Unsettling conditions surrounding the contemporary practice of archaeology have generated an urgent need for clear ethical guidelines. The Principles of Archaeological Ethics were developed to help meet this need and provided in draft form to the Society for American Archaeology membership for review as part of a Special Report (Lynott and Wylie 1995b). Since that initial publication, two additional principles have been developed, and the original six principles have been revised and published in this journal (61:451-452). The changes were made in response to comments provided by the membership and the Executive Board. The principles are intended to serve as ethical ideals rather than a code of professional conduct.

Archaeologists and Native Americans apply different concepts to classify ancient groups of people who lived in the past. This is a topic of current interest because many archaeologists in the United States are now having to determine the cultural affiliation of the materials they study to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The Hopi and Zuni tribes in the American Southwest are used as case examples to examine how and why archaeological and tribal views of cultural affiliation are divergent. We suggest anthropological perspectives of culture need to be reintegrated into archaeological theory in collaboration with Native Americans in order to interpret the past in a manner that is both useful and interesting to the multiple audiences interested in our work.

The organizational structure of the famous Chaco Phenomenon has long been debated by southwestern archaeologists. To better clarify the nature and dynamics of Chacoan organization we need to rethink the relationship between social power and the appropriation of surplus labor in middle-range societies. Drawing on the tradition of anthropological political economy, I outline a theoretical approach that allows for the relative autonomy of power and labor relations in human social life and models Chacoan political economy using a “thin definition” of communalism. Empirical patterns from the Chaco and post-Chaco eras in the northern Southwest are presented in support of a model of Chaco communalism and change dynamics. Suggestions for furthering a political economy of the Chaco Phenomenon that respects the difference or “otherness” of the past are also detailed.

Robert Adams celebrated his 70th birthday on July 23, 1996. Forty years ago American Antiquity published his first journal article, which helped launch a remarkable career. Adams has influenced not only fundamental aspects of social evolutionary theory and archaeological reconnaissance surveys but also the structure of support for science in the United States and abroad. At the 1996 meetings of the Society for American Archaeology, Adams was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. This essay traces the intellectual influences on Adams, the progress of his fieldwork, and the exposition and development of his ideas in his monographs and major essays. The significance of his work is assessed, and a bibliography of his principal archaeological writings is included.

Human social systems are constituted at different scales; the local community, while an important organizational unit cross-culturally, has received limited archaeological study. We argue that community-centric studies in archaeology have significant potential in documenting the diversity of small-scale agricultural systems and in promoting comparative study of local societies. Using comparative data from social anthropology, we put forth a definition of community useful for the archaeologist based on three irreducible elements: social reproduction, agricultural production, and self-identification. These elements provide an ideal framework for cross-cultural comparison. We also argue that using a community approach requires certain methodological refinements, such as adopting an appropriate research scale, conducting intensive surface survey, and using analytical strategies such as labor investment and boundary maintenance. We present recently collected data from two prehistoric agricultural communities, Waiohuli in Hawai'i and Tsikwaiye in northern New Mexico, in order to illustrate the strength of this mode of research.

Cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis traditionally have been viewed (at least by archaeologists) as indicators of chronic iron deficiency anemia resulting from a dependency upon maize. Recent interpretations, however, have sought to explain these conditions as an evolutionary, adaptive response to intestinal parasites rather than as a consequence of poor nutrition. Thus diet is eliminated as a contributing factor. This model, however, adopts too simplistic a view of evolution. Furthermore, it concomitantly severs the well-documented link that exists between cranial lesions and cereal-based subsistence. A more realistic approach would be to incorporate both diet and pathogens (bacterial as well as parasitic) into a symbiotic model that acknowledges the important role of parasites in the etiology of cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis, while maintaining the diagnostic value of these conditions as hallmarks of early agriculture.

The interplay of gender and spatial organization of labor receives little attention in archaeological discussions of huntergatherer society. To help remedy this situation, our ethnoarchaeological research among subarctic Dene (Chipewyan) communities employs a gender-resource mapping approach, including the spatial dimension of hunting for a complex of major subsistence resources. Analysis reveals both profound differences and interconnections between female and male hunters as they procure and process materials and move across the landscape in the sociological context of three team types. The data offer a means of modeling gender dynamics in archaeological contexts as well as rectifying the often invisible role of women in archaeological interpretations of hunting in high-latitude societies. An analysis of historical shifts between “bush-centered” and “village-centered” hunts demonstrates how both women's and men's behavior can be incorporated in site formation processes and general subsistence settlement models, such as Binford's forager/logistical collector framework.

We furnish a theoretical framework for explaining that portion of formal variability in artifacts attributable to the behavior of the artisan. Major causal factors are the artisan's knowledge and experience, extent of feedback on performance in activities along the artifact's behavioral chain, situational factors in behavioral chain activities, technological constraints, and social processes of conflict and negotiation. In identifying the causal factors at work in a specific case, the investigator must focus analytically on activities-that is, on people-people, people-artifact, and artifact-artifact interactions-and on the performance characteristics relevant to each. Application of this behavioral framework allows abandonment of many cherished but unhelpful concepts, including style and function. Ceramic artifacts, the low-fired, clay cooking pot in particular, are employed for illustrative purposes.

Architectural patterning in the American Southwest has long been recognized as a solid manifestation of social patterns of Pueblo groups. The organization of pueblos around plazas and kivas emphasizes the importance of male-dominated ritual. The female role in ritual, while limited, centers around the production of food, an aspect that women not only participate in, but also perhaps control. What evidence exists for the antiquity of gender-specific ritual power? Subterranean mealing rooms, which appear in the Anasazi area at the time of the pithouse to pueblo transition, may indicate that these roles are quite ancient and were a part of the shift from informal household to more formal community ritual at such sites. They also may represent increased social stress and a corresponding attempt to alleviate such stress. The disappearance of these features from sites after a relatively short time may indicate the continued development of a religious system in which male-oriented aspects became increasingly dominant and female aspects became peripheral.

Quantifying discard to accurately estimate the duration of site occupation is critical middle-range research necessary for understanding assemblage diversity, the nature of settlement systems and mobility strategies, and population size, and for testing any anthropological theory that depends on the accurate measurement of these variables. We address this middle-range research by employing a computer simulation to explore assumptions inherent in the discard equation and to determine the accuracy with which cooking pot refuse measures the length of site occupation. The accumulation of discarded cooking pot sherds is simulated using a strong archaeological case: the Duckfoot site, a Pueblo I residential site located in the Mesa Verde region of southwestern Colorado. We argue that estimating the length of site occupation using data from a strong archaeological case is superior to using the discard equation and ethnographic data, but that the discard equation and ethnographic data-used judiciously-can provide reasonable estimates if a strong archaeological case is not available. Results indicate that the most variable and least accurate results are generated by short-term occupations of sites by small numbers of households. We further conclude that quantifying the accumulation of discarded cooking pot sherds has considerable promise as a means of estimating the length of site occupation.

No matter how “pristine” an archaeological assemblage may appear, archaeologists should always be concerned with documenting the degree and nature of possible postdepositional disturbances. This paper outlines a number of tests that can be applied to archaeological, vs. geological, data to assess these effects, and their use is illustrated in an excavation of a Lower Paleolithic site in France. Although this site was originally thought to contain a possible “living floor” reflecting relatively little postdepositional disturbance, the tests applied here clearly show that both the lithic and faunal components in large part reflect secondary deposits and most probably are only coincidentally associated. From a methodological perspective, this study clearly demonstrates the power of these tests for assessing the taphonomic history of any site containing lithic and faunal remains, and the use of this particular example illustrates the need for these kinds of tests to be applied at the time of excavation.

The Plateau culture area of northwestern North America fits the criteria of an interaction sphere. Understanding the general cultural dynamics responsible for the creation of interaction spheres has been poorly developed in archaeological and ethnological theory. Data from the Plateau Interaction Sphere are used to argue that the main factor responsible for the emergence of interaction spheres in transegalitarian societies is the development of an elite class. Elites who seek to maximize their power and wealth at the tribal level do so in part by establishing trading, marriage, ideological, military, and other ties to elites in other communities and regions. They use these ties to monopolize access to desirable regional prestige goods and to enhance their own socioeconomic positions. In conformity with expectations derived from this model, the data from the Plateau demonstrate that interaction sphere goods are predominantly prestige items and that these concentrate in communities that have the greatest potential to produce surplus and to develop socioeconomic inequalities. These same features also seem to characterize well-known interaction spheres elsewhere in the world.

The technological analysis of a collection of cores, flakes, unifaces, and bifaces from a Chickasaw site in northeast Mississippi makes it clear that the lithic industry was substantially reorganized to meet the functional demands of the early eighteenth-century colonial economy. The focus of this industry was a distinctive, well-made end scraper. Similar tools occur throughout the Midwest during late prehistoric times and extend into the middle Mississippi River valley during the protohistoric. Although the Midwest scrapers are likely a response to the spread of bison into that region, a study of the distribution of the Chickasaw tool kit in time and space suggests that it was used to process deer skins, the primary focus of the trade with the French and English in the Southeast. However, stone scrapers are not found on all early eighteenth-century Chickasaw sites. The historical documents suggest that some villages were more successful in their trade relations with the Europeans and were therefore able to replace stone tools with metal at an earlier date. An examination of the occurrence of stone tools throughout the Southeast during the early historic period indicates that relative distance to ports of trade was the primary determinant of the rate at which stone-tool technology was abandoned.

Many of the chipped-stone bifaces so common in the archaeological record functioned as the hafted points of darts or arrows. For archaeologists, these artifacts possess two salient properties: (1) they formed only part of a larger apparatus; but, (2) because perishables decompose, they ordinarily are the only part preserved. Consequently, the identity of that apparatus-i.e., whether dart or arrow-is not readily apparent. For various reasons, we may wish to know if stone bifaces functioned as dart or arrow points. Often we rely on reasonable assumptions, but Thomas's (1978) discriminant analysis is a more reliable way to distinguish the possibilities. This study extends Thomas's approach by increasing the dart sample and the rate of successful classification. Shoulder width is the most important discriminating variable. An independent test on a set of arrows also strengthens confidence in the results.

San Juan Red ware pottery was distributed across the northern Southwest from the eighth through tenth centuries A.D., though made only in the northern San Juan region. This paper investigates the concentration (Costin 1991) of San Juan Red ware production through neutron activation analysis of the pottery and raw materials. Production was concentrated in the area of southeast Utah, and within that area it appears to have been produced at only a limited number of sources, possibly by specialized pottery-making communities. These results have implications regarding economic organization, exchange, and mobility.