This paper is an attempt to place the dispute about early man in South America in historical context and to review the most convincing and important evidence that has been put forward. Essentially no skeletal remains–either in North or South America–have survived recent scrutiny and direct dating by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and small CO2 counters. Only a handful of North American sites still are considered likely to be pre-Clovis, but the concept of an earlier, generalized hunting-and-gathering adaptation remains popular. In South America the pre-Paleoindian sites of the 1960s and 1970s are reevaluated and found to present only weak or negative indications of early occupation. Recently discovered sites in Brazil and Chile are examined critically, and the evidence is questioned. The results of this survey and evaluation suggest that we still lack the absolutely certain case that would be necessary to support the hypothesis of glacial-age occupation. Moreover, the probability of demonstration is seen to decrease, rather than increase, as the Paleoindian horizon increasingly is defined with more certainty while only equivocal cases are marshalled for an Archaic-like pre-Paleoindian stage. In summarizing prehistory, archaeologists should depend more on unambiguous and replicated cases, rather than on regional exceptions. More interpretive caution is needed, especially where there are possibilities of mixture and secondary deposition. Natural processes often mimic cultural patterns, confusing the positive identification of informal hearths and simple artifacts.

Specific questions regarding the antiquity of major midwestern Hopewell culture sites and their role in regional exchange systems are addressed in this paper through the dating (obsidian hydration) and compositional characterization (neutron activation analysis [NAA] and atomic absorption spectroscopy [AAS]) of obsidian artifacts. The analysis of 34 specimens from the Seip, Mound City, and Hopewell sites, Ohio, and the Naples site, Illinois, increases fivefold the number of chronometric dates available from these sites and expands the sample of compositionally identified specimens beyond those resulting from Griffin et al."s (1969) pioneering work. The resulting hydration dates support earlier estimates of the age of these contexts based on 14C or artifact seriation alone. The range of dates (78 B.C.-A.D. 347) and the compositional variety within the sample favors an expanded view of the nature of obsidian trade in the Midwest to include additional western sources, a longer episode of importation, and possible changes in the sources used through time.

Two major drought episodes, A.D. 1000 to 1015 and A.D. 1120 to 1150, contributed to significant change in adaptive strategies of the Virgin Branch Anasazi, a prehistoric population that occupied the southwestern Great Basin between A.D. 100 and A.D. 1150. The first extreme climatic event promoted the adoption of several alternative buffering strategies including intensive agricultural practices, increased reliance on storage, and the organization of large residential labor groups. The second drought, which followed 150 years of favorable climatic conditions and high levels of population growth, had a devastating impact upon the Virgin Branch Anasazi resulting in the complete abandonment of the southwestern Great Basin by that group. These two climatic events required entirely different responses, which suggest that shifts in climate are best viewed as triggering culture change. The preconditions of population growth set the various levels of sensitivity to extreme climatic events and determine the precise nature of the culture changes.

The familiar debate concerning Middle Paleolithic variability has opposed stylistic vs. functional explanations based on the assumption that tool types and assemblage groups represent discrete, invariant entities. Middle Paleolithic variability, however, actually occurs continuously. Further, recent research shows that raw-material constraints and different degrees of artifact-reduction intensity constitute more basic and observable factors of variability than function and style. Thus, much of the variability in these assemblages appears to have been caused by toolmaking and tool-rejuvenation processes and/or by differential occupation intensity induced by environmental circumstances. The correct interpretation of these Middle Paleolithic assemblages must therefore consider these factors, as well as interregional stylistic drift, function, and diachronic change.

Origin stories collected among the indigenous peoples in the Windward Islands during the early colonial period have been interpreted as indicating a mainland Carib affiliation for the islanders. This interpretation gave rise to efforts in the present century to identify the archaeological correlate of the presumed late prehistoric or protohistoric migration of Cariban speakers into the Lesser Antilles. Recent debate centers around two models. One of these associates the supposed migration of mainland Caribs into the Lesser Antilles with the advent of the Suazey ceramic complex in the twelfth century; the other implies either a protohistoric migration or an episode of rapid acculturation of island populations to South American mainland Carib culture in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. A review of relevant archaeological, historical, and linguistic evidence provides little support for either of these models. Instead, the so-called “Island Caribs” were Arawakan speakers, probably longtime residents of the Windward Islands whose cultural and linguistic connections with the mainland Caribs probably were the products of contacts related to trade and alliance.

Cobs of the earliest known archaeological maize from San Marcos Cave in the Tehuacan Valley were reexamined to estimate their morphological similarity to extant Mexican maize races. Cursory examination of these 7,000-year-old specimens aroused suspicion that they are not very closely related morphologically to any thus-far-described modern Mexican race. Statistical comparison of the Tehuacan specimens with 30 races of Mexican maize fully confirmed this suspicion. However, the inclusion in our statistical analysis of an extant race of popcorn from Argentina morphologically similar to the Tehuacan specimens indicated that the two were virtually indistinguishable. These findings imply that the earliest maize from Tehuacan already was fully domesticated, its cobs exhibiting a morphology one would expect had maize evolved from teosinte by way of catastrophic sexual transmutation (Iltis 1983).

Recent archaeological and epigraphic research suggests the existence of what could be Mesoamerica's first conquest state, centered at Monte Albán, the major Late Formative period Zapotec site in the Valley of Oaxaca. This paper explores the idea of an early Zapotec empire by examining evidence from one of Monte Albán's outlying regions, the southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The study is framed in terms of three hypothetical models of political and economic interaction, any one or combination of which could conceivably account for ancient Zapotec relationships with the southern Isthmus and its other hinterland regions.

In both diachronic and synchronic studies of archaeological examples of Ontario Iroquoian longhouses, the standard method of analysis is spatially static. In this paper, the spatially dynamic method is used to analyze longhouses representative of diachronic and synchronic episodes encompassing over 800 years of Ontario Iroquoian prehistory. The results of the analysis using this approach provide significant quantifiable data on the development of Iroquoian matrilocal residence systems and functional and tribal variation in longhouse settlement patterns.