Comparing zooarchaeological data for Native American, Spanish, and British occupations with modern fisheries data from St. Johns County, Florida (USA) shows differences in the use of marine resources from 1450 B.C. through A.D. 2000. Changes in biomass contribution, diversity, types of fishes used, and trophic levels of sharks, rays, and bony fishes suggest that the pattern described as “fishing down marine food webs” (Pauly et al. 1998) may have been present in the St. Johns County area as early as the eighteenth century. A change in the size and growth habits of Atlantic croaker (Sciaenidae: Micropogonias undulatus) occurred early in this sequence, indicating an impact on this specific fish. However, overharvesting of fishes is not the only explanation for these observations. Climate and cultural changes are additional explanations for the patterns observed that should receive closer attention. Exploring these alternative explanations is made possible by a zooarchaeological record that permits us to study fishing habits and fish behavior before large-scale industrial fishing began.

Ongoing research in the Nenana Valley is uncovering a complex record of Late Glacial settlement in the foothills of the Alaska Range. A local eolian sequence provides relatively precise stratigraphic and chronological control, permitting integration with regional paleoclimatic history. Initial occupation seems to have occurred approximately 12,000 years ago, and is represented by several assemblages containing bifacial points. Microblade technology did not appear until ca. 10,500 B.P. The valley probably was exploited on a seasonal basis for large mammal procurement.

The statistical method of nearest neighbor analysis is presented for the study of distributional patterns of artifacts over occupation floors. It is compared with the previously presented method of dimensional analysis of variance. Nearest neighbor analysis is found to be much more sensitive in its detection of non-random spatial clustering. It has the advantage of not being particularly limited in application by problems of size or shape of the area under study, although it does require coordinates for each artifact and cannot be applied when only counts per grid unit are known. On the other hand, nearest neighbor analysis encounters considerable problems in defining the artifact clusters on an area and in comparing the distributions of several artifact types. These problems severely limit the utility of nearest neighbor analysis at the moment. Dimensional analysis of variance handles them better.

Traditional cultural ecology, with its "geocentric" perspective, is most concerned with technological and related social aspects of economic adaptation to the material world. To supplement and qualify this view, an "anthropocentric" perspective with an emphasis on symbolic systems and modes of adaptation to the world as perceived by humans is offered. The cognitive core of culture is expressed in behavior that embodies certain principles underlying figurative expression in language and aspects of magic and taboo, curing practices, mythology, ritual, art, and innovation. An example of the cognitive approach is provided by an analysis of the symbolic systems in which the calumet, atlatl survivals, initiation weapons, and kinnikinnick functioned in historic times. This analysis suggests the possible origin and function of the Hopewellian platform pipe and offers insights into other prehistoric ceremonialism and the process of innovation.

The timing of the adoptions of maize and squash across eastern North America has been a topic of long-standing interest among archaeologists and paleoethnobotanists. The use of flotation for macrobotanical remains beginning in the 1960s and 1970s coupled with the application of accelerator mass spectrometry dating beginning in the 1980s has led to substantial revisions of knowledge about the history of these crops in the region. A complementary source of evidence for the crops' histories in the eastern North America comes from opal phytoliths. Analysis of phytolith assemblages recovered from charred food residues has shown that maize and squash were being used in central New York well before the macrobotanical record indicates. In combination with previously analyzed samples, 16 additional residue assemblages help to clarify the history of maize and squash in central New York. The results indicate that maize and squash were being used in New York by 2270 B.P. and 2945 B.P., respectively.

Positive results were obtained from protein residue analysis on three Clovis points from Wally's Beach, southwestern Alberta. Two tested positive for Equus, the third for a bovid, probably Bison or Bootherium. All genera are present in the site remains. This finding clearly demonstrates use of Equus by Clovis hunters. Four 14C dates indicate that the site was in use between 11,000 and 11,300 B.P.

In a recent paper in American Antiquity (2002:231-256), Hildebrandt and McGuire argue that archaeofaunal patterns in California document an ascendance of artiodactyl hunting during the Middle Archaic. They also suggest that such a trend is inconsistent with predictions derived from optimal-foraging models. Given the apparent failure of foraging theory, they advance a “showing off” model of large-game hunting. While their presentation is intriguing, we do not see a theoretical warrant for predicting that show-off hunting would have increased during the Middle Archaic. We present here an alternative hypothesis for the increase in artiodactyl abundances and the hunting-related patterns they identify. That hypothesis follows directly from the prey model itself under what appears to have been a dramatic artiodactyl population expansion after the drought-dominated middle Holocene period.

People use food and food-related behavior to express and reinforce a multitude of social relations. We examine subsistence remains and pottery recovered from several different social-status and functional contexts in the Moundville chiefdom. Differential distributions of plant and animal remains suggest that elite members of the society received food as tribute. The analyzed contexts also differ in the ratios of serving ware to cooking ware and in the relative frequencies of the functional types of serving vessels present. Greater emphasis was placed on the presentation of food in elite contexts, and the types of vessels used to serve or display food varied depending on whether the context was public or private. This patterning in food remains and pottery assemblages from different contexts is complex and cannot be explained by a single dimension of variability. Rather, to account for the patterns it is necessary to consider the evidence in terms of the ways people used food in different social settings.

Excavation of a small single-component prehistoric campsite in the coastal southern California foothills has provided evidence concerning the patterns and approximate rates of redistribution of archaeological materials caused by the burrowing pocket gopher, Thomomys bottae. Investigation of bimodal vertical distributions of both historic and prehistoric archaeological materials shows a close correspondence to the burrowing habits of pocket gophers in coastal California. Comparison of these bimodal distributions with a site chronology based upon diagnostic artifacts and C-14 dating suggests that, under certain soil conditions, downward displacement of archaeological materials may occur at rates averaging over 5% per century. The broader implications of the effects of faunalturbation upon the interpretation of archaeological assemblages are briefly discussed.

Floor area and population data from three geographical areas are given. The value of recording the use of each floor area is demonstrated. Because of the large variances among floor areas it is suggested that caution be used in applying this relationship.

The organizational structure of the famous Chaco Phenomenon has long been debated by southwestern archaeologists. To better clarify the nature and dynamics of Chacoan organization we need to rethink the relationship between social power and the appropriation of surplus labor in middle-range societies. Drawing on the tradition of anthropological political economy, I outline a theoretical approach that allows for the relative autonomy of power and labor relations in human social life and models Chacoan political economy using a “thin definition” of communalism. Empirical patterns from the Chaco and post-Chaco eras in the northern Southwest are presented in support of a model of Chaco communalism and change dynamics. Suggestions for furthering a political economy of the Chaco Phenomenon that respects the difference or “otherness” of the past are also detailed.

This paper explores the hypothesis that the archaeological Olmecs, at least in part, were speakers of Mixe-Zoquean languages. The hypothesis is supported by not only geographical and temporal correlation, but by Mixe-Zoquean loan words in other Mesoamerican languages, many of which refer to things diagnostic of the Mesoamerican culture area. Also the cultural inventory revealed in Proto-Mixe-Zoquean vocabulary provides additional support.

Recently it has been suggested that variation in the form of Early Paleoindian projectile points across North America was the result of drift rather than regional adaptation (Morrow and Morrow 1999). Here, we test this hypothesis quantitatively with matrix correlation statistics. Using a sample of Early Paleoindian point assemblages from across the continent we attempt to correlate variation in point shape with several measures of late Pleistocene period regional variation including net primary production, prey availability, prey selection, and prey body size. We find no significant correlations between point shape and measures of regional variation, suggesting that functional modifications to points within specific regional biomes were minimal. We do find evidence of spatial autocorrelation as the regional variation in point shape correlates positively with geographic distances among sites, a pattern consistent with recent, shared ancestry. Our findings provide support for the drift hypothesis posed by Morrow and Morrow (1999). We interpret these results as suggesting that despite the wide variation in regional environmental conditions across late Pleistocene period North America not enough time elapsed during the Early Paleoindian period for these local selective gradients to have led to significant changes in point shape.

A simple and inexpensive qualitative chemical field method, or spot test, is described for ascertaining the presence of enriched soil phosphate. The spot test is an efficient technique for rapid archaeological site surveying, for elimination of guesswork in establishing trench lines, and for creating phosphate maps depicting type, extent, and relative duration of abandoned settlement features.

In the early literature, especially that relating to the prairies, there are numerous brief references to the extraction of oil or grease from bones by boiling. For instance, W. R. Gerard in his article on pemmican in Bulletin 30 of the Bureau of American Ethnology says: “Sweet pemmican is a superior kind of pemmican in which the fat used is obtained from marrow by boiling broken bones in water.” Wissler in his paper on the Material Culture of trte Blackfoot Indians says: “Marrow fat was obtained by boiling cracked bones and skimming the floating fat from the top of the kettle with a dipper made of horn.” A still earlier reference to the same process is found in Schoolcraft's History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes (Vol. 4, p. 107) in which he says: “The men break bones, which are boiled in water to extract the marrow to be used for frying and for other culinary purposes. The oil is then poured into the bladder of the animal, which contains when filled about twelve pounds, being the yield of the marrow bones of two buffaloes.”

Although the stability of the pigment, Maya blue, indicates to Gettens that the blue colorant as well as the attapulgite clay base of the pigment is inorganic, the optical properties and thermal behavior of the pigment suggest the alternative hypothesis that Maya blue is a clay-organic complex with an organic colorant in an inorganic base of attapulgite clay.

Along the southeastern Atlantic coast of Georgia, hunter-gatherer groups substantially altered the landscape for more than three millennia (ca. 4,200-1,000 B.P.) leaving behind a distinct material record in the form of shell rings, middens, and burial mounds. During this time, these groups experienced major changes in sea level and resource distribution. Specifically, we take a resilience theory approach to address these changes and discuss the utility of this theory for archaeology in general. We suggest that despite major destabilizing forces in the form of sea-level lowering and its concomitant effects on resource distribution, cultural systems rebounded to a structural pattern similar to the one expressed prior to environmental disruption. We propose, in part, the ability for people to return to similar patterns was the result of the high visibility of previous behaviors inscribed on the landscape in the form of shell middens and rings from the period preceding environmental disruption. Finally, despite a return to similar cultural formulations, hunter-gatherers experienced some fundamental changes resulting in modifications to existing behaviors (e.g., ringed villages) as well as the addition of new ones in the form of burial-mound construction.

Optimal-foraging theory and the concept of energetic efficiency have been used in archaeology for over a decade, usually to explore subsistence behavior. People, however, made choices for energy expenditure in other areas of culture, including lithic technology. It is suggested that a shift in the allocation of energy as an adaptive response to changes in social organization caused the widely noted decline in formal tool types and stone-tool refinement in the late prehistoric periods in eastern North America. Data from an Upper Mississippian village are used to demonstrate the economic use of poor-quality lithic raw material. A bipolar technique was used to produce flake blanks for triangular projectile points as well as a peculiar but common Upper Mississippian tool, the humpback biface. It is suggested that bipolar reduction and other lithic efficiency and economizing strategies are indicators of stress on the energy budgets of human populations.

This discussion deals with the theoretical reasoning that underlies the type-variety method of ceramic analysis. Not only do pottery "types" and “varieties” embody sets of recognizably distinct attributes and impart particular cultural, areal, and temporal connotations, but they are also meaningful entities of cultural interpretation.

1. 1. “Varieties” that have been tested by continued close study and by increases in knowledge concerning their nature and range of variation are close approximations and reliable indicators of original ceramic manifestations due to individual or small social group variation in a society.

2. 2. Ceramic "types" represent the combining of a number of attributes into abstract conceptions which, when executed in clay by potters, are acceptable to them and a majority of others within their cultural configuration. Types are summations of individual or small social group variation consistent with boundaries imposed by the interaction of individuals on a societal level and determined by the operative value system present in any society. Pottery types are therefore representative of cultural phenomena.

3. 3. Ceramic types are cultural derivatives and can be related one to another through space and time. Relationships of this kind are recognized as “ceramic systems” and “ceramic sequences.”

This forum reports the results of a National Science Foundation—funded workshop that focused on the integration and preservation of digital databases and other structured data derived from archaeological contexts. The workshop concluded that for archaeology to achieve its potential to advance long-term, scientific understandings of human history, there is a pressing need for an archaeological information infrastructure that will allow us to archive, access, integrate, and mine disparate data sets. This report provides an assessment of the informatics needs of archaeology, articulates an ambitious vision for a distributed disciplinary information infrastructure (cyberinfrastructure), discusses the challenges posed by its development, and outlines initial steps toward its realization. Finally, it argues that such a cyberinfrastructure has enormous potential to contribute to anthropology and science more generally. Concept-oriented archaeological data integration will enable the use of existing data to answer compelling new questions and permit syntheses of archaeological data that rely not on other investigators' conclusions but on analyses of meaningfully integrated new and legacy data sets.