Our recent efforts in preparing syntheses of Puebloan prehistory suggest that most of the standard, normative generalizations are empirically false and that the conceptual framework traditionally employed to organize the archaeological data is inadequate and inappropriate. We show that the patterned variability manifest in the archaeological record is obscured by normative treatment. An approach to southwestern prehistory that is at once more faithful to the data and to processual, evolutionary anthropology is provided by describing the variable strategies that prehistoric groups used to cope with the continually changing natural and social environments in which they lived. We argue that some aspects of demographic, productive, and social organizational strategies are appropriate for treatment in syntheses of broad scope. We trace these strategies as they seem to have occurred in the northern Southwest from about A.D. 1 to the protohistoric period. In so doing, we find that successful strategies were those that facilitated the articulation of diversity. At some times productive specialization, organized redistributive exchange, and status differentiation were among the more important strategies.

Human behavior has spatial corollaries of great importance to both geographers and archaeologists. Some of these corollaries can be expressed as point maps, and to describe them objectively it has become common-place to employ the nearest-neighbor analysis technique devised by ecologists. But recently it has been shown that "underestimation" is an inherent flaw of the technique. Initially, therefore, the attention of this paper focuses on elimination of this problem by modifying the traditional formulae. With the flaw corrected, the issues surrounding interpretation of the nearest-neighbor statistic are discussed, and a review is made of the special difficulties of applying the technique to archaeological data.

This article suggests that accepted interpretations of variability in nonlithic material culture are insufficient. Recent ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya and Zambia and anthropological studies of societies in Sudan and Nigeria demonstrate that culture may be used by groups to communicate within-group corporateness in reference to outsiders. The greater the competition between groups for resources, the greater the likelihood that material culture will play a part in the maintenance of internal cohesion. Distinctive types of distributions and associations of artifacts occur as strains develop between spatially or hierarchically defined groups. The relevance of this view to archaeology is shown by two examples. Finally, it is suggested that this type of approach will allow a better understanding of the underlying causes of social and cultural change.

Despite their growing importance in the study of prehistoric human ecology, regional subsistence-settlement models continue to be developed and justified largely on intuitive grounds. This shortcoming can be at least partially overcome by using multivariate statistical techniques to clarify and refine these models. Such an approach is illustrated using classical factor analysis and discriminant analysis to explicate and improve a regional subsistence-settlement model previously developed for Owens Valley, eastern California.

The development of social complexity at the Formative period site of Chalcatzingo, Morelos, Mexico, is traced through its effect on the distribution of variability in the anthropomorphic figurines found there. A new methodology for the analysis of stylistic data is applied. The implications of the character and timing of elite developments at Chalcatzingo are placed in the more general context of highland developments in central Mexico. It is suggested that complex society arose in the region primarily as a result of internal processes and that external stimulus from the Olmec area was relatively unimportant.

Alternative models for the exchange of serving vessels at Late Classic Lowland Maya sites are presented. These models are examined in the light of evidence on serving vessel distribution from peripheral and central Tikal, Guatemala, and adjacent intersite areas. Multidimensional scaling analysis is used to demonstrate patterning in area assemblage similarities. The revealed patterning most closely fits a model of distribution based on a fairly centralized marketing system. Changes in the organization and scale of the system between Ik and Imix complexes are examined in the light of other evidence of internal site dynamics.

Underlying paleo-Indian period artifacts, deeply weathered chert implements have been recovered in Florida from a sandy clay horizon heretofore considered culturally sterile. Although the stratigraphic position of the stone implements in the sandy clay deposit has been demonstrated without question, dating has been a problem because no carbon-containing material has been preserved. Thus experiments were undertaken to investigate the environmental conditions under which the stone artifacts have weathered and the time required for the given extent of weathering. The electron microprobe was used to evaluate the surface compositional changes that occur in Florida chert during weathering. The patina of a chert surface exposed to an acid environment was found to be depleted of iron to a depth of ∼ 600μm. The mechanism through which Fe is leached from the surface is thought to be a diffusion-controlled process in which the depth of leaching is proportional to the square root of exposure time. This may provide a means of dating artifacts fashioned from these cherts.

Concordant radiocarbon and aspartic acid racemization dates have been obtained for several Holocene aboriginal skeletons from coastal southern California sites. These results further demonstrate the reliability of racemization dating. One of the skeletons (SDM 16709), dated at 8,300 years, was a burial around which several milling stones had been placed. This well-dated burial indicates that the Southern California Milling Stone horizon is significantly older than has previously been accepted.

An archaeological survey of 17 vacant lots in Tucson, Arizona, was carried out as a student exercise. The survey disclosed evidence for a recurrent set of activities: travel from place to place, refuse disposal, storage, automobile-related uses, adult and children"s play, camping, and various removal processes. Hypotheses about several formation processes, especially trampling, are provided. It is argued that vacant lots are a distinctive kind of activity area involving public use of private space, present in all cities, whose archaeological study may shed light on past urban systems.

A common practice in faunal analysis is the estimation of diet. Review of the various techniques used reveals fallacies in each and a basic misconception about what was actually consumed. Explicit definitions of consumed meat and available meat and means of employing these concepts are presented. Use of the concepts in an example suggests that commonly used concepts provide estimates that are not realistic reflections of consumed meat amounts.

All superimpositions encountered in a sample of 106 panels of proto-Shoshonean petroglyphs in the Coso Range (T22S-R40E). California, were quantitatively analyzed. The relative numbers of superimpositions in three of the nine subject categories (patterned-body anthropomorphs, other humans, and boat-shaped sheep) were higher than expected. Some designs (other humans, boat-shaped sheep, medicine bags) formed the overlying elements significantly more often, and others (patterned-body anthropomorphs, other elements) were seen more frequently as underlying subjects. Boat-shaped sheep and patterned-body humans constituted the most commonly encountered pairs of motifs linked in superimpositions; the high incidence of this particular linkage provides visual support for the postulated occurrence of a late intensification of ritual activities designed to help increase the supply of game animals. The data also contribute some new information about the possible iconographic roles of two controversial design motifs, the “shields” and the “medicine bags.”

On the basis of an analysis of data from 34 of the most thoroughly examined sites in the Upper Willamette Valley of Oregon, a chronological framework is devised that divides the prehistory of the region into five major periods: Period I, ranging between 8000 and 6000 B.C.; Period II, between 6000 and 4000 B.C.; Period III, between 4000 and 250 B.C.; Period IV, 250 B.C. to A.D. 1700; and Period V, the protohistoric and historic period dating between 1700 and approximately 1850. The bracketing dates for these periods are based on a combination of chronometric and relative dating techniques, including radiocarbon dating, tree-ring counts, typological comparison, pollen analysis, cross-dating with historic artifacts, and stratigraphy.

A recent report by Moholy-Nagy (1978) notes the frequency and wide distribution of the freshwater snails Pomacea flagellata and Pachychilus spp. in archaeological sites of the southern Maya Lowlands. The report suggests that these snails served as supplementary sources of protein. In this comment, the author describes the modern Lacandon Maya use of Pachychilus shells as lime for processing maize into tortillas and corn gruels and proposes that snail shells may also have served the ancient Maya as a source of lime.

The businesslike tasks associated with archaeological research continue to grow in complexity, in volume, and in the requirement of special skills. Good business work is increasingly necessary to facilitate funding and maximum scientific achievement. Some investigative centers, successful by any measure, demonstrate that improving the business work is practicable and profitable. Others have dubious prospects because they seem not to recognize (1) that archaeology generally must provide for business work at the investigative level, (2) that such work is far more demanding than it used to be, and (3) that the means of doing that work well are not hard to provide. This paper aims to illuminate these and two ancillary points and to encourage archaeologists to make needed improvements to benefit themselves and the profession.

Archaeological research organizations are a challenge to management since their output-research-is inherently difficult to measure and not subject to evaluation in the marketplace. The integration of business management theory and analytic techniques into the organization can assist those responsible to plan, organize, direct, and control the organization so as to improve effectiveness. Among these techniques are Gantt charts, the critical path method, and zero-base budgeting.