Culture historians working on the Archaic and Woodland periods in eastern North America have adopted an essentialist view of settlement-subsistence relations, while processual archaeologists often have employed concepts emphasizing transformational relations to characterize settlement-pattern change. Selectionist theory uses detailed examination of variability in explaining change. Seven variables measured on a sequence of seriated Archaic and Woodland assemblages from sites in northeast Mississippi show sudden settlement-pattern change at the beginning of the Middle Woodland; this is interpreted as the advent of settled life in the study area. This case contradicts gradualist and essentialist settlement-subsistence scenarios. Such analyses hold promise for identifying the selective pressures at work when settlement patterns change.

It is widely believed that the design of transported artifacts and toolkits employed by mobile populations is influenced by two main factors, portability and potential utility. Choices about the kinds of artifacts to carry around can be modeled as an optimization problem, in which it is beneficial to obtain the greatest potential utility for the minimum total weight. This study approaches the problem analytically, making a few simple assumptions about artifact geometry and the relations between utility and artifact size. If artifact utility is calculated as a function of potential for renewal, transported toolkits should consist entirely of relatively small finished tools. Moreover, most gains in durability or multifunctionality that require increases in overall size are outweighed by increased transport cost. Inconsistencies between these expectations and ethnographic and archaeological observations point to situations in which artifact functionality is more closely constrained by overall size or mass.

To finance their empire, the Inka empire mobilized and expropriated both staple and sumptuary goods. This paper examines the manufacture and use of wealth-associated objects in the Calchaquí Valley, located on the empire's southern periphery. Recent excavations at the imperial settlement of Potrero de Payogasta and at the local Santamariana settlement of Valdéz recovered extensive manufacturing debris. Craft industries included copper, silver, and gold metallurgy; marine and land-snail shell-, stone-, and bone-bead manufacture; and mica disk cutting. At Potrero de Payogasta, the concentration of production debris in the households of the Inka elite and associated personnel represents attached specialization. Because evidence for several craft industries occurs together in individual households, related technologies were probably performed jointly. The inhabitants of the indigenous settlement, Valdéz, manufactured decorative items using primarily locally available land-snail shell. At Valdéz, the high frequency of ceramic molds, used in the casting of pure (unalloyed) copper, documents only initial stages of manufacture. The scarcity of finished wealth from both sites is noteworthy; although Calchaqui settlements were heavily involved in manufacture, wealth was expropriated for circulation in the Inka wealth-finance system.

In 1991, test excavations were conducted at Hedgepeth Mounds (16L17), a two-mound complex in Lincoln Parish, Louisiana. Radiometric, archaeological, pedological, and geomorphological data suggest that the site dates to the Archaic period (6000-1500 B.C.). Charcoal from a hearth beneath Mound A dates to cal 2888 ± 100 B.C. A soil sample from the submound surface dates to cal 4930 ± 117 B.C. Two Archaic projectile points are among the artifacts from the submound surface. Diagnostic soil horizons in Mound A fill suggest the mound is of great antiquity. Soil cores from areas adjacent to Mound A have demonstrated that the living surface of the site is covered with approximately 1 m of alluvium, and that the alluvial mantle contains diagnostic soil horizons indicative of long-term weathering.

Two accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates obtained from samples of Zea mays from the Holding site, 11MS118, in the American Bottom near East St. Louis, Illinois, establish the presence of maize in the Mississippi Valley between 170 B.C. and A.D. 60. The dates finally establish the occurrence of Middle Woodland maize in Illinois and are the earliest dates thus far for maize east of the Mississippi River. Other reports of early Middle Woodland maize in the Midcontinent region should not be discounted unless AMS dating and other supporting information show the maize to be a contaminant at the site at which it occurs. Recent stable carbon-isotope experiments suggest that the relative contribution of maize to Middle Woodland diets is still an open question.

Previous morphometric studies have identified variation in fluted-point thickness data but have seldom considered its cultural or technological sources. New data from western and eastern North America suggest that variation in fluted-point thickness results from variability in lithic raw-material selectivity and bifacial-flaking techniques.

Macaws and parrots were important birds in prehistoric Mimbres-area communities by A.D. 1000. Scarlet macaws (Ara macao) apparently were imported into the area from the tropical lowlands in Mexico, but one other species each of macaw (Ara militaris) and parrot (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha) probably could have been obtained from much closer natural ranges. Macaws in particular evidently were of special, perhaps ceremonial, importance as indicated by consistent age at death, probably reflecting sacrifice in the spring, and by deliberate intramural burial, often in special rooms in the community. The sacrificing of macaws and the season in which it occurred were consistent in Mimbres and contemporaneous sites and began a pattern that continued in the Southwest perhaps until historic times.

Most previous screen experiments have assessed various mesh-size biases in the recovery of faunal remains from specific archaeological samples. These tests provided detailed information about recovery biases at those sites. To augment these previous tests, Shaffer (1992) conducted 1/4″-screen tests on modern comparative mammal skeletons to assess specific biases for the taxa tested. However, because 1/8″ screens are now widely used in archaeological sampling, potential biases should be assessed. Results presented here document hypothetical best recovery of the taxa tested and substantial increased recovery of mammals weighing between 18 and 340 g for 1/8″-screen tests relative to 1/4″-screen tests.

This paper examines the historical development and theoretical underpinnings of the connections established between archaeology and Marxist social thought in Latin America. This dialogue began before the Russian Revolution and persists to the present day in the form of Latin American social archaeology.

Alison Wylie (1992) provides an important discussion about the contribution of feminist research in archaeology by arguing that a feminist perspective can lead to a better, more rigorous science of archaeology. Her article inspires comment in three areas. First, the diversity within feminist theory and practice is emphasized by describing liberal, separatist, and socialist perspectives and how they might manifest themselves in archaeology. Second, the historical and political context of gender ideology and metaphor in the development of Western science is noted. The apparent need for feminist theory to defend its appropriateness is tied to this context. Third, feminist theory must, and will, rehabilitate the structure of that historically and politically constituted science.

In her recent work, Alison Wylie has sometimes claimed an important role for present politics in the constitution of archaeological facts, yet she has not fully documented such claims. Using the same materials as Wylie, namely the research on gender presented at the conference “Women and Production in Prehistory,” held in South Carolina in 1988, I attempt to provide such documentation, arguing that its absence may undermine Wylie's (indeed, archaeology's) “mitigated objectivism” as well as the facts emerging about prehistoric gender. I dispute neither the scientific integrity of those facts nor the rigor of Wylie's analysis. Like many before me, I puzzle about the relationship between truth and politics, and I regard the disjunction of the two notions, so obdurate in archaeology, as counterproductive, the source of contradictions and disabling ambivalences. I make at the end two suggestions about overcoming the notional disjunction of truth and politics, one adopted from Brumfiel and from Conkey (archaeological facts as allegories), the other from Foucault (archaeological evidence as a network of sites of power).

Michael Fotiadis (1994) and Barbara Little (1994) both question the oppositions that structure current debate about the “objectivity” of archaeological science; they raise concerns about my own proposal for a “mitigated objectivism” where it reaffirms these oppositions. I welcome their discussion and offer three responses to clarify and situate my own position. Most valuable, they identify several lines of inquiry that should be pursued beyond the philosophical analyses I have developed, in this instance of gender research.