Recent archaeological investigations of Mississippian period (A.D. 1000–1400) sites permit the development of population estimates for an area immediately south of Cahokia, the largest prehistoric site in North America. Population estimates are derived from the number of structures at 11 sites, with the amount of prehistorically habitable land being incorporated as part of the estimating procedure. Population density increased somewhat during the earliest two of four Mississippian phases, reaching its peak during the Stirling phase. Thereafter, population decreased, reaching its lowest point during the Sand Prairie phase.

During the field season of 1979 a bauxite statuette known as the Birger figurine was uncovered at the BBB Motor site, a Middle Mississippian ceremonial site on the outskirts of Cahokia. A comparison of the figurine's compositional elements with characteristics ascribed to fertility goddesses in the myths of several historic eastern North American tribes suggests that the Birger figurine's symbolism shares many of the concepts associated with various historic fertility deities, and that it represents a Mississippian version of the Earth-Mother.

Archaeologists now possess the knowledge and techniques necessary to identify pottery-vessel function with a reasonable degree of specificity. This article is intended to demonstrate that capability. The pottery vessel assemblage characteristic of the sixteenth-century Barnett phase in northwest Georgia consists of 13 physically and morphologically distinct vessel types. The mechanical performance characteristics of these vessel types are identified and employed in formulating hypotheses concerning the way vessel types were used. Historic Southeastern Indian food habits are reconstructed from ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence and employed to refine the vessel-use hypotheses.

With the rise in importance of the archaeological survey as a major data-recovery tool has come greater concern over methods for making inferences about site subsurface characteristics from surface materials. One growing area of concern is the identification of site function using surface features and artifact assemblages. Here we examine the relations among architectural site types (defined using surface features), modeled functional site types, and surface artifact assemblage characteristics. Analysis proceeded in three stages, each one built on the previous stage. In the first stage we used site type models to predict surface assemblage differences between types and then tested these predictions with the surface assemblages from surveyed sites grouped by architecture type. The procedures involved analysis of variance, difference-of-means tests, and discriminant analysis. In the second stage, we used discriminant analysis to create a classification function for predicting site type on the basis of artifact assemblages. In the third stage of the analysis, we investigated possible reasons for the uneven classification results. We conclude our analyses by presenting an example of functional change that affects the ability of the discriminant analysis to distinguish between two of the site types.

A review of material from Copan, originally assigned a post A.D. 1000 date, suggests the existence of two separate temporal episodes, one a Terminal Classic equivalent. A rare trade ceramic found in this Copan Terminal Classic and at contemporary Seibal is also present in a ceramic group of Lepa phase (A.D. 625–1000) Quelepa, El Salvador. This identification supports the placement of the Copan material in the Terminal Classic. New data from the Ulua Valley, northwest Honduras, document an extreme southeastern extension of the Terminal Classic Altar Fine Orange ceramic sphere of Seibal. Two networks of interaction linking the southeastern extreme of Mesoamerica and the western Maya area suggested by these ceramic correlations are examined, and the processes involved are discussed.

Japan is close to the land bridge route to the Americas; therefore, any evidence of early occupation there may be relevant to the peopling of the New World. In this report I briefly discuss recent discoveries from North Japan that are claimed to have an “Early,” i.e., pre-30,000 years B.P., date.

Charred remains of Bison antiquus recovered in 1950 from lacustrine sediments at the Lubbock Lake archaeological site (Southern High Plains of Texas) yielded a radiocarbon age of 9,883 ± 350 years B.P. (C-558). The bone was believed to be from the Folsom occupation of the site and the date was considered to be the first for the Folsom culture in North America. Although the feature that contained the bone was correlated with bone beds that contained Folsom points found elsewhere at the site, the dated feature did not contain diagnostic artifacts and direct correlations with the Folsom features were not possible. Excavations at the site since 1973 provide data that demonstrate that the feature that produced the historic date is stratigraphically above the Folsom horizon. Sediment samples taken from the feature have yielded radiocarbon ages of 8,585 ± 145 years B.P. (SI-5499) and 8,130 ± 80 years B.P. (SMU-1089). These ages further demonstrate that the feature is from a post-Folsom occupation, and probably represents the Firstview occupation of the site. The Lindenmeier site, Colorado, probably produced the first radiocarbon age for the Folsom culture.

Analysis of archaeological sites on a stream terrace system in Kansas supports the idea that spurred end scrapers are valid diagnostic Paleoindian artifacts. No sites with spurred end scrapers were discovered on the Holocene terraces, while the Wisconsin terraces did yield such sites. The differential distribution of spurred end scraper sites on terraces appears to be statistically significant. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that spurred end scrapers were not found on the Holocene terraces because they were not being used when the Holocene terraces formed.

Broken canines from two caves on the Porcupine River, Alaska are analyzed with respect to size, development, morphology, breakage pattern, and stratigraphic placement. These analyses indicate that they are deciduous bear teeth exfoliated in these caves through noncultural processes associated with dental development. Similarity of these teeth to the canines recovered from various stratigraphic levels at Trail Creek Caves 2 and 9, on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska (Larsen 1968:58), indicates that the Trail Creek specimens (including specimens from levels dating to the late Pleistocene) are also naturally exfoliated bear teeth and not dog canines (Canis familiaris) broken out by human beings, as originally suggested.

A net made of juniper (Juniperus sp.) bark cordage and designed for capturing animals the size of deer or mountain sheep has been radiocarbon dated to late Paleoindian times. It was recovered in the Absaroka Mountains of north-central Wyoming and provides insight into prehistoric animal procurement strategies that did not require the use of stone artifacts.

Sulphur Springs Woman, an early human burial, was recovered from alluvial deposits dated between 8,200 and 10,000 years before the present in Whitewater Draw, southeastern Arizona. These are the oldest human remains from the Southwest and are some of the oldest in North America. These bones provide data on the earliest inhabitants of the New World.

In February 1866, workers found a human skull deep in a mine in Calaveras County, California, believed at first to be of Pliocene age. It was passed through several hands before reaching J. D. Whitney, State Geologist of California and Professor of Geology at Harvard University. While some scientists accepted it on face value, other scientists and the public press refused to believe it and even ridiculed the claim. Some believed it was a “plant,” while others had faith in the reports of the miners, which led to a long controversy. Apparently two skulls became confused in transmission from one person to another, but in the end they were identified as fossilized Indian skulls of modern type, and it was finally admitted that the one taken from the mine was “planted” as a joke.

Identification of spruce (Picea) and fir (Abies) construction timbers at Chetro Ketl in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, implies that between A.D. 1030 and 1120 the Anasazi transported thousands of logs more than 75 km. These timbers came from high elevations, probably in mountains to the south (Mt. Taylor) and west (Chuska Mountains) where Chacoan interaction was well established. Survey in these mountains might disclose material evidence of these prehistoric logging activities.

Santa Rosa Island skeletal collections, dating from between 4000 and 400 B.P., were analyzed for evidence of dental caries. Carious lesions were found to decrease significantly through time, as were sexual differences in caries rates. These trends in dental health appear to reflect changes in diet and sexual division of labor associated with a subsistence shift from the exploitation of roots, tubers, and other cariogenic plant foods to the intensive exploitation of fish. Analysis of dental caries can provide information on prehistoric carbohydrate intake that is unavailable using conventional methods of faunal and artifactual analysis.

Artifacts from 24 chipping stations and a lithic scatter from the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada were analyzed by refitting conjoinable flakes to original cores. Artifacts represented debitage from the initial reduction of locally-available low-quality chalcedony nodules for the eventual production of flake tools. The refitting analysis allowed the debitage to be divided into four patterns that roughly correlate with variation in the quality of the raw material. All result from the same strategy of reduction aimed at producing as many usable flakes as possible from low-quality material. Such relatively unproductive sites are rarely studied in detail because they require intensive analysis, but were probably an important part of prehistoric resource systems.

Radiocarbon dated features at the newly investigated Dawson Creek site in southern Ontario, Canada, document recurrent Amerindian occupations between the ninth and fifth centuries B.C. Artifactual, botanical, and faunal remains from six hearths evidence consistent fall season visits by task groups using Vinette 1 ceramics. Indicated reliance on nut-collecting and deer-hunting is duplicated at small Early Woodland sites elsewhere in Ontario and the Great Lakes region. Early thick ceramic types are clearly associated with scheduled seasonal activities. Possible differentiation of artifact assemblages by site function and season underscores the need for more discriminating definition of Early Woodland culture in the Northeast.

In a recent article in American Antiquity, Muller (1984) challenged the claim that Mississippian salt production was a specialized activity. He made a useful distinction between special activity sites and specialized production in his study, but by limiting his investigation of Mississippian specialization to a single task at a special purpose site (the Great Salt Spring in Galatin County, Illinois), he fails to prove or disprove his hypothesis that no non-leadership specialists existed in Mississippian society. Muller's article also raises some issues about the relation of economic specialization to levels of social complexity in prehistoric cultures, and about measuring the degree of economic specialization in a society from archaeological remains. These issues are addressed in this comment.

Yerkes's comments fail to place my article in its context of other research on the lower Ohio Valley. He reacts more to what he thinks I believe than to what I actually wrote. Yerkes seems to want to identify Mississippian specialization on the basis of artifact traits rather than on the basis of actual organization of production. Moreover, he does not present any additional significant evidence to support the idea that true specialization was present in Mississippian society, in the American Bottom or elsewhere. The need to reject lower-level explanations of data before proposing higher-level explanations is not sufficiently appreciated. Finally, there is not sufficient appreciation of the degree of importance of the concept of specialization to the investigation of the social evolution of hierarchical systems.

In a recent article based on ethnoarchaeological research in Mesoamerica, Cannon has suggested that presence/absence statistics are generally preferable to percentage statistics. The case presented is weak, and seems only to reflect a specific instance rather than a general rule.

Comments are offered on the inappropriate use of Texas-derived projectile point typology at certain Mesoamerican sites. Moholy-Nagy et al. (1984) recently applied labels to point groups from the Maya site of Tikal that are misleading in terms of the original type descriptions. Similar misuse of the Texas typology in central Mexico and in the Tehuacan Valley is noted.