In addition to archaeologists who make stone tools for experimental purposes, there is a growing number of flintknappers who make lithic artifacts for fun and for profit. The scale of non-academic knapping is little known to archaeologists, and is connected to a flourishing market for antiquities, fakes, replicas, and modern lithic art. Modern stone tools are being produced in vast numbers, and are inevitably muddling the prehistoric record. Modern knappers exploit some material sources heavily, and their debitage creates new sites and contaminates old quarry areas. Modern knapping is, however, a potential source of archaeological insights, and a bridge between the professional community and the interested public. Modern knapping also is creating a “twentieth-century stone age,” and archaeologists working with lithic artifacts need to be aware of the problems and potentials.

This paper examines geographic variation in fluted point morphology across North and South America. Metric data on 449 North American points, 31 Central American points, and 61 South American points were entered into a database. Ratios calculated from these metric attributes are used to quantify aspects of point shape across the two continents. The results of this analysis indicate gradual, progressive changes in fluted point outline shape from the Great Plains of western North America into adjacent parts of North America as well as into Central and South America. The South American “Fishtail” form of fluted point is seen as the culmination of incremental changes in point shape that began well into North America. A geographically gradual decline in fluting frequency also is consistent with the stylistic evolution of the stemmed “Fishtail” points. Although few in number, the available radiocarbon dates do suggest that “Fishtail” fluted points in southern South America are younger than the earliest dates associated with Clovis points in western North America. All of these data converge on the conclusion that South American “Fishtail” points evolved from North American fluted points.

Decrease in projectile point size around 1350 B.P. is commonly regarded as marking the replacement of the atlatl by the bow and arrow across the Great Basin. The point typology most widely employed in the Great Basin before about 1980 (the Berkeley typology) uses weight to distinguish larger dart points from smaller, but similarly shaped, arrow points. The typology commonly used today (the Monitor typology) uses basal width to distinguish wide-based dart points from narrow-based arrow points. The two typologies are in general agreement except in central Nevada, where some dart points are light, hence incorrectly typed by the Berkeley typology, and in eastern California, where some arrow points are wide-based, hence incorrectly typed by the Monitor typology. Scarce raw materials and resharpening may explain why dart points are sometimes light in central Nevada. That arrow point basal width is more variable in eastern California than central Nevada likely reflects differences in the cultural processes attending the spread and subsequent maintenance of bow-and-arrow technology in these two localities.

North American archaeologists have long been interested in distinguishing between dart and arrow points in order to establish when bow-and-arrow technology was adopted in the Eastern Woodlands. A quantitative analysis of point form and qualitative reconstructions of bifacial reduction trajectories from Plum Bayou culture sites in central Arkansas indicate that arrow points were abruptly adopted and became widespread about A.D. 600. Moreover, arrow points are metrically discrete entities that were not developed through gradual modification of dart points in this region as appears to be the case elsewhere. Comparisons with patterns observed in other regions of the East show significant variation in the timing, rate, and direction of the adoption of the bow and arrow, as well as the role of this technological change in Native American economies and sociopolitics. These observations suggest that the bow and arrow were: (1) introduced significantly earlier than some researchers have posited; (2) independently invented by some groups and diffused to others; and (3) relinquished and later readopted in some areas of the Eastern Woodlands in response to changing social, historical, and environmental conditions. Our data also call into question simple unilinear or diffusionary models that claim to explain the development and spread of this technological innovation.

I examine how a cognitive archaeology may best be advanced by focusing on Intentionality, the mental property that acts as the causal interface in the human-world interaction. I call this approach symbolic pragmatics. The argument is that, through style as the symbolic medium, material culture is endowed by its users with a form of derived Intentionality that is expressively imposed on it in the moment of usage. The central heuristic is the notion of the legal warrant as a pragmatic symbol that transforms behavioral interventions into the types of social activities (intended) they are. In the same way, material cultural style symbolically endows its users with pragmatic or action-constitutive powers that transform their material interventions into the social activities they (intend) are. I apply the warranting model to interpreting the Old Copper Culture Complex, arguing that its copper/stone duality manifests a structuring of the material activities of this society into two complementary water and land ecological spheres.

Two raven skeletons were excavated from Charlie Lake Cave, British Columbia, in association with Paleoindian occupations dated at about 10,500 and 9500 B.P. The distribution and condition of the bones, the association with artifacts, the configuration and location of the site, and data from ethnographic and historic sources contribute to the argument that the two ravens were deposited deliberately by people.

The longevity of ceramic vessels in ethnographic contexts has been reported from several ceramic-using groups. Several methods have been used to derive estimates of the mean uselives of ceramic classes. Among them, the Kalinga Ethnoarchaeological Project employed a method based on a series of ceramic inventories since 1975. This inventory method recorded large number of pots, much more than any other previous studies, to ensure the representativeness of uselife estimates. Another data set of ceramic breakage collected by the project reveals that biases against short-lived pots were introduced by the inventory method. As a result, ceramic uselife estimated by the inventory method appears to be too long, and the revised estimates are similar to those observed in other contexts. This paper identifies the biases intrinsic to the inventory method and suggests revised uselife figures.

Experimental replications show that ridge breadth measurements from fingerprints on archaeological artifacts can be used to estimate the age of the individual who produced the prints. While the greatest amount of variability in human ridge breadth is due to the growth during development from birth to adulthood, there is also variability due to hand and body size, sex, and ethnicity. Despite these confounding variables, the variability due to age is great enough to allow the separation of children’s prints from those of adults using ridge breadths. The utility of this measurement is illustrated with a short case study using ceramic vessels and figurines from northern Arizona. This discovery has great potential for illuminating some of the roles that children played in prehistory.

Petrographic analyses were made of 386 utilitarian pottery vessels from 23 dated components of 18 Early Woodland through early Fort Ancient period sites (ca. 1150 B.C.–A.D. 1300) in south-central Ohio. The analyses reveal that a significant percentage ( 11.6 percent) of the 386 vessels bear uncolored (i.e., unpigmented) pottery slips and washes, that these surface materials were common (>56 percent) among the 23 sampled components, and that they were produced throughout most of the examined prehistoric sequence, including the earliest Early Woodland, when pottery making began in the Midwest. In contrast, a literature review indicates that uncolored slips and washes are unrecorded for utilitarian wares in the prehistoric Eastern Woodlands, that both colored and uncolored slips are unknown for any ceramics of the Early Woodland period, and that colored slips or washes in the pre-Mississippian Midwest have been observed in only low frequencies. Electron microprobe analysis of seven sherds show the compositional similarity of the clays of slips to the clays of their associated vessel bodies, indicating that the slips were made from the same raw clays as the bodies, but with no or little added rock temper and/or with the sieving of the slip clay. Contextual analyses give further insights, including the possible uses of slips and washes for decoration and to decrease vessel wall permeability. Calcite and apatite coatings on the vessel surfaces also were observed and are interpreted. Results indicate greater continuity between and Midwestern and Southeastern United States in ceramic technology than previously thought, and suggest a need for caution in electron microprobe and INAA chemical studies of Midwestern ceramics.

Intertaxonomic differences in skeletal element representation in archaeological faunas may reflect preferences in the procurement, processing, transport, and/or consumption of these species by prehistoric foragers. However, the possibility that they also may result from preservational bias must be addressed before behavioral attributes of human hunters may be inferred. For example, at many archaeological sites, the remains of equids exhibit a different pattern of skeletal element representation than those of bovids and cervids. To evaluate the significance of such differences, this study examines intertaxonomic variability in patterns of bone density, the attribute most commonly employed as a proxy measure of resistance to destructive processes. Density data derived for a bovid (Connachaetes taurinus), a cervid (Rangifer tarandus), and two species of equid (Equus burchelli and E. przewalskii) exhibited very similar patterns, suggesting that values for one species may be used to interpret the survival patterns for other species of generally similar morphology. The differences in skeletal element representation between bovid, cervid, and equid species observed in archaeological faunas do not correspond with bone density and thus likely indicate selective treatment by human or other biotic agents.

Patterson (1994) offers a history of the development of Social Archaeology and five points that, according to him, constitute its theoretical ground. Oyuela-Caycedo et al. (1997) provide significant new evidence that questions the actual importance of the intellectual current and theory described by Patterson. While the former gives an inflated perspective of Social Archaeology, the latter leads the reader into a post-Social Archaeology limbo. Providing facts ignored by both Patterson and Oyuela-Caycedo et al., I elaborate a third argument, centered in Peru, which recognizes National Archaeology as a response to the failures of Social Archaeology. Taking into account the century-long search for identity—key to any understanding of twentieth-century Peru—the concept of National Archaeology, as developed in four national institutions, laid the ideological and political ground for the end of the terrorism in Peru.

In their review of the Flote-Tech machine-assisted flotation system, Hunter and Gassner (1998) depict the machine as nearly perfect and present it as a technical marvel. I attempt to present a more balanced view of the Flote-Tech machine, based on four years of direct experience. Rather than being a perfected machine for flotation recovery of archaeological plant remains, the Flote-Tech is a prototype with important design and use problems. It can only be recommended with major caveats and system modifications.