This article briefly reviews methodological issues relevant to subsurface testing and advances a general method for objectively assessing the reliability of an archaeological survey program based on subsurface survey methods such as the excavation of shovel tests or the use of auger holes. The proposed technique employs simulation to model subsurface testing strategies using simple principles of probability and assumptions that are explicit and realistic. An arbitrary layout of test units can be evaluated to yield an estimate of the proportions of sites of different sizes and artifact densities that will be found (or missed) by the testing program.

Assemblage diversity is an important part of the structure of the archaeological record, but measuring this parameter often is difficult if samples of assemblages differ in size. Two methods, here called the sampling approach and regression approach, currently are used to assess the sample-size effect. The approaches differ in method and in results. The sampling approach is better suited to analysis of assemblage diversity among samples when the underlying population structure is well known, while the regression approach is more useful for examination of the sample-size effect when the underlying population structure is known poorly.

Three different sorts of bifacial tools-by-products of the shaping process, cores, and long use-life tools-are used to consider the role mobility plays in producing variability in hunter-gatherer lithic technologies. The relations among tool roles, raw-material distribution, and mobility as well as the archaeological consequences of the different roles are key factors. An examination of temporal trends in the use of bifacial implements in the Carson Sink of western Nevada shows how the proposed perspective on lithic technology can help to elucidate change in mobility strategies. A shift from the use of bifaces as cores to an infrequent use of bifaces as tools suggests a shift from logistical to short-term residential use of the raw-material-poor Carson Sink; a later shift to the use of small, frequently unifacial, nonresharpenable points may indicate a shift to target-specific hunting strategies.

In recent investigations of plantation society, Otto and Moore use a model that incorporates status and caste. I argue that these concepts are too vague for plantation studies and must be replaced with a more relevant formulation that includes economics and power. A reconsideration of the data presented by Moore indicates that these last concepts have greater strength in the archaeological analysis of plantation society.

Comprehensive geochemical studies of archaeological obsidian sources in the Southwest typically have lagged behind other regions of North American and Mesoamerica. Current archaeological and petrological research indicates four previously unreported sources in Arizona, Sonora, and western New Mexico. This initial semiquantitative X-ray fluorescence (XRF) examination of archaeological silicic-glass sources in this region focuses on current technical problems in southwestern obsidian studies. The chemical variability within some regional obsidian sources appears to be relatively extensive and new data from the San Francisco volcanic field in northern Arizona modifies the results of earlier researchers.

In spite of considerable fluctuations in the likelihood of agricultural success from place to place and from time to time, the southern Colorado Plateaus show a smooth increase in farming populations between A.D. 1 and 1150. At the local level, however, population curves in this region often register a pattern of short-lived occupations and abandonments that are tied to specific patterns of short-term and long-term climatic conditions. The prehistoric population record from the Dolores area, in the southwestern corner of Colorado, demonstrates how localized population adjustments to climatically sensitive environments can result in long-term population increases. Here, a 600-year history of population increase was maintained primarily through population movements between environmentally complementary places. When that strategy failed, due to a combination of adverse short-term and long-term climatic conditions, agricultural methods shifted from rainfall farming to intensified agriculture supported by water-control facilities.

New data are presented on prehispanic ground drawings discovered and mapped during the 1979-1980 settlement-pattern research in the Santa Valley region, north coast of Peru. Among the drawings, which appear to date to the Early Suchimancillo/Gallinazo time period (ca. B.C./A.D. to A.D. 200), are a number of naturalistic figures-including humans, sierra-related llamas and condors, and a jungle-related (possible) cayman. These figures, and other lines of evidence such as rock-walled corral enclosures, suggest the existence of a strong ideological focus on sierra-related animals that probably reinforced intensive coast-sierra socioeconomic relations involving the use of llama pack trains.

One of the most exotic Maya glyphs consists of a seated figure having a head that appears to be a penis. This paper argues that the head is indeed a penis and provides an interpretation and a linguistic decipherment for the glyph. The glyph can be read as xib'ah "underworld lord" (Cholan) or xib'alb'a "underworld, underworld lord" (Yucatec). It is an epithet for a major Maya deity who was both god of Venus and Lord of the Underworld. In one case, it is used as a place name for the underworld. The paper also presents a rationale for the unusual graphic form of the glyph based on ethnohistoric documentation.

Analysis of unpublished house floor and fill data has revealed new information concerning the production and distribution of shell artifacts at the Hohokam site of Snaketown. In addition to presenting data on the frequency and distribution of shell in structures, the analysis identifies manufacturing loci and evaluates previous statements concerning craft production at the site. Implications for the organization of production and exchange during the Sacaton phase also are considered. It is concluded that local kin groups could have procured, produced, and distributed shell products. This reconstruction is provided as an alternative to views which hold that a higher-level administrative agency was in control of the production and distribution of marine shell.

A falling-weight device was developed for testing ceramic impact strength. Tests carried out on a large sample of commercial tiles showed that the incremental height test, wherein drop height is raised gradually, is the most reliable. In order to assess the accuracy of the test, an additional experiment was performed on laboratory-made briquettes fired at 550, 650, 750, 850, and 950 °C. In contrast to the results of Bronitsky and Hamer's (1986) pendulum test (but in conformity with general principles of ceramic engineering), the present study found a strong correlation between firing temperature and impact strength. It is concluded that the falling-weight device provides a simple, accurate, and reliable test for ceramic impact strength.

The Public Relations Committee of the Society for American Archaeology, in seeking ways to promote the Society and increase public awareness of archaeology, commissioned this "do-it-yourself" guide to the print media, principally newspapers. For demonstrative purposes, the short-paragraph format used conforms stylistically to that used in journalism.