Read's (1974) discussion of contingency table analysis is amplified. Procedures for model formulation and testing advocated by Fienberg (1970) and Goodman (1968, 1969, 1970) are outlined, contrasted, and used to analyze a corpus of archaeological data. It is argued that Fienberg's approach is better suited to situations in which the behavior of the data can be accurately predicted within fairly narrow limits. The Goodman approach is more appropriate to situations in which the behavior of the data is completely unknown.

The 600 square mile volcanic area of the Sierra Pinacate, in extreme northwestern Sonora, Mexico, comprises a unique geologic and ecologic enclave in which archaeological remains have been undisturbed by erosion. Situated in an essentially waterless desert, its semipermanent waterholes have been foci of human activity since man's first entry into the region. Three geologic phenomena indicate the chronology of artifacts in the region. Desert pavements formed by aeolian deflation of loess are altithermal phenomena. Two degrees of thickness of desert varnish on pavement and associated artifacts provide evidence that man was present during a pluvial period preceding an altithermal episode centering around 17,000 B.C., as well as throughout the well-known Pluvial period. The formation of caliche below ground level helps place excavated artifacts in sequence. M. J. Rogers' term “Malpais” is revived and assigned to the earlier pluvial occupation, basal to “San Dieguito Phase I (SD I)” of the Pluvial. Diagnostic criteria which involve both archaeologic and geologic elements have been developed for both periods, and their extension to related areas is briefly discussed.

A method of chronological seriation and a system of collecting data for it were devised to cope with certain practical and theoretical inadequacies of other methods. The method and collecting system are described in the context of solving problems encountered in the course of a particular archaeological study. It is believed that the method described here will be of use to others. Finally, some implications of this kind of seriation for the way in which ceramics change are discussed.

About A.D. 950, 11 persons of a small Anasazi settlement on Burnt Mesa north of the San Juan River, New Mexico, were butchered, mutilated and possibly roasted. The group's mixed remains were left strewn over a pithouse floor. Nearly all the bones were smashed and splintered. Some of them were burned, some show cut marks, and all exhibit greenstick breaks. Cannibalism is the most reasonable explanation for the patterned destruction. Starvation or necessity, rather than ritual or religious configuration, seem to best explain why the cannibalism occurred.

Walls surrounding three sites in northwest Yucatan, Mexico, were observed in aerial photography. The walls are thought to have been constructed during the Pure Florescent (Terminal Classic) period and to postdate the architectural complexes at the sites they surround. The photographs also show causeways connecting satellite communities with major centers; these are interpreted as Classic period attempts at boundary maintenance. The apparent trend toward increased severity of such activity through time is considered the result of demographic, social, and ecological factors.

A collection of lithic material from a site in the lower Tennessee River valley contains Paleoindian projectile points, uniface, and biface tools. Since few projectile points of Archaic types are included, there are implications that the rather extensive biface industry is of Late Paleoindian origin, contrary to the accepted idea that biface industries occur extensively only in post-Paleoindian occupations.

Recent geomorphic investigations in central California coupled with a re-evaluation of radiocarbon determinations from one Farmington complex locus provide a base for a more explicit definition of the age of this alleged Paleoindian manifestation. Flaked stone implements were apparently buried in gravels deposited during terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene times when channel filling occurred in the Sierra Nevada foothill drainages. The radiocarbon dates do not support the geologic interpretations. However, because of the charcoal"s stratigraphic context the dates are considered the product of later events.

Although the eastern lowlands of Costa Rica have seen little scientific archaeology, recent stratigraphic test excavations have outlined a ceramic sequence of almost 1,500 years in the region. The earliest ceramic complex in this sequence, El Bosque, has been radiocarbon dated to the first few centuries after Christ. Stylistically, the El Bosque complex resembles material from contemporary periods in adjacent regions (Zoned Bichrome, Aguas Buenas), but also shares many ceramic modes with the Colombian site of Momil. A carbonized maize cob from an El Bosque midden is eight-rowed Pollo, an ancient race of South American maize. Evidence is presented supporting the hypothesis that aboriginal cultural traditions in eastern Costa Rica were basically part of a northern South American tropical forest pattern.

Valdivia-related ceramics found near Lake San Pablo (Imbabura) demonstrate that this area was in contact with coastal Ecuador prior to 2000 B.C. The interaction between the coast and highlands is attributed to the existence of trade routes which probably originated in preceramic times. It is suggested that coca was among the scarce resources which attracted trade to the northern highlands.

Certain enigmatic prehistoric constructions in the eastern United States were possibly designed partly as barriers to restrict the movement of spirits or to protect the enclosed area from unwanted supernatural influences. Ethnographic accounts indicate that in historic times the belief was widely held in the United States that ghosts could not pass through water and that the geometry of a circle was effective in countering magic or supernatural forces. Some implications for archaeology are explored.

Problems involved in the application of probability sampling strategies to woodland environments are discussed and illustrated by example. The results of the sample and the field tactics employed in its implementation are appraised. Some directions for the development of specialized field tactics in woodland environments, including the reduction of transect intervals, the use of test-pitting, and the generation of explicit means for survey strategy alteration, are suggested.

Excavations at the Airport site, Springfield, Illinois, recently provided a rare opportunity to examine lateral displacement that has occurred due to plowing. Measurements of relative displacement of sections of reconstructed bifaces are given. These measurements suggest that plow drag may not be as great as is sometimes supposed.

Disagreements among archaeologists about whether inductive or deductive methods are appropriate for establishing archaeological hypotheses are often founded in a misunderstanding of the nature of inductive reasoning. In this paper several cases of confirmation of archaeological hypotheses are examined in order to expose the logical structure of the reasoning involved. In all these cases the structure is basically inductive. In actual practice the methodology adopted by archaeologists is far more sophisticated than the account of this methodology presented by archaeologists.

In the October 1974, issue of American Antiquity (39:616–17) Dudley M. Varner contributes a note on “Two Ethnographic Functions of Bird-Form Pottery from Oaxaca, Mexico.” He notes, without citing evidence, the archaeological occurrence of similar forms from the southern half of North America. The example illustrated was purchased in Yalalag, Oaxaca, and he cites two Zapotec informants from the same village about the functions of this form among the neighboring Mixe who made it. One function is that the handle remains cool when the toe of the vessel is pushed into the coals of a fire. The second he cites is that three such vessels provide a support for the comal or ceramic cooking griddle and says that knobs or ridges on the toe-end of many Oaxaca shoe forms were specifically designed for this purpose.

The traditional broad category of shoe-shaped pots (or bird-forms or patojos) is invalid for analytic purposes. It is a catch-all category for vessels which may have had different histories, uses, and meanings. One kind, the culinary shoe-pot, does form a distinctive class with a special use in cooking and was widely distributed in space and time. Previous researchers, including Varner, Beals, and Sisson most recently, have generated spurious problems and have been led to erroneous conclusions. The following recommendations are explained: (1) culinary shoe-pots should not be classified with bird or foot effigies, although they sometimes become effigies as visual puns; (2) they should not be grouped with other asymmetrical pots on the single criterion of horizontal body elongation without considering the other vessel attributes; (3) further ethnographic and linguistic field investigation should be done where culinary shoe-pots are still used; (4) primary and secondary uses of culinary shoe-pots should not be confused.