Sampling biases in archaeological research may inadvertently lead to unsubstantiated assumptions about the relationship between various site features. The majority of radiometric dates from the Poverty Point site have been recovered from excavations in the large, earthen ridges. While archaeological investigations have previously been undertaken in the Poverty Point mounds, few of these excavations have yielded radiometric dates. As a result of the almost complete absence of chronometric data from Poverty Point's mounds, the construction of these features is generally assumed to have occurred during the same time span as construction of the ridges. New radiometric dates from the Poverty Point mounds reveal information about the timing and pace of their construction. These new chronological data provide the basis for a more detailed developmental sequence, and may allow for the development of new hypotheses about population size, the organization of labor, architectural relationships, and the degree of social complexity at Poverty Point. Examining the development of cultural landscapes, such as the chronology of earthwork construction at Poverty Point, also provides a better understanding of the ways prehistoric societies interacted with and modified the environments in which they lived.

Mound A is the largest platform mound at the Angel site (12VG1), a Middle Mississippian town along the Ohio River in southwestern Indiana, and consists of an upper and lower platform joined by an offset conical peak. Solid-earth cores, geophysical data, and 14C ages indicate that mound construction began at 900 B.P. by stacking 10–15 cm-thick turf blocks two meters high at the junction of the upper-lower platform and that by 890 B.P. the upper platform was built to nearly its full 8m height. The dates from Mound A are among the earliest recorded from the site, which implies that earthwork construction coincided with the initial occupation of the site and was among the first construction tasks undertaken. Cultural features associated with a structure partly buried under the conical offset on the upper platform of Mound A yielded 14C ages of 750–520 B.P., which show that the upper platform surface was probably used throughout occupation. As also occurred on Mound F (the only other platform mound investigated at the site), the Mound A structure was destroyed and covered with a fresh layer of fill just before site abandonment. This final filling episode to cap the mounds may have been part of a "ceremonial closing" of the site. The youngest dates from the structures buried on Mounds A and F, as well as others across the site, suggest that the Angel site was essentially abandoned by 500 B.P., which also corresponds with the abandonment of Mississippian sites throughout the region.

Much of the discussion about North American precontact and contact-period populations has focused on continent-wide estimates. Although the associated work has produced valuable information on the demographic and cultural history of the continent, it has failed to generate agreed-upon estimates, population trends, or detailed demographic knowledge of Native American cultures. Using archaeological settlement remains and methods developed in recent research on Iroquoian cultures, this study estimates and examines population trends for the Onondaga and Oneida cultures of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) from A.D. 1500 to 1700. Onondaga population appears to have increased until the mid—seventeenth century, when drastic declines in settlement area and population size occurred. This depopulation event is both several decades after first contact with Europeans and at least a decade after the first known depopulation event among the Haudenosaunee. Oneida populations show a much more complex history that suggests the need for more detailed analyses of contact-period Native American population data. In conjunction with archaeological evidence and ethnohistoric information, the population trends generated by this study create a model of two precontact Native American populations and display the effects of European contact on those populations.

Hockett's (2005) examination of the faunal deposition rates at three sites in the Great Basin contains two fundamental errors. The rates are calculated using uncalibrated radiocarbon determinations, and ignores the fact that atmospheric radiocarbon has fluctuated through the millennia. Second, despite pronouncements on significant differences, no formal significance tests were done. This comment re-analyzes two of the sites discussed by Hockett using calibrated radiocarbon determinations and formal statistical significance tests.

Using data from a single site along the central California coast (CA-SLO-2), Jones et al. (2008) critique our use of human behavioral ecology to explain changing hunting and fishing adaptations in prehistoric California and the Great Basin. Instead, they argue that human adaptations tend to stay relatively stable over time until they are influenced by historical contingencies. We question the utility of using data from a single site, and expand the sample with information from several deposits along the south-central coast. This expanded sample documents a dynamic evolutionary sequence characterized by increasing residential stability accompanied by hunting and fishing in more distant resource patches. Access to these patches, both terrestrial and marine, was made possible by changes in social organization and technology. Many of these behaviors appear to have incurred high costs, and are potentially explained with reference to costly signaling theory.

Hildebrandt et al. offer this rather vitriolic challenge to our conclusions on the Diablo Canyon fauna in order to recast the data in favor of their view that major diachronic trends in western North American prehistory are the product of an increase in men's prestige hunting over time. Here we respond, first by discussing our view of the relationship between historical contingencies and behavioral ecological models, second by showing that the patterns they find in a regional faunal dataset result only from inappropriate aggregation of bone counts, third by questioning the potential prestige value of highly vulnerable species, and finally by making the case that standard behavioral ecological models, punctuated by historical contingencies, provide more parsimonious, albeit less fanciful, explanations for patterning in the western North American faunal record. We conclude by suggesting that when practitioners attempt to explain away empirical variability in order to support a favored hypothesis, it might be time to acknowledge that the hypothesis has failed to take flight.

This Comment interrogates claims made by Foster and Cohen (2007) regarding eighteenth-century Creek Indian hunting strategies. It argues that Foster and Cohen’s attempts to link the archaeological and ethnohistorical record are flawed because of their misreading of the latter. The "Comment" demonstrates that Creeks did not—contra Foster and Cohen (2007)—conduct large-scale hunts near their communities or frequently rely on fire-drives. Thus, pollen and charcoal samples gathered by Foster and Cohen (2007) from the neighborhood of those communities speak to activities other than hunting.

Hall's (this issue) comment to my paper published in American Antiquity five years ago (Hockett 2005) makes the following statements: (1) I calculated "depositional rates" for a series of Great Basin faunal assemblages; (2) my analysis did not account for atmospheric radiocarbon fluctuations; and (3) my paper argued "against an increase in hunting artiodactyls from the Middle to Late Holocene." He further argues that recalculation of the data I presented demonstrates that both large-and small-game hunting increased from the Middle to the Late Holocene. Hall is wrong on all accounts. I agree, however, that calibrated dates should now be used instead of the raw radiocarbon dates I used in my original paper. Using calibrated dates, however, does nothing to change the initial patterns I outlined five years ago. Three more recent papers (Hockett 2007, 2009; Hockett and Murphy 2009) on large game hunting in the Great Basin also corroborate my 2005 interpretations.

In response to Joshua Piker's (this issue) comment on our article (Foster and Cohen 2007), we point out that our article was a description of a test of a hypothesis. Piker's (this issue) criticism of our paper is grounded in the differences between historians and anthropological archaeologists. The historic literature that Piker (this issue) cited does not inform about whether or not Creek Indians hunted where we performed the sediment cores. It merely points out that Creek hunters may have hunted with greater frequency elsewhere. But that is irrelevant to our study, which tested whether the eighteenth-century deerskin trade increased the frequency of forest fires in a particular region. Archaeologists will benefit from using historical documents but archaeologists still have to be clear about the potential biases of those interdisciplinary data sources.