It is argued that the normative theory of culture, widely held among archaeologists, is inadequate for the generation of fruitful explanatory hypotheses of cultural process. One obvious shortcoming of this theoretical position has been the development of archaeological systematics that have obviated any possibility of measuring multivariate phenomena and permit only the measurement of unspecified “cultural differences and similarities,” as if these were univariate phenomena. As an alternative to this approach, it is proposed that culture be viewed as a system composed of subsystems, and it is suggested that differences and similarities between different classes of archaeological remains reflect different subsystems and hence may be expected to vary independently of each other in the normal operation of the system or during change in the system. A general discussion of ceramic classification and the classification of differences and similarities between assemblages is presented as an example of the multivariate approach to the study of cultural variability. It is suggested that a multivariate approach in systematics will encourage the study of cultural variability and its causes and thereby enhance the study of culture process.

Excavations to investigate stratigraphy at Zia Pueblo indicate that the mesa now occupied by the tribe was first settled by their ancestors during the fourteenth century, when a neighboring site also was established by others of the same people. Except for a short period in the late seventeenth century when the group moved to a refugee site, occupation was continuous. In the east dump, sterile soil was encountered on the bottom of level 36 (each level of 25 cm. thickness); above this, five sloping zones with sherd complexes differing in proportions, if not always in types, could be traced.

Seventeenth and eighteenth-century gravestones in Massachusetts are decorated with a traditional set of designs which have distinctive spatial and temporal limits. By treating them as archaeological phenomena, one can demonstrate and test methods of inferring diffusion, design evolution, and relationships between a folk-art tradition and the culture which produced it. Early popularity of death's-head designs reflects Puritan attitudes toward death, while the later cherub, willow tree, and urn motifs indicate the breakdown of these values. Although cherubs appear earliest among an innovating urban class in Cambridge, they remain a relatively minor type in this central area but are rapidly adopted in outlying districts further removed from the center of influence. Imperfect reproduction of certain designs gives rise to distinctive local styles of other areas. The distribution of these local styles in time and space provides further insights regarding religious change in the Colonial period, including a clear indication of how this change proceeded in different geographical areas at different times. Future analysis of this material promises to be quite productive in the areas of experimental archaeology, kinship analysis, demographic studies, style change, and religious change in Colonial America.

Surface collecting in 1960 and excavations in 1961 have produced a large sample of chipped obsidian tools from El Inga, a site in Highland Ecuador. From a total surface collection sample of 83 projectile points, 25 complete and 3 nearly complete specimens have been examined intensively. They are described here by precise line drawings and narrative statements about the presence or absence and quantity or quality of morphological and technological attributes within the five attribute systems of material, form, dimension, chipping, and grinding. The three major projectile point styles derived here — “Fell's Cave Stemmed,” “Ayampitin,” and “Paijan” — are interpreted as representing horizon markers in South American preceramic times. The “Fell's Cave Stemmed” style is earliest and shows some technological relationships to the "fluted" points of North America.

Archaeological material from Kodiak Island, Alaska, is described in terms of five phases which, from oldest to youngest, are Ocean Bay I, Ocean Bay II, Old Kiavak, Three Saints, and Koniag. Ocean Bay I and II, components of a single site, are characterized by flaked-stone and ground-slate industries, respectively. Old Kiavak and Three Saints appear to be developmental stages within a single tradition, possibly different from the traditions of the antecedent Ocean Bay phases and the succeeding Koniag. In Old Kiavak there is a partial return to flaking of stone artifacts, and two characteristic artifacts are small notched stones and plummet-type grooved stones. In the Three Saints phase, "plummets" went out of use, and by the beginning of the Koniag phase, which continued into the contact period, so did small notched stones. Among the new elements that characterized the Koniag phase are the steam sweat bath, the splitting adz, and, locally, pottery. A pottery-using variant of this phase has been emphasized. When compared with Three Saints material, Koniag archaeological remains usually show style changes or degeneration in workmanship. These units do not outline a complete sequence because the periods between Ocean Bay II and Old Kiavak and, locally, between Three Saints and the pottery-using Koniag variant do not appear to be represented. It is estimated that their time range is 2500 B.C. to shortly after A.D. 1800.

Studies of the Great Basin show that the Desert cultures of 8000 B.C. closely resemble the historic cultures of that area, but linguistic evidence indicates that the ancestors of the historic inhabitants moved into the Great Basin as late as 1000 years ago. The linguistic affiliation of the prehistoric cultures thus cannot be directly inferred. Taylor has proposed that Hokaltecans settled in the Great Basin at an early age and were only recently replaced by Uto-Aztecans who moved in from the northeast—an offshoot from a major Uto-Aztecan movement down the western flanks of the Rocky Mountains. This hypothesis does not satisfactorily account for the distribution of the major subdivisions of Uto-Aztecan and directly contradicts the implications of the distribution of Numic (Plateau Shoshonean) languages. An alternate hypothesis is proposed, namely, that Uto-Aztecans moved southward from the northern Great Basin as the Altithermal began; that they moved in two major branches which skirted the Great Basin, one along the Rocky Mountains, the other along the Sierras; and that, as the Medithermal set in, the Numic branch (northernmost Sierran branch) began to move back into the Great Basin proper, this movement being retarded until about 1000 years ago by the presence of horticulturists. This hypothesis is supported by correlations between lexico-statistical dating of the separation of Uto-Aztecan languages and the dates of climatic periods, and by the distributions of the major Uto-Aztecan branches. Identification of these branches follows recent linguistic studies by Voegelin and Hale. Previous classifications of Uto-Aztecan languages, theories concerning the location of the ancestral Uto-Aztecan community, and the implications of these for the present hypothesis are discussed.

There are multiple structural and stylistic differences between local Middle Woodland expressions in the Great Lakes-Riverine area. These reflect not only different cultural systems but also in some cases different levels of cultural complexity. At present these manifestations are grouped into a single Hopewellian culture on the basis of selected artifact commonalities. Variations within Great Lakes-Riverine Middle Woodland are of several kinds: (1) complexes that include diagnostic Hopewellian culture artifacts are concentrated in the major river valleys, while apparently contemporary manifestations in neighboring localities lack Hopewellian forms; (2) if we employ artifact classes other than those used as Hopewellian diagnostics, Middle Woodland regional traditions can be defined that have distributions sharply different from those of specifically Hopewellian complexes; (3) comparison of Hopewellian manifestations in Ohio, Illinois, and elsewhere indicates that these are not local expressions of a homogeneous culture but probably representatives of more than one cultural system; and (4) structural analysis of Middle Woodland mortuary and subsistence-settlement patterns in two regions, Illinois and Ohio, indicates contrasting cultural systems. It is argued that if ceramics of the Havana tradition are classified according to criteria developed in the central Illinois Valley, then potentially significant local style variations will go unrecognized. Tentative definition of four microstyle zones within the Havana tradition illustrates the utility of a system of analysis geared to recognition of small-scale style differences.

Geologic investigation and radiocarbon dating of a newly exposed stratigraphic section at the famous Early Man site of Blackwater No. 1 (Clovis) in eastern New Mexico show the Brown Sand Wedge to be in part a contemporaneous facies of the Diatomaceous Earth (10,000 to 11,000 years old) and in part older (11,000 to 11,500 years old). The Gray Sand is probably more than 12,000 years old. Artifacts contained therein are concentrated in the upper 6 in. and are believed to have intruded the sand via the tramplings of the surface by man and animals.

The discovery of ancient spring-feeder conduits confirms the springhead origin for the Brown Sand Wedge and the Gray Sand suggested by Sellards and Evans (1960). In addition to well-sorted, nearly spherical, graded, quartz grains the conduits contained Clovis, Folsom, and Agate Basin artifacts bearing an extremely high polish. Some Agate Basin points appear to have been coeval with Folsom points; others are younger. Deposition of the Carbonaceous Silt containing Scottsbluff points, Frederick points, and points of the Portales complex began as early as 9,800 years ago, and possibly continued as late as 7,000 years ago.

A class of pressure-flaked stone objects of crescentic shape made to an easily recognizable pattern is usually associated with surface sites adjacent to continuous or discontinuous bodies of water or playas. The crescent has a distribution from the Southern California Channel Islands to western Utah and the Columbia Basin in Washington. Even though its function is not yet known, it nevertheless is — because of a unique and consistent association of attributes — a useful material culture trait that may serve as a marker for a particular cultural complex. The trait is not known to be associated with the small-game hunting and food-gathering based cultures of the Archaic stage. Archaeological evidence indicates that the crescent is contemporaneous with big-game hunting cultures of the techno-economic level associated with the upper Lithic stage.

Organization of the great mass of data accumulated during the salvage archaeology program in the Missouri River Basin poses a number of problems. One of the most fundamental is the choice of a satisfactory taxonomic system. The version of the Midwestern taxonomic system which has been used so far in the area has a number of shortcomings. In order to avoid some of them, data from the Missouri Valley in the Dakotas are organized here in terms of the Willey and Phillips system of "archaeological unit concepts." The classification which has emerged seems to have considerable merit; the application of the system itself to a particular archaeological situation has also suggested some modification of the categories which Willey and Phillips proposed.

Twin Angels Pueblo In Northern New Mexico Is An Example Of A Small Pueblo Hi Structure With Chacoan Architectural Affinities. It Was Built Close To A.D. 1100 And Was Abandoned Before A.D. 1300.

A secondary burial of at least 30 individuals was excavated on Polacca Wash south of the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. This burial does not match either the prehistoric or contemporary Hopi pattern and cannot be duplicated in the recorded habits of surrounding tribes. Slight evidence favors a prehistoric placement. The formal arrangement of the burial, with skulls around the periphery and the remainder of the bones within the outline, suggests a magico-religious rite.

Two bone objects from the Tule Springs site, possibly tools, occurred in ancient sedimentary fill of a small spring outlet-channel remnant. The ancient spring was active more than 40,000 years ago and again 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. The fill and the bone contained therein could be of either age. Chemical and X-ray analysis on bone of the known ages and bone from the fill showed no significant or systematic differences in fluorine, uranium, nitrogen, or phosphate content. On geological grounds, it is concluded that the bone objects are 12,000 to 13,000 years old.

Elaborate rock paintings from several rock shelters in the central part of Baja California are reported and described. The paintings are assigned to the Comondú culture on the basis of artifacts found in the shelters, one of which yielded a radiocarbon date of A.D. 1435 ± 80. The paintings apparently served as hunting magic. The complexity of the rock art and the wealth of sites and paintings suggest a somewhat more advanced culture than reported by the Spanish.

A definition of historic sites archaeology as it applies in the New World is offered, and a five-fold classification of historic sites is proposed (protohistoric, contact, postcontact, frontier, and nonaboriginal). The usefulness of the concept of historic sites archaeology is discussed.

By utilizing archaeological associations of contemporaneity found at different sites and a few pieces of stratigraphic information, and by examining the patterning - the interrelationships of shape and decoration - of the pottery, it has been possible to define ten chronological units in the southern highlands of Colombia. The ten phases are grouped into two regional sequences: one with four phases at Tierradentro and another with six phases at San Agustin. Seriational as well as stratigraphic evidence suggests that the pottery from the burial caves of the Tierradentro region is older than the pottery associated with the shaft and chamber tombs of both Tierradentro and San Agustin and may date to the seventh or eighth centuries B.C. The earliest known shaft and chamber tombs appeared at San Agustin during the sixth century B.C. and, by the fifth century of the Christian era, were replaced by a new burial pattern, one consisting of interment in rectangular graves that were sometimes lined with stone slabs.

Three point types, and the several varieties of each, make up the Small Side-notched Point System of the northern Plains. The earliest type is the Avonlea, appearing with large-scale communal bison hunting in the northern Plains early in the Christian era. The Avonlea type is replaced after ca. A.D. 700 by the Prairie Sidenotched type, which may have been derived from the Middle Woodland Besant points that were contemporary with Avonlea. The final northern Plains type of point is the Plains Side-notched, present from ca. A.D. 1300 to the historic period. It is suggested that the Avonlea point may have been brought by Athabascans, the Prairie Sidenotched may have been an Algonkian type, and the Plains Side-notched may have been of Mississippian derivation.

Excavations at the site of Pottery Mound, 40 mi. south and west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, give evidence that the first structure at the site was a large, flat-topped pyramid built in two terraces. Four Pueblo IV architectural levels are superimposed on top of this structure. Sixteen painted kivas in association with the Pueblo IV room tiers retained on their walls a number of multi-layered fresco paintings. These paintings show macaws, other varieties of parrots, jaguars, and possibly Mexican Indians. The flat-topped mound and the ceremonial implications of the frescoes seem Mexican-inspired. The mound may date in the late Pueblo III period. The superimposed architectural levels and the frescoes date in the early Pueblo IV period.