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).

In attempts to implement probabilistic survey designs in areas of reduced surface visibility, archaeologists have turned to shovel testing or Test Pit Sampling (TPS). Characteristically TPS involves excavation of small, systematically spaced test pits within larger survey units as a method of searching for archaeological materials that would otherwise go undiscovered. While TPS has been the subject of considerable study most studies have been theoretical in nature. As a result, while the characteristics of TPS are understood generally, it is not known how well the method functions in known archaeological contexts. This article describes the results of research directed at estimating the reliability and validity of the test pit method when carried out on known archaeological sites under varying conditions of artifact density and spatial clustering. Split-half correlations and logistic regressions show that TPS is reliable in the sense that it produces replicable results, but is biased against discovery of small, low-density sites, especially when these sites exhibit high degrees of spatial clustering of artifacts. A model relating TPS to regional survey in general is presented and a means of estimating potential biases of the method is illustrated.

The data presented here, by providing examples of resource diversity in Belize, add support to the current consensus that a basis indeed exists in the Maya Lowlands for placement of research emphasis on elucidating patterns of local or intercommunity exchange as a step toward understanding socioeconomic integration. The point also is made that any generalized model of exchange will fail to shed light on lowland integration unless patterns are defined for exchange that operated at the local or inter-community level. It is suggested that these patterns be sought against a backdrop of differential resource distribution.

For the Neolithic transition in the Near East and Europe, this paper compares the isochrones predicted by computational models to those obtained by interpolating the archaeological data. This comparison reveals that there is a major inconsistency between the predictions of the models and the archaeological data: according to the models, the Neolithic front would have arrived to Greece in less than half the time interval implied by the data. Our main new results are as follows, (a) This inconsistency can be solved by including only Pre Pottery Neolithic B/C (PPNB/C) sites in the Near East; (b) the model that yields the lowest mean error per site in the arrival time of the Neolithic across the Near East and Europe is obtained by allowing for sea travels up to distances of 150 km; and (c) Mountain barriers have a negligible effect on the spread rate of the Neolithic front at the continental scale.

There are two competing views regarding the nature of human adaptation in the Great Basin. One, proposed by Jennings, is that the adaptation was based on the intensive use of all available resources, and remained essentially static from 8000 B.C. to the present, being unaffected by climatic changes. The other view, proposed by Heizer and others, suggests that the regional adaptation varied through time and space, being affected by local resource availability and climatic changes. The validity of these two views was tested by regional surface sampling in Owens Valley, eastern California. Survey data were analyzed by a variety of quantitative and qualitative techniques, revealing a complex sequence of changes in subsistence-settlement patterns. These data tend to support the view that prehistoric adaptation in the Great Basin was variable, rather than static, through time.

This article demonstrates how the cosmological metaphors in ritual song texts are an important but unrecognized resource in the repertoire of oral tradition that can be used to reconstruct past lifeways. We test this proposition with a study of 125 Hopi katsina song texts from the 20th century and show how the cosmological principles underlying the Hopi lifeway are embedded in special song word and phrase metaphors. Through the transcription and translation of the content of these song metaphors we reveal a consistency of thought and prescribed social action that has sustained the Hopi people as they have followed a lifeway of corn agriculture done by hand. We then show how these same principles for living expressed metaphorically in words are visually repeated in the same metaphors in mural images on 15th- and 16th-century kiva murals from the Hopi sites of Awatovi and Kawaika'a as well as on associated Jeddito and Sikyatki yellow ware ceramic design.

This paper attempts to unify recent theorizing on cultural meaning in material culture using the notion of conceptual metaphor. Research in several disciplines suggests that conventional metaphorical concepts are central to cultural cognition. Ethnographic studies and psychological experiments indicate that conceptual metaphors are expressed in numerous forms of human expression, including speech, ritual, narrative, and material culture. Generalizations on the nature and structure of metaphor emerging from cognitive linguistic research can be used to develop methods for reconstructing ancient metaphors from archaeological evidence. In a preliminary application, I argue that pottery designs from the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest were conceptualized as textile fabrics, and suggest that connections between these media derived from a worldview grounded in container imagery. The ability to decipher conceptual metaphors in prehistoric material culture opens up many new avenues for research, including the role of worldview in cultural evolution, and the discovery of cultural continuities between archaeological cultures and historic ethnolinguistic groups.

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.

The appearance of pithouse settlements in the American Southwest that have multihabitation structures has been considered evidence for the emergence of "village" social organization. The interpretation that village systems are reflected in pithouse architecture rests in great part on the assumption that large sites correspond to large, temporally stable social groups. In this article we examine one of the best known pithouse settlements in the Southwest—Shabik’eschee Village in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico—and argue that the site may represent episodic aggregation of local groups rather than a sedentary occupation by a single coherent social unit.

Two recent developments in southwestern archaeology are brought together in this paper. First, theoreticians have begun to argue that the archaeological record should be viewed as the product of selection-driven evolution. Second, tree-ring research has produced a highly detailed history of climate for a large area of the northern Southwest. We view the record of climatic oscillations and extreme events as a record of the strength of selection favoring stabilization of specialized agricultural strategies in the arid northern Southwest. Published data from Black Mesa provide a cultural record of sufficient precision to permit comparison with the climatic record, while new data from Vermillion Cliffs, southern Utah, document one local end-product of an evolutionary sequence shaped to an important degree by the long-term variability of climate. Anasazi occupation of many regions failed to persist through the “Great Drought” of the 1270s. From a local perspective, this extreme climatic event caused adaptations shaped by selection prior to the 1270s to fail; from a broader temporal-spatial perspective, however, the drought must be seen as part of the selective regime that shaped subsequent human adaptation to the northern Southwest.

This GIS analysis of the dry-land agricultural field system in Kohala on the island of Hawai'i reveals patterning that is explained by evolutionary ecological principles set within a selectionist framework. The ca. 55 km2 fixed-field system was developed through establishment, expansion, and intensification from the sixteenth until the early nineteenth century. During this time, differential growth rates and levels of intensification occurred in diverse locales. The development of the field system was characterized by changes in the size of the fields, variability infield size, the size of production communities, the level of distribution of production, and the spatial distribution of fields. The most important factors influencing the differential temporal and spatial changes included differences in the abundance of marine resources, variability in the distance between the coast and the inland fields, differences in the amount of variation of rainfall levels over a given distance, and the insurance or subsidy that chiefs could offer to residents to initiate farming in the least optimal locations. Selective pressures within the heterogeneous environment of north Kohala provided the context in which subsistence strategies shifted from a focus on optimizing energy returns to one of stabilizing returns via risk aversion.

A quantitative method is presented which assists the archaeologist in distinguishing between bones resulting from human activity and those deposited in archaeological contexts by non-cultural means. The assumption is that relatively incomplete carcasses are more likely to have been deposited or disturbed by extra-corporeal activities such as carnivores, raptorial birds, rodents, stream action, or man. This method is illustrated on faunal data from 3 sites in the High Rock county of extreme northwestern Nevada.

Based on the analysis of assemblages from the French sites of Pech de l'Azé I, La Quina, and Combe-Capelle has, a model of stone-tool resharpening is proposed for Middle Paleolithic notched tools. This model is based on the observation that tools with a larger number of notches have greater mean blank lengths irrespective of their typological designation. This pattern is then used to help investigate the relationship between raw material availability and tool reuse. Our results indicate that the number of notches found on a tool is a function of both the size of the tool blank and the availability of raw material.

Shellfish seasonality studies are summarized in this article, which presents the results of analysis at 94 sites in nine southeastern states. All but six of the sites are middens or shell lenses composed of marine or brackish water species (M. mercenaria, R. cuneata, D. variabilis). Shells in those sites along the Atlantic coast were collected from fall to early spring, while shells in sites on the Gulf coast were collected during early spring to summer. Freshwater shellfish middens in four states have been investigated and consistently indicated collection during warm weather. The uniformity of the results indicates that the variation in species used, techniques used, sample sizes, or geography have no noticeable negative impact on the usefulness of the results. It is argued that shellfish were a staple in the diet of many prehistoric horticultural peoples in spite of the fact that they are a dietary supplement for modern hunters and collectors.

We know a great deal about how prehistoric pots were made and used but surprisingly little about how long they lasted in service. Vessel use life, however, is an important component of ceramic assemblage formation. A growing body of ethnoarchaeological data shows that the directly measurable “primitive property” of vessel size—in its various dimensions—is positively related to use life and that height and weight are the most reliable predictors of use life. Results offer the provisional prospect of estimating use life of archaeological vessels from their size.

Although most archaeologists recognize that valuable information about the social lives of ancient people can be obtained through the study of burial practices, it is clear that the symbolic nature of burial rituals makes interpreting their social significance a hazardous enterprise. These analytical difficulties can be greatly reduced using a research strategy that draws upon the strengths of a broad range of conceptually and methodologically independent data sources. We illustrate this approach by using archaeological data from cemeteries at Malibu, California, to explore an issue over which researchers are sharply divided: when did the simple chiefdoms of the Chumash Indians first appear in the Santa Barbara Channel area? First we establish the social correlates of Chumash burial practices through the comparison of historic-period cemetery data, ethnohistoric records, and ethnographic accounts. The resulting understanding of mortuary symbolism is then used to generate hypotheses about the social significance of prehistoric-period Malibu burial patterns. Finally, bioarchaeological data on genetic relationships, health status, and activity are used to independently test artifact-based hypotheses about prehistoric Chumash social organization. Together, these independent data sources constitute strong evidence for the existence of a ranked society with a hereditary elite during the late Middle period in the Santa Barbara Channel area.

Fell's Cave lies near the Magellan Straits of South America's Southern Cone. This was the first site to provide evidence of a late Pleistocene occupation of South America, and it is the site where the Fishtail projectile point type was defined. Previous radiocarbon ages from Fell's Cave on charcoal samples from three hearths in the late Pleistocene artifact-bearing levels yielded dates ranging from ca. 11,000 to 10,100 radiocarbon years before present. New radiocarbon dates on curated charcoal samples from these same hearths yield revised ages of ca. 10,800 to 10,400 radiocarbon years before present. These new dates from Fell's Cave agree well with ages from other South American sites in the Southern Cone with Fishtail points and show that the Fishtail projectile point was made from ca. 10,850 to 10,300 radiocarbon years before present or ca. 12,800 to 12,100 calibrated years before present.

Widely held notions about the effects of heat treatment of flakeable stone were tested by agitating matching sets of regularly shaped pieces of heated and raw chert. The tests indicate that heat treatment changes some of the variables that control flake formation although not necessarily in ways that make flintworking "easier." It appears that in order to realize an advantage to the practice, the flintknapper must call on individual skill to make technical readjustments.

"Assemblage" is a fundamental archaeological construct. By their composition, we interpret assemblages as expressions of activity or cultural identity. Yet they are not simple products of these factors alone but also of formation processes. Assemblages accumulated over varying spans, with varying combinations of tool types and discard rates. They are contexts for the playing out of complex relationships, not static types. This is a materialist view, against the essentialist view that assemblages are exemplars of ideal types (e.g., "base camps," "Quina Mousterian"). Materialism implies that their size and composition, fundamental assemblage characteristics, are correlated variables, not fixed properties, and that composition varies as size increases. I document size dependence consistent with materialism in Paleoindian and Paleolithic assemblages. Among ways to analyze size-dependent assemblage data, I apply "SHE analysis"—the joint study of assemblage richness, heterogeneity, and evenness—to gauge data’s fit to theoretical models. Archaeologists acknowledge size dependence, but we misapprehend it as a methodological bias of assemblage measures that must be suppressed when, in materialist perspective, it reveals meaningful relationships that an essentialist view cannot.

While the prevailing theoretical orthodoxy of North American archaeology overwhelmingly discourages consideration of transoceanic cultural diffusion, linguistic and archaeological evidence appear to indicate at least one instance of direct cultural contact between Polynesia and southern California during the prehistoric era. Three words used to refer to boats - including the distinctive sewn-plank canoe used by Chumashan and Gabrielino speakers of the southern California coast - are odd by the phonotactic and morphological standards of their languages and appear to correlate with Proto-Central Eastern Polynesian terms associated with woodworking and canoe construction. Chumashan and Gabrielino speakers seem to have borrowed this complex of words along with the sewn-plank construction technique itself sometime between ca. A.D. 400 and 800, at which time there is also evidence for punctuated adaptive change (e.g., increased exploitation of pelagic fish) and appearance of a Polynesian style two-piece bone fishhook in the Santa Barbara Channel. These developments were coeval with a period of major exploratory seafaring by the Polynesians that resulted in the discovery and settlement of Hawaii - the nearest Polynesian outpost to southern California. Archaeological and ethnographic information from the Pacific indicates that the Polynesians had the capabilities of navigation, boat construction, and sailing, as well as the cultural incentives to complete a one-way passage from Hawaii to the mainland of southern California. These findings suggest that diffusion and other forms of historical contingency still need to be considered in constructions of North American prehistory.