Neutron activation analysis was used to determine the chemical composition of sources of obsidian artifacts from the Paleoindian site of Los Tapiales in Guatemala with an occupation date of around 10,700 radiocarbon years ago. Three different sources were detected, all between 50 and 75 km from Los Tapiales. The predominant source represented in our ten samples was in the Rio Pixcayá area, and another was in the Tajumulco area. A third source, identified by comparison with other work, appears to be in the area of San Bartolomé Milpas Altas.

Data derived from site survey and excavation in central New Mexico indicate that there is a lack of congruence, or agreement, between material recovered through excavation and expectations derived from environmental, ethnographic and site location information. It is argued that the lack of congruence should not be dismissed but may provide useful insights into past subsistence technology.

Experiments were performed to establish correlations between the edge characteristics of a series of tools and the marks they produce when applied to bone. Pressure and angle of application, length of blade, and motion used during the cutting stroke, were found to be important variables that affect the shape of tool marks. Using cross sections of butchering marks from archaeological sites, it was possible to establish associations between various classes of tools and specific tasks.

Weakly bound composite materials such as low-fired pottery, bricks, mortar, and indurated soils can be disaggregated by ultrasound with no significant chemical or physical alteration of individual component grains. The components may then be separated by size, shape, density, magnetic properties, etc. This allows mineralogical, bulk chemical, trace-element, thermoluminescence, or other analyses of individual separates as well as determination of their relative proportions in the composite.

Excavations by the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology in 1950 at the Pulcher site in the American Bottoms south of Cahokia, Illinois, reveal a long occupation from about A.D. 500-1300 which was probably not continuous. The major occupation in terms of area and most of the mounds appear to be Late Woodland. A Stirling-Moorehead occupation is known to have occurred in a limited area. This was followed by a southern intrusion of people burying in stone box graves and a "foreign" ceramic complex.

The problem of teaching archaeology to large, lay audiences has received little attention from specialist anthropologists. A very diverse audience with specific attitudes to archaeology takes such courses. Few people are interested in more specialist training, although most beginning courses emphasize this aspect of archaeology. The paper describes some of the basic course content desirable in an introductory course and some of the methods that can be used to teach it. It concludes that the specialist training of professional archaeologists and the reward system of the discipline make it difficult for them to face the challenge of teaching beginning students.

A reexamination of all the published reports on split-twig figurine sites in light of the excavation of Cowboy Cave where 20 whole and fragmentary specimens were recovered under good stratigraphic control provides a foundation for discussing the possible cultural affiliation of the Grand Canyon figurine complex. A hypothesis is presented which may account for the known distribution of figurine finds and their lack of cultural associations at some sites.

A hydration rate for obsidian of 1.3 μm2 per 1,000 radiocarbon years has been calculated for the lower Columbia River Valley of Oregon and Washington. The rate provides a means for dating prehistoric archaeological sites containing obsidian in terms of their radiocarbon age.

Analysis of a series of negative impressions in fired clay recovered during the 1975 excavations at Icehouse Bottom (40MR23), Tennessee, indicates the production and/or use of both single element textiles and basketry at that site. One type of single element textile, knotted looping, is represented by a single specimen while one of the three major subclasses of basketry is also present. The latter includes 19 samples of a single structural type of twining. The technical characteristics of this, the oldest well dated "perishable" assemblage from east of the Mississippi River, are discussed and the assemblage is briefly compared to others in eastern and western North America.

The Early Formative period divisions proposed by Meggers, Evans, and Estrada for the coast of Ecuador were incorrectly shown in a recent paper by Myers; the correct version is supplied.

Pendergast's assertion that a Teotihuacan cache at Altun Ha, Belize, should be dated to the earliest part of the Protoclassic period is questioned in the light of recent findings of the ceramics of that period. The new evidence also tends to confirm the belief that the Floral Park ceramic complex coexisted with and did not totally displace the Chicanel phase.

Dissection of certain animal specimens indicated that meat poundage figures based on modern processing practices could be unreliably high.

One aspect of the recent article by Drennan (1976) merits some additional discussion. This has to do with the units of time that can be discriminated by seriation methods. One advance claimed for the new method proposed is that it allows for time placement within 25 years or so, stated as “ … finer than most traditional seriation.” In an article published 17 years ago, I showed this degree of time discrimination, with a much simpler graphical method of seriation.