A decorated pottery vessel excavated at the Cahokia site in southwestern Illinois is believed to be a specimen from the southeastern United States. A megascopic and a petrographic analysis are presented to confirm a southern origin. The megascopic analysis suggests that the vessel is of Caddoan derivation. The petrographic analysis demonstrates that the paste of the vessel is not indigenous to the American Bottoms and suggests the use of weathered Tertiary shale deposits from the lower Mississippi River Valley. Both analytical procedures are required in order to assess adequately the sources of origin for suspected foreign pottery specimens in archaeological sites.

A new cognitive model is proposed and applied to the analysis of the anthropomorphic-dominated paleoimagery or rock art of both the Archaic Barrier Canyon Style and the Basketmaker San Juan Style of the Colorado Plateau, including the attributes of headdresses and messengers. Under the cognitive model, the decision to execute rock art is culturally and historically conditioned; the interaction of narrative language and visual imagery takes precedence over hallucinatory and trance mechanisms. The cognitive model examines the interplay between perceptual imagery and stored mental imagery, both of which occur within the human cognitive system. Such an interplay arguably has been as important in the shaping of human cultures as the role of language. These Archaic and Basketmaker ecologies and cultures also may have developed group ritual, an early adoption not requisitely tied to the transition from a mobile hunter-gatherer ecology to an agricultural ecology. Such interpretations redefine the predominant images of the region's Archaic and Basketmaker anthropomorphic figures, bird-headed imagery, messenger spirits, supplication panels, and processional panels. The model reinstates the praejudico role that visual imagery plays in the construction of culture.

In the summer of 1953 the Texas Memorial Museum of Austin, Texas, conducted scientific excavations of a Paleo-Indian bison kill near Milnesand, New Mexico. After the departure of this group from the site, a large number of artifacts were collected from the bison bone bed by Ted Williamson of Milnesand, New Mexico. Because of the site's importance and the paucity of culturally related sites, a detailed description of the artifacts collected by Williamson is considered to be of immense value to specialists in the Paleo-Indian field.

Ethnohistorical, archaeological, and ethnological data are combined in a discussion of Inca bridges in the Huanuco area. A colonial document provides the details of how a major bridge on the Inca highway was constructed by placing a series of logs over projecting canes. The division of labor in providing the logs was described as being divided among neighboring communities, with the river itself as a significant dividing line. The section of the Inca highway in question is still in use today and the bridge still exists, apparently much the same as it was in the Colonial Period and probably in the Inca Period. Other bridges in the area are discussed from the point of view of function and maintenance and as an example of the persistence of an ancient tradition of bridge building.

Evolutionary theory, in consort with Marxism and processualism, provides new insights into the interpretation of grave-good variation. Processual interpretations of burial sites in the American Southwest cite age, sex, or social rank as the main determinants of burial-good variation. Marxist theorists suggest that mortuary ritual mediates social tension between an egalitarian mindset and an existing social inequality. Evolutionary theory provides a supplementary explanatory framework. Recent studies guided by kin-selection theory suggest that humans grieve more for individuals of high reproductive value and genetic relatedness. Ethnographic examples also show that individuals mourn more intensively and, thus, place more social emphasis on burials of individuals of highest reproductive value (young adults). Analysis of grave goods from La Ciudad, a Hohokam site in the American Southwest, supports the hypothesis that labor value, reproductive value, and grief contributed to grave-good differentiation. At La Ciudad, individuals between the ages of 10 and 20 possessed more and higher-quality grave goods on average than any other age group. Grief at the loss of a young adult of high reproductive and labor value may facilitate explanation of mortuary variation at La Ciudad, as well as other sites in the greater Southwest and beyond.

In the course of its long and eventful prehistory, the territory embraced in the present state of New York was invaded from nearly every direction. For several groups, notably the Iroquois, it was the end of the trail; others sojourned briefly and passed on. In part it was heavily occupied by diverse bands for a considerable period of time. This is especially true of the central and southern sections and of large parts of the Genesee Valley. The latter and the Finger Lakes region, including the Seneca River, are thickly strewn with sites of varying age and size. In one section of the Genesee Valley, just south of Rochester, hardly a knoll is opened without revealing skeletons. Other relatively intensively occupied areas are the Susquehanna drainage, parts of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys and Long Island.

Waters and Ravesloot (2001) test the assumption that natural river channel change caused periods of Hohokam cultural reorganization. However, they conclude that channel changes did not correlate with all periods and areas of significant cultural changes and that landscape alone cannot explain Hohokam transformations. An anthropological perspective on political ecology and disasters can explain why environmental processes and events differentially impact societies, differentially impact societies diachronically and differentially impact social groups within societies. We suggest that this perspective may explain the variability described by Waters and Ravesloot.

A set of modern Tijuana vessels has been used to test some solutions to problems involved in the reconstruction of the morphology and capacity of vessels in ceramic assemblages. The technique employs morphological criteria to partition and reconstruction the modern assemblage. The results of these experiments are described.

As a result of work on Santa Rosa Island during 1947-1950, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has completed a survey which includes 142 ancient Indian village sites. On the California mainland intensive cultivation, construction and pot-hunting have pretty well eliminated the natural surface conditions of Indian sites, but on Santa Rosa Island, due to its isolation, there are many sites untouched by modern man. Consequently, it was possible to set up a system of classification of the sites undisturbed by civilization on a basis of natural physical conditions.

Dorn (1983) has proposed that changes in rock varnish chemistry can be used to date varnished artifacts. Specifically, he suggests that the varnish cation ratio, (K + Ca)/Ti, decreases as the age of the varnished surface increases. Although the method is generating significant archaeological interest, many of its underlying assumptions remain undemonstrated. This paper examines one premise of the method, that the varnishing process is regular. Data obtained from varnish distributional studies challenge this assumption and, when compared with the chemical data obtained from the same archaeological site, suggest that the cation-ratio dating technique may not be able to provide accurate dates for most varnished artifacts.

Brian Hayden argues that our analysis of Keatley Creek stratigraphy and dates offers inaccurate conclusions. Although our data demonstrate that the village appeared late and was somewhat unstable, Hayden continues to support a model of early emergence and high stability. Hayden offers no new data to support his position. Consequently, we argue that there is no reason to reject our revised view.

Frequency seriation has often led to valid ordering of archaeological data, yet critiques of the technique, and in particular of the construction of unimodal popularity (battleship) curves, have appeared periodically for almost 20 yr. Problems of type definition, collection manipulation, and chronological inference have been emphasized. It is here suggested that, above and beyond these difficulties of execution and interpretation, frequency seriation is methodologically unsound: that the battleship curve concept is self-contradictory; that a type/collection frequency has descriptive value only within a collection but has no comparative value between collections; that the most commonplace kinds of ceramic variation can negate the type/collection unimodal curve; that seriation of collections to conform to the self-contradictory battleship curve provides a mechanical method by which significant changes in ceramic complexes may be obfuscated. If this basic form of frequency seriation is methodologically invalid, then more complex schemes for manipulating type/collection frequencies using the same or equivalent assumptions (for example, the Brainerd-Robinson technique and others) are also methodologically suspect.

Simulation can be an effective tool for investigating the demography of small, prehistoric Southwest Pueblo communities. The model presented here incorporates biological and physiological, cultural, and behavioral characteristics and tracks each individual as the simulation of a small population is carried forward through 70 years of annual iterations. Sensitivity analyses are performed for a suite of critical parameter values. Many of parameters and functions are probabilistic, and Monte Carlo techniques are used to obtain statistically significant results. Simulation results are collected on numerous variables that profile the individual and group characteristics such as mortality, immigration to emigration ratio, nuclear family formation, and distribution of population size and mix. Initial success is dependent on the attributes of the founding population and its gender mix. The long-term survival of a small population is extremely sensitive to the mortality schedule, attributes of the founding population, and marriage-residence rules. Small shifts in the age-specific mortality statistics dramatically affect the population growth and the frequency of site collapse. The consequences of inaccuracies in mortality statistics are highlighted.

Within recent years it has become increasingly clear that the antiquity of man in America can be pushed back to respectably remote periods of time. The evidence for this is now beyond reasonable question. The original Folsom find, as well as the more recent Lindenmeier excavations, among others, have established the general status of the Folsom culture complex involved. The work at Gypsum Cave has added to the picture of early man in America, and that at Sandia Cave also shows clear-cut evidence that cannot be ignored.

Technological analysis of ceramic materials from the early phases of the Lower Mississippi area indicates that Tchula pottery is untempered, and this throws doubt upon the concept of a fiber-tempered horizon in the Southeast. Certain recommendations are made for technological studies which include the use of close-up photography during the study and in the final report.

Archaeological research in the Mississippi Valley during the past decade, although a map illustrating the areas intensively worked would have an exceedingly spotted appearance, and programs of study have been hardly more than superficial anywhere, has resulted in more clearly defining many of the problems for that field, and in marked progress toward the solution of a few of the more simple problems. Perhaps the most important advances made are in relation to such final preliterate manifestations as are classified under the Upper Mississippi Phase. Certainly, relatively small headway has been made in the general field of the Woodland Pattern.

I explore in this paper the significance of the headdress interred on Burial 11 under Hopewell Mound 25 by reexamining its archaeological context and the history of its interpretation. Following Shetrone’s (1926) initial interpretation, I argue that it was an avian headdress that specifically portrayed a two-headed raptor. I support this reassessment with an iconographie analysis of related representations from the Central Ohio River Valley, especially the imagery engraved on a femur from Hopewell Mound 25. I also delve into what these two-headed raptors might have meant to people in the Eastern Woodlands.

On December 28, 1946, during the forty-fifth annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, a symposium on River Valley Archaeology in the United States was conducted under the auspices of the Committee for the Recovery of Archaeological Remains. The Committee was organized in 1945 to represent American Archaeology and Anthropology in the emergency brought about by the extensive Government program for floodcontrol and irrigation. Plans for hundreds of dams in the major and minor river systems of the country are completed.

Recent excavations and laboratory analyses by the Statewide Archaeological Survey of Louisiana have provided the means for a better definition of the Natchezan culture type and its antecedents. Comparative ethnological data were obtained from Dr. John R. Swanton and Dr. Andrew C. Albrecht.

The archaeological data were obtained from six excavated sites and several surface collections. Only two of these sites were documented; the Fatherland Plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, and the Bayou Goula site in Iberville Parish, Louisiana. The undocumented sites were the Angola Farm in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana; the Laborde site in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana; the Ring site in Warren County, Mississippi; and the Glass site also in Warren County, Mississippi. With the exception of Bayou Goula and Laborde these sites have been mentioned by Ford.

Southeast Europe is the location of the earliest horticulture and metallurgy in Europe, and is therefore important to understanding processes of cultural development in prehistoric Europe as a whole. This review of the rich literature is an introduction to topics of current interest, including the debates and differences of opinion among scholars.