This paper reports the first set of isotopic data relating to human diet from the Samoan Archipelago. Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data measured on bone collagen were used to assess dietary patterns of prehistoric communities on Tutuila Island, American Samoa. We examined 14 human bones from three sites dated to three distinct periods: ~1,000 years ago (N = 5); -500 years ago (N = 8) and -150 years ago (N = 1). The isotopie data suggest that the human diet on Tutuila over the last 1,000 years was composed mainly of terrestrial resources with some consumption of coastal reef products. These data suggest a possible dietary change over time, with a higher dependence on marine resources in the earlier period shifting to a more terrestrial diet in the later period. Several possibilities for this dietary shift are suggested including: change in community specialization; marine resource depression; disintensification of marine procurement; intensification of horticultural production; and cultural or social changes in resource allocation.

A prehistoric ceremonial cache in the Arizona State Museum was found in 1957 by S. R. Claridge of Safford, Arizona. In 1958 additional objects were collected on a subsequent visit to the cave. The ceremonial objects include wooden flowers and cones, strings of miniature baskets, terraced wooden objects, a wooden pendant, cotton cloth, and bows and arrows. Apparently most of these objects had been stored in a Maverick Mountain Polychrome jar which had been covered with a smudged brownware bowl. The cache dates from the closing years of the 13th century or the early years of the 14th century. It probably belonged to the group of migrants from the Kayenta area who moved into Point of Pines about A.D. 1280 only to be driven from there about 20 or 30 years later.

This cave in the Sierra Madre Occidental was excavated to obtain information from a little-known region which might help clarify problems of Mexican-Southwestern contacts. The excavation produced ten burials with associated mats and blankets, only a few artifacts, and both cultivated and gathered plant remains. Stylistic elements of Mogollon and Casas Grandes pottery and the cultivated plants suggest a beginning date of A.D. 1000; the lack of European artifacts, a terminal date of 1600. The death complex is interpreted by analogy with modern Tarahumara practices. The use of the cave is described in terms of a series of events and episodal analysis is presented as a way of operationalizing the conjunctive approach.

Rautman's critique of our article “Although They Have Petty Captains They Obey Them Badly: The Dialectics of Prehispanic Western Pueblo Social Organization” (McGuire and Saitta 1996) provides us with an opportunity to clarify some points about our theoretical perspective. Rautman shares our dissatisfaction with attempts to characterize Prehispanic western pueblo social organization as either egalitarian or hierarchical. She, however, questions our dismissal of processual theory and our advocacy of a dialectical approach to the problem. She proposes instead an alternative approach that relies on the concept of heterarchy. We have little problem with the use of heterarchy as a descriptive label for late Prehispanic pueblo social organization, but we desire a more dynamic understanding of that organization than the concept of heterarchy allows. We find that understanding in a dialectical approach.

Diversity is generally valued, although it sometimes contributes to difficult social situations, as is recognized in recent social science literature. Archaeology can provide insights into how diverse social situations play out over the long term. There are many kinds of diversities, and we propose representational diversity as a distinct category. Representational diversity specifically concerns how and whether differences are marked or masked materially. We investigate several archaeological sequences in the U.S. Southwest. Each began with the coming together of populations that created situations of unprecedented social diversity; some resulted in conflict, others in long-term stability. We trace how representational diversity changed through these sequences. Specifically, we review the transregional Kayenta migration to the southern Southwest and focus empirical analyses on regional processes in the Cibola region and on painted ceramics. Results show that, initially, representational diversity increased above and beyond that caused by the combination of previously separate traditions as people marked their differences. Subsequently, in some instances, the diversity was replaced by widespread homogeneity as the differences were masked and mitigated. Although the social causes and effects of diversity are many and varied, long-term stability and persistence is associated with tolerance of a range of diversities.

The material described in this article was secured by Dr. D. Jenness and the writer in 1927 and 1929 in the course of archaeological reconnaissances along the east and west coasts of Newfoundland. The purpose of both field trips was to locate sites and burial places of the extinct Beothuk Indians. Although the writer suspected that other people besides the Beothuk had inhabited the island in prehistoric times, he was surprised to find abundant evidences of the presence of an Eskimo people on the northwest coast: one of the sites visited by Dr. Jenness on the northeast coast also was inhabited by Eskimo.

A recent surface survey was conducted at the site of Chan Chan, Peru, for purposes of investigating the nature of community settlement patterns. Previous writers have tended to view these in terms of the speculated sociological implications of specific largescale architectural features known as ciudadelas. In doing so they have neglected an extremely important body of information regarding the many small and inconspicuous building units that are closely associated with the ciudadelas. The present survey concentrated on the smaller complexes and provided data that were relevant to studying aspects of community settlement patterning such as house types, distribution of public buildings, street layouts, distribution of population types, population size and density. The results indicate that the range of social activities that were engaged in at Chan Chan during its flourish cannot possibly be understood in terms of the implications of large-scale architecture. It is suggested here that the overall community settlement pattern of Chan Chan is coincidental to the configuration described by Sjoberg (1965) for the typical preindustrial city. The hypotheses and suggestions generated by this study provide a base or foundation for future research at the site.

Student members of the Arizona State University Walnut Creek Archaeological Field Camp excavated six pit houses and located several more at Walnut Creek Village, located 10 mi. southeast of Young, Arizona, during the summer of 1967. Three of the pit houses were Hohokam and three were Anasazi; one of the latter was a subcircular kiva with sipapu-resonator complex of distinctive western Pueblo style. The occurrence, during the ninth century, of these two archaeological groups, side-by-side, in an ecological setting which is unusual for the Hohokam contributes to our knowledge of them and permits inferences concerning the Hohokam community at Roosevelt:9:6, 30 mi. away. Additionally, hypotheses concerning Hohokam ceremonial and communal houses at other sites can be evaluated.

This paper discusses a method for the analysis of spatial patterning which is based on aspects of the study of spatial autocorrelation. By means of computer simulation it is shown that the join count statistic (Cliff and Ord 1973; Moran 1950) has a wider validity than was presumed originally. Some archaeological applications from the analysis of a late Mesolithic cemetery in Karelia, USSR, are presented.

Illicit excavation of archaeological materials for sale to collectors and museums is widespread and damaging. Details on the scale of this activity in Costa Rica are discussed, as well as various ways in which it affects the economy and life-style of the contemporary population.

It is generally accepted that Lake Mohave artifacts date from the closing phase of the last deglaciation when the lake stood at its highest level. A re-evaluation of published data shows that Lake Mohave artifacts date from the overflow period, but only after the lake had abandoned the highest or 946-foot beach. A radiocarbon date of 9640 ± 240 years has been obtained from Anodonta shells at levels between 925 and 930 feet. These shells have been interpreted as remains of animals stranded en masse during the final recession of the Pluvial lake. No evidence for such a catastrophic event has been presented, and there is some evidence which suggests the opposite. The Anodonta shells appear to represent remains of dead animals deposited when the lake stood somewhat higher than 930 feet. It is apparent that an interdisciplinary approach, involving geology, paleolimnology, and palynology, as well as archaeology, is needed if man's place in the history of Lake Mohave is to be understood.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Puebloan women (if not entire families) were incorporated into Apache Dismal River communities in western Kansas. In at least one site (14SC1), Puebloan people lived in a small masonry pueblo. We evaluate the timing and nature of the Puebloan occupation at 14SC1 and its relationship to the Dismal River population at the site. We use a Bayesian analytical framework to evaluate different models of the pueblo's use history, constraining 12 radiocarbon dates by their stratigraphic data and then comparing this framework with different temporal models based on the historical record. We conclude that Dismal River people lived at 14SC1 prior to the appearance of Pueblo migrants, sometime between cal AD 1490 and 1650. Construction and early use of the pueblo by migrants from the Rio Grande valley occurred between cal AD 1630 and 1660, and the pueblo was closed by burning sometime between cal AD 1640 and 1690. Site 14SC1 lacks Rio Grande Glaze Ware, and its residents seem rarely to have engaged with the groups in the Southern Plains Macroeconomy. Our results contribute to studies of indigenous community formation and Puebloan residential mobility during the Spanish colonial period.

Using lithic and faunal data from 33 Cody complex (10,000–8600 14C years B.P.) components from the northern Great Plains, this study explores how Paleoindian land use and foraging strategies varied in relation to resource structure at the regional scale. The analysis of regional-scale faunal and lithic data was undertaken to demonstrate how disparate but related datasets must be considered together to develop a more complete understanding of hunter-gatherer lifeways. Empirical observations from the Cody archaeological record were compared to an optimal foraging theory and temporal resource predictability theory-inspired land-use model. The model predicts, and the data support, a pattern whereby Cody groups in the resource-rich foothill-mountain zone employed a regionally restricted land-use strategy for a protracted portion of the year, made spatially limited movements during which they relied on local toolstone, and expanded diet breadth by hunting a mixture of dispersed bison herds and small-bodied animals. In the comparatively resource-poor plains grasslands and adjacent alluvial valleys, the model predicts and the data indicate that Cody groups employed a nonregionally restricted land-use strategy in which they rapidly moved through regions, relied on nonlocal toolstone sources, made many residential moves over vast areas, and relied on a narrow range ofbiotic resources (primarily bison).

The view that technological advance was the prime cause of the early civilizations is examined and rejected. Instead, it is argued that civilization was an organizational solution to specific social and ecological problems. Even where technology gave an impetus to the rise of civilization, it can be shown that the tools or weapons involved were themselves developed in response to societal demands. Thus, the invention of the steam engine, which led to the Industrial Revolution, can be traced back to the need by feudal states in Europe to cope with a severe shortage of labor. This interpretation is presented, not as a repudiation of cultural materialism, but as an elaboration on it.

An exceptionally fine and significant stone figurine of the Ohio Hopewell Culture was found recently among the items in the collection of the late James L. Wright of Rochester, New York. Purchased by Mr. Wright's father in 1882, this figurine was found in one of the mounds of the famous Newark (Ohio) earthworks group in August 1881. The figurine is that of a shaman or priest masked by the head and skin of a bear, the probable totem of his clan or group. The shaman holds in his right hand a human head. The presence of typical Hopewellian earspools on both the shaman and the head indicates the possibility that the shaman is performing one of the rites in the ceremonies concerned with the dead and that the head is that of a fellow clan or group member.

Three AMS radiocarbon dates on bone collagen from Las Palmas culture human skeletons from the cape region of Baja California are analyzed. Carbon derived from both terrestrial and marine sources necessitates correcting the radiocarbon ages for reservoir effects. Complicating this, however, are (a) the uncertain percentage of carbon of marine origin in the samples and (b) the convergence of the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California, which differ markedly in reservoir values. Computer program CALIB 3.0.3c is used to correct and calibrate the conventional radiocarbon dates in a simulation using varied values for marine carbon and reservoir effects for each sample. This produces substantial variance in the results and, therefore, difficulties for chronological interpretation. For example, reasonable input values for dR and percent marine carbon yield dates that overlap the first European contact (A.D. 1533), despite the absence of historic documentation of the Las Palmas mortuary complex. Further research on reservoir effects and paleodiet is needed in order to interpret radiocarbon determinations on cape region human remains. Moreover, our findings have serious implications for the proper application of radiocarbon dating to samples from other regions subject to reservoir effects.

The storage, retrieval, and analysis of archaeological data on electronic computers requires that artifacts be described in the framework of models which are: (a) sufficiently analogous to the “real world” of the data to be meaningful; (b) sufficiently expandable or open-ended to be usable in situations as yet undefined; and (c) sufficiently specific to be convertible into machine language. A model which meets these criteria is described, and samples of an artifact inventory prepared on an IBM 1440 computer are shown to illustrate the use of this descriptive system.

The change from a boreal to a temperate mammal fauna in central Pennsylvania is believed bracketed by radiocarbon dates associated with two cave faunas at from ca. 9300 to 7290 B.C.

Cotton plant parts recovered from archaeological sites usually consist of cordage and textile fragments, raw cotton, boll segments, and seeds. All of these can be readily identified as cotton, but much less easily as particular species of cotton. Some possibilities for obtaining a more precise botanical identification are presented. Peduncles (i.e., the stalks to which the bolls are attached in living material) might be particularly useful for identification purposes.