p. 151) Donald J. Lehmer protests against the coefficient of agreement used by W. S. Robinson in his paper on “A Method for Chronologically Ordering Archaeological Deposits” (American Antiquity, Vol. 16, pp. 293-301). Lehmer's objection to the coefficient

This response to Adams’ comment regarding the interpretation of Çatalhöyük, a 9000 year old tell site in central Turkey, notes some important differences between Neolithic Çatalhöyük and the Indonesian societies described by Adams. Ritual was closely linked to daily practices in all houses at Çatalhöyük. While it is argued that socialization through daily routines in houses was a main mechanism for creating and maintaining social relationships at Çatalhöyük, it is also accepted that feasting was a very central part of social and political strategies. However the role of feasting needs to be situated within specific sets of historical meanings. Similarly, a contextual analysis of the circulation of human heads suggests that those at Çatalhöyük were more likely ancestral heads than victim or enemy heads.