Our ability to order chronologically the archaeological record has long been linked to our capacity to generate explanations. Evolutionary explanations make even greater demands on chronological data requirements than most other approaches. Single date characterizations of deposits are wholly inadequate. Rather, we require distributions of dates that can be used to estimate duration and rates of assemblage formation. In addition, the events dated must have direct archaeological relevance such as artifact manufacture or deposition. In a study of the evolution of social complexity in the late prehistoric record of the central Mississippi River valley, luminescence dates of sherds that have been assigned to a single culture historical type provide a means of determining the chronological character of assemblages derived from large village deposits. In this way, the temporal data requirements for evolutionary accounts can be met reliably.

This article presents a hypothetical, general model that describes the processes involved in one aspect of traditional Southwestern agriculture: the interactions between soil hydrology and farming technology. In conjunction with extensive participation in hand cultivation with Hopi farmers, studies of soil hydrologic processes in Hopi maize fields have identified hydrological processes directly linked to Hopi field location criteria and farming practices. Field location criteria select for locations where soil textures and soil profile heterogeneity control rates of moisture infiltration, as well as loss to runoff, bare soil evaporation, and drainage. Farming practices, including clearing, maintenance, plant spacing, seed depth, and planting pit morphology, operate in conjunction with soil profile attributes to increase the amount of moisture available to plants and the mobility of that moisture. Effects of both soil profile attributes and farming practices are integrated into the discrete soil volume model of hydrologic processes occurring in the basic unit of Hopi farming, the individual plant clump. This information provides basic insights on ways archaeologists might evaluate the productive potentials of soils, the extent of farmable land around prehistoric communities, and the ranges of climate conditions that permit crop growth on that land.

Archaeological studies of temporal changes in human predation strategy using foraging theory tend to focus on the role of overexploitation of important prey resources and resulting resource depression. An alternative use of the prey-choice model framed under foraging theory is to investigate the influence of environmental changes, such as increases in climate stress, on prey availability. Environmental change can be expected to produce many of the same effects on human predation strategy as resource depression. Here analytical techniques typically used to study the effects of over-predation and resource depression caused by humans are used to monitor their response to fluctuations in prey availability related to climate change during the Holocene in Missouri. Data and interpretations presented here add to the growing body of zooarchaeological foraging theory literature implicating environmental change as a critical factor in human diet.

Many of the discussions addressing the issue of the capabilities and significance of early watercraft forms or a regionally specific evolutionary sequence for craft such as the Southern California plank canoe have limited their range of analogies to those forms present among the ethnohistorically documented groups of Southern California. However, this article attempts to demonstrate the existence of at least one additional form of watercraft present on the Pacific coast of Baja California, as well as call attention to the greatly underrepresented capabilities of some long-recognized forms of watercraft. Inference, historic documents, contemporary environmental conditions, and archaeological data are used in an attempt to reconstruct a meaningful picture of Isla Cedros watercraft and their place within the repertoire of indigenous maritime culture and society. It is suggested that modern political boundaries have resulted in the exclusion of Baja California from discussions of North American archaeology. This discussion attempts to be a contribution to concepts of indigenous watercraft along the Pacific coast of North America and a vehicle to expand the research horizons of North American archaeology to include the underinvestigated regions of Baja California and northwestern Mexico.

Cortex is often used as an indicator of core reduction and transport, but current measures to evaluate the observed amount of cortex in a lithic assemblage with what might be expected under particular conditions are still ambiguous. The purpose of the present study is to develop and evaluate an alternative method based on solid geometry. This method is evaluated with an experimentally produced assemblage, and implications of its application to archaeological assemblages are presented and discussed.

Metric analyses of recently excavated maize (Zea mays, L.) cupules and cob fragments from Early Agricultural period (2000 B. C.-A.D. 50) sites in southern Arizona indicate that early maize cultivars produced small cobs with small cupules. Although it is risky to generalize about the yield potential of a plant that may have no compelling modern analogues, this work provides further support for the claim that ancient Tucson Basin maize plants provided relatively low yields as compared with more recent varieties.

Previous 14C determinations obtained on two segments of a single mastodon bone recovered from Monte Verde, Chile, were highly discordant, differing by more than 5,000 years. Because of the significance of this site in discussions concerning the earliest peopling of the Western Hemisphere, additional 14C and new δ13C values have been obtained on organic fractions isolated from both segments. The constituent amino acid profiles indicate that both bone segments retain significant amounts of protein (mostly collagen) residues. Four accelerator mass spectrometry-based 14C values obtained on total amino acids and ultrafiltered gelatin fractions—two from each segment—are statistically identical and indicate an age of 12,460 (± 30) BP for the mastodon. This value is concordant with 14C values obtained on other culturally affiliated organics associated with the MV-II levels at this site.

Archaeological and historical research in 1999–2001 on the loss of the 3-masted, iron barque “North Carolina” produced a series of anomalies and coincidences suggesting that the ship was sunk intentionally. The wreck lies along the southwest edge of Bermuda’s reef system. At first it appeared to be that of a fairly typical sail-propelled, iron-hulled cargo ship of a general type built in the United Kingdom during the late nineteenth century. The original research design for the “North Carolina” project sought to test how representative this shipwreck was as an example of that shipbuilding tradition. Archaeological surveys as well as published and archival accounts of the ship's loss, however, revealed discrepancies that were explored further. The project evolved into the investigation of a possible 120-year-old crime scene. The “North Carolina” offers a case study of how scientifically grounded archaeology applied with due regard for critical issues of cultural context can reveal systemic as well as proximate factors that affect past human behavior—including possible criminal behavior.

Melting and retreating glaciers and ice patches (aniuvat) have revealed frozen archaeological remains on several continents, including North America. Artifacts from these sites provide information about high-latitude and high-altitude human adaptations and unique insights into prehistoric material culture. A Geographic Information System (GIS) model, “Modeling Archaeological Potential of Ice and Snow,” or MAPIS, is being developed to focus aerial reconnaissance and pedestrian survey for archaeological and paleontological site discovery over vast areas containing glaciers and ice patches. Two field surveys in Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve refined the MAPIS model and documented historic and prehistoric artifacts on the surface of recently melted glaciers and aniuvat. Because thawed and exposed organic artifacts decompose or are destroyed soon after exposure, there is an urgent need to locate and preserve them before they are lost forever.

The large radiocarbon database now established for Paleolithic sites in Siberia and the Russian Far East can be used to build up a picture of relative population size in these regions. We consider the time period of ca. 46,000 to 12,000 B.P. for which we have assembled and critically studied 437 radiocarbon dates. All dates from individual sites that fall within 1,000 14C years are considered as a single event and called occupation episode. The results of our analysis show that the number of 14C dates until ca. 28,000 B.P. is small and increases at ca. 28,000–20,000 B.P, and dates decrease in frequency for the ca. 20,000–16,000 B.P. time range. It is after ca. 16,000 B.P. that we see a substantial rise in the number of 14C dates. In terms of the relative size of Siberian Paleolithic populations based on the frequency of occupation episodes, population density was small until ca. 36,000 B.P. Subsequently, population size increased gradually at ca. 36,000–16,000 B.P., and the growth rate became almost exponential at ca. 16,000–12,000 B.P. The number of occupations from ca. 20,000 to 18,000 B.P. did not decrease, running counter to arguments that Siberia was completely or considerably depopulated during the Last Glacial Maximum.

This paper examines the way in which patterns of human occupation and geomorphic processes interacted to produce a highly structured distribution of artifacts and hearths over a period of over 3,000 years at the Allen site (25FT50), a Paleoindian campsite in southwestern Nebraska. Despite accumulation of roughly a meter of sediment, artifact concentrations remained in almost exactly the same horizontal locations throughout the period of site occupation. Hearth locations varied considerably, but were virtually always located in areas of low artifact density. Considered in light of ethnoarchaeological studies of hunter-gatherer site structure, our data indicate that the excavated portion of the site was at the periphery of a domestic area and was used for secondary discard and other purposes. Trash appears to have been collected and discarded onto previously existing and continuously visible middens throughout the occupation, and new hearths appear to have been located to avoid these middens. We discuss the implications of these patterns for current models of Paleoindian landuse on the Plains and for studies of hunter-gatherer site structure in general.

In recent years, prehistoric warfare has increasingly attracted the attention of archaeologists in North America, much like other parts of the world. Skeletons with several forms of trauma, including arrow wounds, are often used as evidence of intergroup conflict, although opinion is divided over what these casualties might mean in terms of the effect of warfare on everyday life. Information on 191 patients from the nineteenth-century Indian Wars in the American West indicates that only about one in three arrows damaged bone, and as many as one-half of wounded lived for months or years following their injuries. Arrow wound distributions vary among Indian Wars cases, modern Papua New Guinea patients, and prehistoric skeletons from eastern North America, in large part because of differences in how fighting was conducted. Despite arguments to the contrary, it is reasonable to infer that even low percentages of archaeological skeletons with distinctive conflict-related bone damage indicate that warfare must have had a perceptible impact on ways of life.

Recent papers by Michelle Hegmon (2003) and Joe Watkins (2003) purport to “map the terrain” of North American archaeology. Yet these two metaphorical maps present very different views of the contours of North American archaeology. Taken together, the two papers highlight problematic divisions between (1) theory and practice in North American archaeology, and (2) academic archaeology and cultural resource management. What are the roles archaeological theory plays in the contemporary practice of archaeology? Why do discussions of archaeological theory have so little to offer stakeholders other than academic archaeologists? Although Hegmon has shown many areas of convergence in archaeological theory, her depiction of “processual-plus” archaeologies dulls the edge of postprocessual critiques of the processual status quo. I argue that feminist, Marxist, and postcolonial archaeologies cannot be subsumed by this label because some of their practitioners aspire to contribute to social change beyond the realm of archaeology itself. These practitioners realize that the practice of archaeology always has political consequences, not just for academic archaeologists, but for a diverse set of stakeholders.

There is a gap between discussions of theory and of practice in North American archaeology. More political engagement by archaeologists would be desirable. Regarding these and other issues, Moss and I agree. However, I also believe that the open-mindedness and dearth of theoretical schisms characteristic of Processual-plus archaeology is desirable. Critical perspectives such as Marxist and feminist approaches can be included in this broad perspective, and can thus contribute to both the advancement of knowledge and political agendas. More consideration and analysis of the linkages between theory and practice would be fruitful.

Many new, or processual, archaeologists of the 1960s argued that Americanist archaeology became scientific only in the 1960s. The hypothesis that the rate of publication of archaeological research in Science and Scientific American increased after about 1965, as new archaeologists sought to demonstrate to their peers and other scientists that archaeology was indeed a science, is disconfirmed. The rate of archaeological publication in these journals increased after 1955 because the effort to be more scientific attributed to the processualists began earlier. Higher publication rates in both journals appear to have been influenced by an increased amount of archaeological research, a higher rate of archaeological publication generally, and increased funding. The hypothesis that editorial choice has strongly influenced what has been published in Science is confirmed; articles focusing on multidisciplinary topics rather than on narrow archaeological ones dominate the list of titles over the period from 1940 through 2003.