Demographers use mathematical projections to estimate both future and past population in areas where they lack quality data. Such projections may be very useful in archaeological situations. In this analysis, we mathematically project population growth rates from Classic Maya settlement in the Copán Valley, Honduras, from A.D. 650-800 backward to A.D. 450 to estimate valley population levels during the Middle Classic. Projections based on the growth rate (r = .0098) that best describes Late Classic growth yield population estimates that are from 40 to 100 percent higher than the unsmoothed estimates for the Middle Classic calculated by Webster et al. (1992:189). However, they still indicate that Middle Classic Copán was a relatively small polity, with a population of approximately 2,400 by A.D. 550 and 6,400 by A.D. 650. The fact that population growth at Copán from the period A.D. 400-800 conforms well to exponential growth indicates that population growth in the valley was relatively unaffected by episodic events. Each of the three growth rates considered would have been sustainable in a preindustrial agrarian society.

Botanical remains found in ceramic vessels and other containers at the Cerén site, El Salvador, provide evidence for how plants were used by Classic-period inhabitants. Because of the rapid inundation of ash caused by the eruption of the Loma Caldera volcano sometime around A. D. 590, conditions for the preservation of plant parts at Cerén are superior to most other Mesoamerican sites. Carbonized plant remains, or impressions thereof, recovered from vessels include an assortment of domesticates, cultigens, and wild plants that describe an overall pattern of a highly diversified subsistence base. Although clear statistical associations among vessels, structure types, and plant remains are not evident, the contextual data reveal food storage and other plant-use practices of the site occupants. The apparent abundance of plant-derived products and Mayan trade goods at Cerén suggests the potential contribution made by small farmers as both suppliers to and trading partners with the larger cultural developments in Mesoamerica.

A long-standing debate in Amazonian archaeology is whether large sites represent contemporaneous communities or palimpsests accrued through multiple reoccupations. Quantitative ceramic seriation has been used to support the latter view. This argument is evaluated in terms of its statistical basis and its assumptions about sources of ceramic variability. On the basis of this evaluation, we conclude that the case for reoccupation, based on seriation, is unconvincing.

It is commonly assumed in both the public and professional perceptions of Maya archaeology that tombs serve as time capsules, each representing a single event, and that burials of single individuals were the normal interment type, at least during the Late Classic period (A.D. 550-800). The investigation of Caracol Structure A34 provides excellent examples of tomb re-entry as well as of multiple-individual interment in sealed contexts, both of which contradict current assumptions. Analyses of the excavations also embody a true conjunctive approach by utilizing stratigraphy, osteology, artifacts, and epigraphy. When the archaeological data from Structure A34 are placed within a broader context, single-event single-individual tombs are shown to be but one manner of interment at Caracol. Although the large number of multiple-individual burials and the possibility of widespread tomb re-entry at Caracol may appear aberrant when compared with general interment practices at other Maya sites, the inferred funerary rites are well within the bounds of worldwide cultural practices relating to death and burial.