The midden at Indian Creek, Antigua, is very probably a nearly complete record of the animal food consumed by the inhabitants over about 1,100 years of occupation. During that time the resource exploitation pattern changed in a number of major and minor ways. The most obvious change, when crab gave way to bivalve mollusks as an important dietary element, has been examined in some detail and the possible causes for the change discussed. Although the data presented here could be used for a variety of theoretical models it seems likely that no single model is sufficient to explain all the changes. The faunal remains obtained from the excavation have been used to calculate the amount of protein represented and this in turn used to calculate the approximate mean human population over the period of occupation. The figure obtained is between 21-53 depending upon the criteria adopted. The possible sources of error in the calculations are identified and discussed.

Archaeological and paleoenvironmental data are integrated in an investigation of culture change among the Anasazi of the American Southwest by a conceptual model of the interaction among environment, population, and behavior, the major determinants of human adaptive systems. Geological, palynological, and dendrochronological reconstructions of low and high frequency environmental variability coupled with population trends are used to specify periods of regional population-resource stress that should have elicited behavioral responses. Examination of these periods elucidates the range of responses employed and clarifies the adaptive contributions of mobility, shift of settlement location, subsistence mix, exchange, ceremonialism, agricultural intensification, and territoriality. These results help differentiate responses that are triggered by environmental variability from those stimulated primarily by demographic or sociocultural factors. These analyses also demonstrate the adaptive importance of amplitude, frequency, temporal, spatial, and durational aspects of environmental variability compared to the commonly invoked but simplistic contrast between “favorable” and “unfavorable” conditions.

Data from a mid-eighteenth century Native American cemetery (the Fletcher Site) are used in conjunction with ethnohistoric documents to draw sociological conclusions about the society represented at the site. Methodological tools employed toward this end include the calculation of the actual wealth represented in the graves, as well as a spatial analysis of the cemetery. It is demonstrated that the cemetery was the product of an incipiently ranked society.

Richard Gould has built a substantial literature treating the subject of archaeological method with an emphasis on ethnoarchaeology. His writings have been received with mixed feelings by the field and have recently sparked an interesting “debate.” Much of Gould's criticism of the recent literature stems from his misunderstanding of that material. In similar fashion, I suspect that much misdirection in the current “debate” stems from Gould's naivete regarding his own philosophy. Therefore, I have attempted an analysis of Gould's works that will, I hope, clarify his position as well as the character of the points he raises that are in need of debate.

A set of 296 obsidian artifacts from the lakes area of the Department of Peten, Guatemala, has been provenienced by X-ray fluorescence and neutron activation analysis. The obsidians come from socioeconomic contexts (primarily rural/domestic) and time periods—from the Middle Preclassic period, ca. 800 B.C., up to the time of Spanish contact, A.D. 1525—that have been poorly represented in previous Lowland provenience studies. Thus they provide new data on the acquisition and distribution of this important non-local commodity in the Maya Lowlands.

A series of buried ridged agricultural fields has been discovered at the Sand Lake Site (47 Lc44) in La Crosse County, Wisconsin. Associated artifacts, features, and assayed carbon samples demonstrate that the fields were constructed by Oneota people in the fifteenth century A.D. Evidence suggests that water control was a major function of the ridges.

This article begins with a description of excavations in the Las Vegas type site on the Santa Elena Peninsula, Ecuador. A pre-Las Vegas phase (11,000 to 10,000 B.P.) is defined provisionally, and the Early Las Vegas (10,000 to 8000 B.P.) and Late Las Vegas (8000 to 6600 B.P.) phases are described from artifacts, burials, settlement data, faunal remains, pollen, and phytoliths. The Las Vegas people were unspecialized hunters, fishermen, and gatherers living in a littoral zone who added plant cultivation to their subsistence system before 8,000 years ago. Evidence for bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) and primitive maize (Zea mays L.) was found in the Las Vegas type site. The differences between the modern, semiarid environment and the environment of the preceramic period are accounted for without hypothesizing climatic change. Las Vegas is interpreted as a local manifestation of an early tropical forest cultural tradition out of which developed the ceramic-stage cultures of the Ecuadorian coast.

A reply to Lewis Binford's criticism concerning my views on archaeological inference and the relationships of such inferences to various kinds of ethnoarchaeology, with special reference to the Australian data included in Binford's critique.

The redating of the Laguna and Los Angeles Man skeletons by the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon method has shown that the Upper Pleistocene dates for these skeletons determined previously by the conventional radiocarbon method are probably incorrect. Using the revised ages for these skeletons to calibrate the aspartic acid racemization rate yields racemization ages for the Del Mar and Sunnyvale skeletons that are compatible with their AMS radiocarbon ages, a point that Taylor et al. (1985) fail to discuss.

Dean's review (this issue) of my recent synthesis of Anasazi prehistory clearly identifies him as a member of the school of thought I sought to criticize.

Anthropology, along with chemistry, geology, physics, medicine, and mathematics, consists of scientific modes of inquiry and techniques that have application for the public good beyond the boundaries of the respective disciplines. Within the past few decades the application of these sciences has emerged as a major force in scientific police investigations. The methods and techniques of archaeology are increasingly being applied by physical anthropologists and police investigators to the excavation of bodies buried during the course of criminal activity. It is argued that the potential for substantive and methodological contributions to archaeology, as well as to the criminal justice system, warrants increased participation and support of forensic research by forensically trained professional archaeologists.