Civilizations represent human ecosystems amenable to systematic geo-archaeological analysis. The civilization of Axum, spanning the first millennium A.D., had its settlement core on the now-denuded, subhumid plateau of northern Ethiopia. Axum, a new city, began A.D. 100 as a ceremonial center, growing to over 10,000 people, as a prosperous emporium for international trade. Intensified land use led to mass movements in slope soils before A.D. 300, but a range of clayey stream deposits also implicates strong periodic floods and seasonally abundant moisture. The paleoclimatic ensemble suggests that stronger and more reliable spring rains allowed two crops yearly without irrigation, compared to only one with modern summer rains. Trade declined after 600 and Axum was essentially landlocked by 715. Intense land pressure and more erratic rainfall favored soil destruction and ecological degradation during the seventh and eighth centuries. Largely abandoned by 800 and pillaged by border tribes. Axum retained only symbolic significance as power shifted to the more fertile lands of humid central Ethiopia. Axum shows how the spatial and temporal variability of resources, and the interactions between a society and its resource base, can be fundamental in the analysis of historical process.

This paper presents a method called column-wise seriation, which is founded on inherent properties of the sequencing problem. Although nearly all previous approaches have focused on the permutation of units, hypothetical examples illustrate that certain relationships between types must likewise exist to achieve an ideal arrangement. Further examination and exploitation of these relationships furnish a new perspective on the seriation process, and lead to a strategy which is simple in concept and practice. A computer implementation of column-wise seriation is applied to archaeological data.

The use of ethnohistoric and ethnographic data in interpreting evidence for prehistoric ritual activity is highly controversial in Mesoamerican circles. This paper traces the long history of a Maya ceremony identified as the cuch rite. Although transformations in characters and symbols have occurred, continuity is also evident. Application of the ethnohistorical approach has suggested that a large corpus of ancient art depicts fertility and accession ceremonies. The stag appears to have been a major agricultural supernatural in Maya religion.

An earlier article in this journal suggested that Tayasal, the island capital of the late Postclassic and historic period Itza Maya, was located at Topoxte on Lake Yaxha in the Department of Peten, Guatemala. Study of ethnohistorical sources for the Peten Itza and their neighbors leads us to conclude, however, that Tayasal was in fact in Lake Peten Itza, the location long favored by earlier writers. These sources are reviewed here, and Tayasal is positively located on the island of Flores; tentative locations for other contemporary settlements in the central lakes region of Peten are offered. The current status of Postclassic period central Peten archaeological research is reviewed in light of the known ethnohistory of the region. The need for continuing interaction between archaeological and ethnohistorical research is stressed.

Alluvial geology studies indicate that valleys crossing the Texas High Plains have significant archaeological and paleontological potentials. Paleo-Indian and Ceramic/Historic sites are unexpectedly common, and are associated with ancient lake and marsh environments, spring deposits, entrenched meander necks, and buried strath terraces. Paleogeologic maps illustrate prehistoric topography and relate known sites to depositional environments. Archaeologically, the most valuable strata in both Yellowhouse and Blackwater Draws date to 11,500 to 8000-6000 radiocarbon years B.P. and 1000-100 radiocarbon years B.P. Sediments dating to ca. 6000-2000 radiocarbon years B.P. have a distinctly lower archaeological content. Yellowhouse, Blackwater and Running Water Draws have similar sedimentary sequences which are divided into two lithostratigraphic units, the Yellowhouse Draw and Lubbock Formations.

Prediction of human skeletal preservation at mortuary sites is important in archaeological research and in cultural resources management. In this study, correlations between osseous deterioration and soil acidity, as measured by pH, were found to be significant. Age-associated preservation biases were also evident. The use of multiple regression is suggested as a technique for estimating recovery of human osteological remains in archaeological context.

This paper presents a method for quantifying "boundary effect" in square, rectangular, triangular, and circular study areas. It is based upon a very different, theoretically oriented modification of the classic computation methods, is applicable to the variously shaped study areas described, and produces results which approximate simulation data quite closely.

A critical evaluation of radiocarbon measurements taken from recent excavations at Chavin de Huantar, Peru provides the basis for an absolute chronology for the Chavin culture at Chavin de Huantar which spans from 850 B.C. to 200 B.C. Radiocarbon measurements from four coastal sites stylistically related to Chavin de Huantar are reviewed and found to be generally prior in date to the earliest known occupation at Chavin de Huantar.

This paper evaluates the research potential of small contract surveys conducted in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. It is argued that if the data produced by small project surveys are to be used to answer regional questions, it is necessary to treat each small survey as a sample unit within a region and to synthesize the data from several such surveys. Statistical techniques are employed to determine the representativeness of the greater Phoenix small survey sample. Preliminary archaeological results of the surveys conducted within the Phoenix area are presented and guidelines for the conduct of future surveys are suggested.

Site acquisition or placing of preservation easements on archaeological sites are the best means currently available for insuring site preservation for future research. The examples presented are intended to inform the archaeological community about agencies involved in the acquisition of archaeological sites.

Evidence indicates that several temporally distinct periods of prehistoric occupation of the now dry Santa Elena Peninsula of Ecuador coincided with periods of mangrove formation on the Peninsula. This article challenges the premise behind the hypothesis that such hydrophytic vegetation indicates greater rainfall during these periods. An alternative hypothesis is suggested, based upon the argument that known coastal uplift and probable accompanying physiographic changes first created, and later destroyed, the edaphic requirements for such a formation. The need to invoke a hypothesis of climatic shifts is thus dispensed with.

A subsurface, modified systematic survey using a mechanical soil auger was carried out in downtown St. Augustine, Florida in 1976. The purpose of the survey, done in conjunction with historians and planners, was to locate the boundaries of the sixteenth-century Spanish settlement founded in 1565. The auger survey attained this goal, and the results were confirmed by three years of subsequent test excavations. The survey comprised the first stage in an ongoing cultural inventory and site assessment program for planning in St. Augustine, and has subsequently been extended to cover the entire corporate limits of the city. Having been tested through the excavation, the auger survey has proven to be a reliable method of revealing subsurface occupational and temporal patterning. It is also a fast, inexpensive and nondestructive survey method for the modern urban environment.

Recent discussions of deposit formation and disturbance in archaeology ignore the possible perturbation of artifact distribution by children's play. Experimental data indicate some results of such activity, and suggest that it should be borne in mind when reconstructing behavior patterns based on depositional history.

The use of systematically derived site location data in defining subsistence systems has increased markedly. However, the logical fallacy in the approach has never been discussed. Sites in a particular environmental setting may have been occupied for a variety of reasons at a variety of times (this is particularly true of "ecotone" sites). As a result, the assumption that a particular adaptive strategy may have been in force is, in the absence of any subsistence data, extremely questionable. Locational data may be useful in formulating hypotheses which can be tested through procurement of subsistence data, but in themselves they cannot be used to demonstrate the accuracy of a hypothetical subsistence system.

In a recent exchange Munday and Lincoln (1979) and Bettinger (1979a) debate the conclusions reached by Bettinger (1977) regarding diachronic variation in the prehistoric land-use patterns of Owens Valley, California. There are several related sources of error in Bettinger's quantitative and statistical operations that were not clarified or discussed in the published arguments. An evaluation of their potential effect on the analysis conducted by Bettinger (1975) lends considerable support to the basic assertion of Munday and Lincoln that Bettinger (1977) did not fully appreciate alternative explanations of the spatial and temporal variation he observed in site and artifact distributions in Owens Valley. Two of the three "adaptive shifts" in land-use patterns proposed by Bettinger are not supported by the published data.