Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers regarded Coosa as one of the most important chiefdoms in the southeastern United States. Using both documentary and archaeological evidence, we have located the main town of Coosa and several tributary towns, as well as some of the frontiers of the chiefdom. The locations of these towns and frontiers are supported by the archaeological recovery of sixteenth-century European artifacts in the postulated area of the chiefdom.

It has commonly been argued that chiefdoms were the dominant form of prehispanic political organization in Lower Central America. Reexamination of the data base, however, reveals that tribal forms of organization were also present in Lower Central America at the time of Spanish contact and before. The salient characteristics of both tribes and chiefdoms are discussed, and criteria for identifying tribes and chiefdoms in the archaeological record are outlined. Data from the Central Provinces of Panama and the Gulf of Nicoya are then examined in light of these criteria. We argue that while a chiefdom form of organization prevailed in Panama, the Gulf of Nicoya was occupied by tribal groups immediately prior to contact with the Spanish.

In its first five decades, American Antiquity has grown from a small publication with relatively limited interests to a much larger publication with wide interests. Its reputation has grown along with its change in size and look (see Figure 1), and it is now recognized internationally as a leader in the presentation of theoretical and methodological advances.

Much of the credit for this growth must be given to W. C. McKern, founding editor (see Figure 2), who devoted four years of intense effort to establish the overall quality and intellectual liveliness that are the journal's hallmarks. This commitment to excellence has been adhered to by the twelve editors who have followed McKern. The salutary growth of the journal, however, has not been without its costs. It is on one of these costs that I focus my attention here.

There is no clear-cut consensus or reliable body of published data in the Andean literature indicating whether llamas were bred and herded on the prehistoric North Coast of Peru or periodically imported from the highlands. Based on four lines of evidence—ethnographic, archaeozoological, physiological, and ethnohistoric—we argue that llamas (and perhaps even alpacas) were successfully bred and maintained on the North Coast from the early Middle Horizon (ca. A.D. 600) and perhaps since the Early Horizon. More specifically, we discuss population structure, representation of body parts, climatic and dietary adaptability, and abundance of coastal forage. Both llamas and alpacas are physiologically well-adapted for the coastal environment and can efficiently process a wide range of forage. By the Middle Horizon, domestic camelids served a wide range of functions including transport, sacrifice, tools, and meat. Species identification, coastal herd management, effects of disease vectors, and other related issues are also discussed.

The microscopic and sequential analysis of an early nineteenth-century American Indian calendar stick documents the notation of a precise, non-arithmetic, observational lunar year of twelve months with the evidence for added, subsidiary months suggesting the use of a thirteenth intercalary month every three years to bring the calendar into phase with the solar tropical year. The calendar stick is the most complex astronomical-calendric, problem-solving device known from the Americas outside of the high Mesoamerican and Andean Civilizations, but it is not derived from these late traditions. The analysis suggests the presence of an underlying observational conceptual base that may have come into the Americas from Asia.

The systematic study of chipped stone debitage provides important information about prehistoric lithic technology. However, the results of most debitage analyses are unconvincing because of questionable assumptions and inherent flaws in the typologies used to classify the material. After briefly reviewing these problems, we present an alternative approach that does not rely on the presumed technological origins of individual artifacts as the basis for debitage classification and interpretation. An important element of this approach is a typology composed of interpretation-free and mutually exclusive debitage categories. The derivation of this typology is described and the utility of the approach is demonstrated with two Arizona case studies. The TEP St. Johns project provides new data and interpretations about Archaic Period technological and settlement changes while the Pitiful Flats study illustrates how differences in functional and organizational factors affect debitage assemblage variability.

Among my earliest memories is the shoe box of “Indian rocks” that my father kept on a shelf behind the kitchen stove. These he had found and brought in to keep as curiosities. Although he knew some of the local collectors and at least one buyer for E. W. Payne of Springfield, Illinois, he never thought of selling any of his finds, so when I came along there was a small collection waiting for me.

The amateur archaeologist is a valuable resource that has always been available, but too often one not fully developed. The formation of amateur archaeological societies is one way to coalesce the various interests and skills of non-professional or avocational and professional archaeologists in the pursuit of archaeological knowledge. The founders of the Society for American Archaeology recognized the value of bringing together all those interested in and working in archaeology when the organization was formed in 1934. To this day the Society is not an organization for professionals only: it still encourages and accepts amateurs as members.

Bogucki's review deals with theoretical directions in current archaeological research in Europe, and Kohl's covers recent fieldwork and analysis in central Asia. It should be emphasized that these reviews are written specifically for the readers of this journal. Their purpose is to provide brief overviews of the topics and to introduce the readers to some of the literature in the field. The authors emphasize issues most likely to be of direct interest to readers working in the Americas and in literature published in English. PSW

The midden at Indian Creek, Antigua, is very probably a nearly complete record of the animal food consumed by the inhabitants over about 1,100 years of occupation. During that time the resource exploitation pattern changed in a number of major and minor ways. The most obvious change, when crab gave way to bivalve mollusks as an important dietary element, has been examined in some detail and the possible causes for the change discussed. Although the data presented here could be used for a variety of theoretical models it seems likely that no single model is sufficient to explain all the changes. The faunal remains obtained from the excavation have been used to calculate the amount of protein represented and this in turn used to calculate the approximate mean human population over the period of occupation. The figure obtained is between 21-53 depending upon the criteria adopted. The possible sources of error in the calculations are identified and discussed.

Archaic societies in the American midcontinent tend to be viewed as “archetypal” egalitarian, subsistence-oriented, gatherer–hunters. The strong techno-environmental orientation of most recent studies makes it hard to understand how and why increasingly socially differentiated gatherer-hunter societies emerged during the later Woodland period. In this article I attempt a social perspective on gatherer-hunters in general and those of the Archaic in particular. I suggest that alliance and exchange are universal hominid strategies and that, while they may have ecologically or biologically adaptive features, they are primarily about social relations and social reproduction.

Gatherer-hunter reciprocity has been stressed in the literature, but the opposite side of the coin is debt, and debt is about inequality, however slight or well masked. The internal social feedbacks embedded in alliance and exchange that might exacerbate social differentiation, and the feedback between social demand and productive intensification are explored. The divide between the midcontinental Archaic and Woodland begins to crumble.

Archaeological and paleoenvironmental data are integrated in an investigation of culture change among the Anasazi of the American Southwest by a conceptual model of the interaction among environment, population, and behavior, the major determinants of human adaptive systems. Geological, palynological, and dendrochronological reconstructions of low and high frequency environmental variability coupled with population trends are used to specify periods of regional population-resource stress that should have elicited behavioral responses. Examination of these periods elucidates the range of responses employed and clarifies the adaptive contributions of mobility, shift of settlement location, subsistence mix, exchange, ceremonialism, agricultural intensification, and territoriality. These results help differentiate responses that are triggered by environmental variability from those stimulated primarily by demographic or sociocultural factors. These analyses also demonstrate the adaptive importance of amplitude, frequency, temporal, spatial, and durational aspects of environmental variability compared to the commonly invoked but simplistic contrast between “favorable” and “unfavorable” conditions.

In February of 1879, Dr. J. M. Toner, Professor Otis Mason, and Col. Garrick Mallery placed an advertisement in the Washington, D.C. newspapers that read, in part

Two complementary models illuminate the formation of artifact assemblages at one type of prehistoric hunter-gatherer campsite—the workshop/habitation site. One model posits three successive stages in the activity contributing to the distribution and composition of lithic artifact assemblages. The other describes the formation of assemblages near exterior hearths and similar features. These models are discussed with reference to the Peace Point site, a rapidly buried and deeply stratified workshop/habitation site in northern Alberta. The implications of these models for refining our understanding of formation processes at other types of hunter-gatherer campsites are noted.

This article summarizes recent prehistoric research in western Central Asia (Western Turkestan) or the area of internal drainage towards the Caspian and Aral Seas, stretching from the Pamir massif and Fergana valley in the east to the Caspian in the west, and from the Aral in the north to the Hindu Kush watershed in Afghanistan and the eastern extension of the Alborz chain and the Iranian plateau in the south (Figure 1). This vast area contains distinct ecological zones ranging from high intermontane valleys to piedmont and alluvial plains, yet despite this diversity and its inevitable consequences for cultural development, certain shared features unite the area into a logical unit of analysis. Western Turkestan is a land of interior drainage with access to no seas other than the landlocked Caspian and Aral basins.