Scientific archaeology and indigenous oral traditions have long been estranged. While there appears to be something of a thaw in recent years, the terms of epistemological engagement are unclear. Are these different modes of constituting the past heuristically compatible at all? Or should they, as the postmodernists would avow, simply be treated as alternative narratives in the intractable culture wars, where the privileged truth-claims of science are dismissed as a spurious arrogance? Focusing on an example from Hopi oral tradition, this paper argues that objective archaeological explanation can gain a great deal, without any loss of analytical rigor, by treating oral traditions not as scientifically unassimilable myths but as a primary source of evidence and interpretation of past social formations. The need for dialogue, then, is important not just as a matter of multicultural diplomacy, but for the enhancement of scientific explanation itself.

In Mesoamerica and the Near East, the emergence of the village seems to have involved two stages. In the first stage, individuals were distributed through a series of small circular-to-oval structures, accompanied by communal or “shared” storage features. In the second stage, nuclear families occupied substantial rectangular houses with private storage rooms. Over the last 30 years a wealth of data from the Near East, Egypt, the Trans-Caucasus, India, Africa, and the Southwest U.S. have enriched our understanding of this phenomenon. And in Mesoamerica and the Near East, evidence suggests that nuclear family households eventually gave way to a third stage, one featuring extended family households whose greater labor force made possible extensive multifaceted economies.

Evolutionary theory and terminology are widely used in recent archaeological work, and many evolutionary archaeologists have argued that the integration of such theory and terminology is essential to the future of our field. This paper considers evolutionary archaeology from two perspectives. First, it examines substantive claims that archaeology can study the operation of Darwinian evolution, either through a reliance on optimal-foraging theory or by linking the process of natural selection to archaeological data. It concludes that there are serious problems with both of these claims on Darwin: the relation between evolution and foraging theory has never been documented, and midrange arguments linking selection and archaeological data are unsustainable. Second, it argues that archaeologists rely metaphorically on evolutionary terminology to help make sense out of archaeological data. Although the use of evolutionary metaphor can be, and has been, problematic, it also offers a powerful conceptual framework for our research. However, this framework is only of one of a number of comparable frameworks that have been offered to our field, as a comparison of systems archaeology and evolutionary archaeology shows.

Research reported here is based on the stable isotope (δ 13C,δ 15N) and radiocarbon chemistry of Fremont burials from wetlands lining the eastern shores of the Great Salt Lake (GSL). Bone collagen stable isotope signatures covary with reliance on maize and intake of animal protein, facilitating useful reconstructions of past diet. Among the GSL Fremont, economic strategies vary over time with an initial increase in reliance on maize (A.D. 400–850) followed by a period of marked economic diversity (A.D 850–1150) then a return to reliance on wild foods (after A.D. 1150). During the period of greatest economic diversity, male and female diets vary significantly and male diets are correlated with status differences evidenced by grave goods. There is also a clear temporal correlation between the rapid abandonment of maize agriculture and significant moisture anomalies in regional tree-ring chronologies and pollen profiles. These results are discussed in the context of recent arguments regarding economic diversity, social complexity, and the demise of the Fremont.

Violence and the role of violence have emerged recently as topics important to understanding the prehistory of the northern Southwest. Recent excavations at Castle Rock and Sand Canyon pueblos, two thirteenth-century sites in the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado, bring new data to bear on these subjects. Field contexts and the results of bone and myoglobin analyses indicate that nonlethal and lethal violence occurred in both of these villages and that additional modifications to bodies and bones occurred near the time of death. Around A.D. 1280, at least eight individuals at Sand Canyon Pueblo died violently, and at least 41 individuals died at Castle Rock. During or after the warfare event that ended the occupation of Castle Rock, some bodies were dismembered, bones were broken, crushed, and heat altered; a few bones were reamed, and the end of one bone was polished. Several incidents of violence and probable anthropophagy (the consumption of human flesh) have been documented in the Mesa Verde region for the mid-A.D. 1100s; however, this analysis of violent events in the late A.D. 1200s establishes a critical link between probable anthropophagy and warfare, and links both with the depopulation of the region.

A comparison of the rich ethnohistoric record of prehistoric conflict in Hawai'i with evidence of warfare in other culture areas suggests some basic similarities in cause and effect shared by many complex hegemonic polities. Three types of archaeological remains in Hawai'i indicate that human sacrifice and monumental-scale ritual construction were integral parts of pre-Contact (A.D. 1778) conquest warfare. The Hawaiians, however, invested much less labor in long-term responses to possible threats to civilian security than many cultures, suggesting that wartime expectations were very different even if the scale and intensity of combat was similar. These differences are perceived to be a reflection of distinct historical traditions of wartime ethics in Polynesia, unique rules of conflict adapted to the geographic isolation of the Hawaiian people and the environmental diversity that defines the archipelago.

Archaeologists have long sought to understand the relationships between the quantity and diversity of material that accumulates at a site and the variables of community size and occupation duration. This paper examines these relationships through an analysis of mobility and settlement population in the late precontact and early colonial Chesapeake region of the eastern U.S. Drawing on previous accumulations research and two “strong” archaeological cases that provide critical values, the study develops measures of relative sedentariness and ceramic-discard behavior that can be used to model behavior at sites without stratified deposits or well-preserved architecture. Application of this model to the James River Valley of Virginia produces more reliable dates for the inception of village communities, several centuries following the adoption of maize-based horticulture in the region. The analysis also suggests that the fundamental nature of residential settlement changed dramatically in the study area after A.D. 1200 with the emergence of a settlement hierarchy including relatively large communities with lengthy occupation durations. The creation of a new cultural landscape containing substantial villages, combined with related changes in household and community organization, is central to the origins and development of the Powhatan paramountcy, one of North America's archetypal complex chiefdoms.

Weak impacts, such as those caused by bumping vessels together or knocking vessels over, are a major cause of ceramic vessel breakage. The ball-on-three ball test for resistance to biaxial flexure is intended to test resistance to weak impacts. Ceramic types with greater resistance to biaxial flexure should therefore have longer use lives than those having less resistance. Data on ceramic strength are also important for understanding technological change and the demand for exchanged vessels. This paper refines the original methodology for use of the ball-on-three-ball test (Neupert 1994) and explores the strength of Hohokam plainware and Red-on-buff ceramics from south-central Arizona. Gila Plain sherds exhibit the most resistance to biaxial flexure of the three types tested. Casa Grande Red-on-buff sherds appear to be stronger than earlier Sacaton Red-on-buff sherds. Whole and reconstructed Casa Grande Red-on-buff mortuary vessels are also significantly less fragmented than Sacaton Red-on-buff mortuary vessels from the sites of Snaketown (AZ U:13:1) and AZ U:13:21, suggesting that Casa Grande Red-on-buff vessels have greater resistance to weak impacts.