Although behavioralists who deal with plow zone sites have a need to discriminate between cultural and non-cultural effects on artifact distributions, relatively little is known about the influences of agricultural equipment. A series of experiments was conducted to answer questions concerning the parameters of recovery, lateral artifact displacement, spatial patterning, duration of tillage, and the effects of tillage patterning. Results indicate an average recovery rate of 5-6 percent; support for the "size effect"; relatively constant recovery of small and large pieces; dominant displacement in the direction of plowing; lack of relationship between displacement and artifact size; basically random distribution of objects; and possible spurious clustering, depending upon the analytical methods employed.

The degree of development of specialist positions associated with large-scale construction at the Maya site of Copan, Honduras, is evaluated. The methodology used involves the quantification of energy, in human labor, which was expended in the construction of Str. 10L-22, a major palace in the Main Center of Copan. The results suggest that few specialists were required, and that the vast majority of construction personnel were unspecialized conscripts. Moreover, the absolute energetic investment was low, suggesting that energetic expenditures in largescale architecture could not have been a major source of stress on the Late Classic Maya socioeconomic system.

This paper discusses a method for the analysis of spatial patterning which is based on aspects of the study of spatial autocorrelation. By means of computer simulation it is shown that the join count statistic (Cliff and Ord 1973; Moran 1950) has a wider validity than was presumed originally. Some archaeological applications from the analysis of a late Mesolithic cemetery in Karelia, USSR, are presented.

If research on the Initial Variant of the Middle Missouri tradition is to progress, more attention must be given to the development of a processual understanding of the groups represented. This article provides a discussion of the Mill Creek culture as it has been formulated through the culture-history approach. The background information is provided as a means of gaining insights into factors of processual significance that can be investigated deductively. The paper then presents a model of Mill Creek culture process and suggests hypotheses that are believed to have broad implications for understanding the causes of change and interaction within the Initial Variant.

The use of architecture as an artifact gives archaeologists a data set that we have rarely employed to examine cultural evolutionary questions. In this paper I consider the determinants of some architectural forms and propose some causes of architectural change, specifically in the American Southwest. Using ethnographic material from around the world, I demonstrate the relationship between structure seasonality and two of the most common southwestern architectural forms, pit structures and pueblos. The ethnographic record also suggests that the conditions surrounding the southwestern use of pit structures, and to a lesser degree of pueblos, are rather different from what many archaeologists have supposed. The differences in the conditions under which pueblos are used rather than pit structures form the basis for a theoretical framework that begins to explain the transition between the two kinds of structures in the prehistoric Southwest.

Failure to distinguish clearly between human behavior and cultural behavior, as well as inattention to procedures for evaluating inferences about the past, undermine some recent efforts in archaeological interpretation. Examples from the archaeological literature of the American Southwest show how analytical confusion may arise when research strategies obscure cultural variability. We are especially concerned about instances in which archaeologists assume that variability in archaeological assemblages derives primarily or exclusively from variability in human behavior (rather than cultural behavior) or from noncultural processes that are instrumental in forming the archaeological record. Suggestions for modifying research strategies to avoid these problems are offered.

The 168 metal artifacts collected at Machu Picchu in 1912 by Hiram Bingham have been examined for evidence that metallurgical artificers worked at this site in pre-Columbian times. Fifteen artifacts have been identified as metal stock, work in progress, or waste materials from metallurgical processes. Bronze was made by alloying metallic tin and copper and was cast into both finished objects and stock for subsequent forging. Hammering was done with stone tools, but bronze chisels were also in use. Silver-copper alloys were worked, but this material was not held to compositional limits as close as those for bronze. No alloys containing arsenic and relatively little evidence of the use of sheet metal were found.

By comparing thin sections of basalt artifacts from three early and middle Holocene Aleutian sites with geological samples, we can infer the location of the artifactual rock source or sources. Contrary to the sources, the comparison shows that the basalt artifacts came from a single flow or closely related flows 15-30 km from all three sites. This finding suggests we should reassess the role of cultural continuity, trade, and exchange in the early and middle Holocene of the Aleutians.

Based on examination of an extensive phytolith reference collection of domesticated and nondomesticated plants, it was determined that spheroidal and hemispheroidal phytoliths with deeply scalloped surfaces of contiguous concavities can be used as indicators of selected varieties of squash in archaeological sites in the central United States. Based on this classification and the distribution of the wild buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima), squash was identified in prehistoric sites in Nebraska and Arkansas.

Marie Cottrell's recent (1985) proposal that prehistoric long distance exchange of jasper occurred between the California coast and inland deserts is most unlikely in light of the presence of abundant secondary siliceous sediment sources (including jasper) along the nearby southern California coast. The obsidian hydration based site chronology at Tomato Springs, founded on non-source provenienced obsidian, is equally problematic. A number of other lesser potential fallacies serve to undermine the assumption of long distance transport of a raw material that was available locally.

This paper critically assesses Cottrell's model of prehistoric exchange of jasper said to have been transported through the Mojave Desert to the Tomato Springs site in coastal southern California. We point out numerous conceptual and analytical errors which cast doubt on Cottrell's interpretation of the Tomato Springs site as a control center for the importation, production, and trade of this supposedly nonlocal material. Cottrell has not demonstrated a desert origin for the jasper found at Tomato Springs, and thus has no grounds for testing any of Renfrew's distance-decay models. The presence of local natural sources of jasper better explains the occurrence of this mineral at Tomato Springs and nearby sites.