This paper seeks further to define the processes of the interpretation of meaning in archaeology and to explore the public role such interpretation might play. In contrast to postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, a hermeneutic debate is described that takes account of a critical perspective. An interpretive postprocessual archaeology needs to incorporate three components: a guarded objectivity of the data, hermeneutic procedures for inferring internal meanings, and reflexivity. The call for an interpretive position is related closely to new, more active roles that the archaeological past is filling in a multicultural world.

Operations research is the systematic study of resource utilization through the manipulation of conceptual models. Used most often by engineers and managers, these models also have potential application in archaeology. Event tree analysis, which models multipart systems with a number of potential consequences resulting from a series of events, makes it possible to analyze artifact-production processes or the operation of complex economic activities such as hunting. Fault tree analysis models the interactions of factors that can cause a technological system to fail. It offers a framework for the interpretation of archaeological remains such as flintlock firearm parts at Indian and Euroamerican sites of the Great Plains.

On October 6, 1846, M. W. Dickeson, a physician from Natchez, Mississippi, exhibited a collection of specimens of mastodon and sloth fossil bones that he had found in 1845 at the base of a bayou cut through the loess above the Mississippi River near his home. He had brought them to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia to which he donated them. Among the specimens was a fragment of human pelvis, implicitly also fossil, from a deposit of blue clay 61 cm below the animal fossils, which included mylodon (now Glossotherium harlani) and Megalonyx jeffersoni. After 144 years of controversy over the antiquity of “Natchez Man,” a sample of the pelvis has been dated by accelerator mass spectrometry to 5580 ± 80 B.P.

Widespread exchange networks operative in the early historic period in the southern Plains and adjacent areas were documented by early Spanish explorers. Among the more important trade items they noted were bison hides, including robes. It is suggested here that the occurrence of beveled knives and endscrapers in assemblages dating after about A.D. 1300 reflects the importance of bison hides in late prehistoric exchange. Both of these chippedstone tools probably were used in acquiring and processing the hides of bison. The importance of bison hides continued into the historic period when they were documented items of exchange in southern Plains and adjacent areas.

A series of unusually large hunter-gatherer winter villages emerged along the Fraser River in the Lillooet region of British Columbia during the last 3,000 years. Population estimates for these villages range from 500-1,000. Salmon heavily dominated the subsistence economy of these groups. We believe that these groups were socially and economically more complex than subsequent inhabitants. Village size and complexity seem to achieve maximum development from 1000-2000 B.P. About 1,000 years ago it appears that all of the large villages in the Lillooet region were abandoned and never reoccupied to any significant degree. Numerous causes for this apparent cultural collapse have been considered. Recent geomorphological research on landslides and terraces in the Lillooet region make failure of salmon runs due to catastrophic landslides that dammed the Fraser River the most likely explanation for the apparently abrupt abandonment of the large Lillooet villages.

Many researchers have linked the evolution of the prehistoric center Cahokia to its location near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois rivers. It is possible to evaluate this idea mathematically through the graph-theoretic concept of centrality. The analysis suggests that Cahokia was located at the point of highest centrality in the Mississippi River drainage.

Interrelations among three roughly contemporaneous late prehistoric Mississippian societies in Middle and East Tennessee are reexamined in terms of currently available biological, archaeological, and ethnohistoric data. Previous researchers have suggested a close relation between two of those cultures—Mouse Creek and Middle Cumberland—to the exclusion of the third, Dallas. However, multivariate analyses of craniofacial and mandibular dimensions of individuals from the three groups suggest a greater biological relation between Dallas and Mouse Creek than between Mouse Creek and Middle Cumberland. In addition, a comparison of intrasite settlement patterning, ceramic and mortuary variability, and ethnohistoric data across the three groups support the skeletal analysis. Relations between Dallas and Mouse Creek may mirror similar processes of sociopolitical reorganization occurring throughout the Southeast in the late prehistoric period.

The problems with dating prehistoric canals are renowned, due to the fact they seldom contain material appropriate for traditional dating methods. However, the application of archaeomagnetic techniques may offer a method of dating canals in those regions where master curves of polar wandering already exist. Detrital remanent magnetism in Hohokam canal sediments seems to produce accurate dates with ranges of ca. 200 years, twice the resolution of previous canal-dating attempts. However, at least some of the sediments seem to record inclinations that are less accurate than the declinations. In these cases, the declination values for the sediments can be compared to master declinations curves as a method of dating the sediments.

The petrographic identification of ceramic tempers has long been known to be a fruitful line of inquiry for investigating intersite and interregional cultural interaction. By applying point-counting procedures to the recording of natural as well as humanly added mineral inclusions in ceramic thin sections, considerable power can be added to this traditionally qualitative technique. The effectiveness of this more quantitative approach in discriminating local from nonlocal vessels is demonstrated through a comparative analysis of two Middle Mississippian-contact sites in the upper Mississippi Valley region-Hartley Fort in northeast Iowa and the Fred Edwards site in southwest Wisconsin.

Throughout the world, public agencies, professional societies, and individual archaeologists have recognized the need for more and better public education about archaeology. We are challenged to act on this recognition by providing opportunities for the public to learn about, and even participate in, archaeological interpretations and investigations. The audiences for these efforts include the general public, students and teachers, legislators, public administrators, and Native Americans. Archaeology has been a subject of interest to the public for centuries, and the archaeological record has fascinated people for even longer. Contemporary archaeologists must reach out to the public by providing them with understandable interpretations and explanations. We must do this if appreciation for archaeology and for the importance of archaeological preservation is to grow in America.

Stein (1986) presents a very timely contribution on the history and utility of archaeological site coring that has major implications for the detection and retrieval of subsurface archaeological data. My purpose in this comment is threefold. First, I would extend her history of coring to include three periods instead of two. More importantly, in so doing, I would stress the need to modify Stein's observations to cultural-resource-management (CRM) settings. This would expand the applications of subsurface probing to broader sets of sedimentary environments and site contexts, specifically those where preservation conditions are less than ideal. Finally, I propose a versatile coring strategy that is amenable to both research and applied cultural-resource-management (CRM) situations in a cost-efficient manner.

Corers and augers have become increasingly useful in archaeological investigations, but more in cultural-resource management (CRM) than in research archaeology. Although this increase is evident, coring and augering were used in the earliest CRM projects in the 1970s and merely have gained in popularity in the last five years. Schuldenrein (1991) points out that of all the coring and augering equipment described, the manual bucket auger with a large-diameter barrel is of special value. However, one major disadvantage is that sediment is disturbed during extraction, making observations about soil structure and stratification difficult. The disadvantages have to be balanced against the fact that bucket augers are more versatile than corers and penetrate many more types of substrate. Because of these differences between augers and corers, the terms should not be used interchangeably.