Radiocarbon dates from marine mammal tissue present Arctic archaeologists with some difficult interpretive problems. These problems are so serious that McGhee and Tuck have even advocated omitting all sea mammal dates from the Eastern Arctic radiocarbon chronology. A flexible approach to interpreting sea mammal dates will allow researchers to use existing dates more effectively and to make future dates more reliable. Solving the problems with sea mammal dates requires: (1) abandoning the assumption that radiocarbon assays are quasi-absolute chronological indicators; (2) recognizing and understanding the sources of variability that affect these dates; (3) correcting for these sources of variability; and (4) developing a more flexible strategy for interpreting the resulting date sequence. A large table of radiocarbon dates from the Eastern Arctic provides the basis for demonstrating how these four steps can be accomplished. Applying this flexible approach also suggests directions and guidelines for future research.

Multivariate statistical techniques such as factor analysis are capable of producing patterned results with most, if not all, data matrices. This paper demonstrates that patterned results are obtainable when principal component analysis is applied to a random data set. It is suggested that Bartlett's test for the statistical significance of a correlation matrix be employed in deciding whether a factor analysis of the matrix is justified.

Linear nearest neighbor analysis is reconsidered and revised. This statistical method facilitates decisions about whether points along a line are clustered, random, or dispersed. One of its possible archaeological applications is illustrated using a set of probable housemounds along the Cabeza de la Vaca Arroyo in Veracruz, Mexico. The mounds are in a dispersed pattern. Ecological and subsistence factors offer one promising explanation for the pattern.

An objective methodology, based upon the rank-ordering and spatial patterning of Maya centers of the central Peten and central Yucatan zones, is used to infer developmental sequencing in the Maya Lowlands. If courtyard counts are employed as the basic measure of center importance, the Tikal and Calakmul regions each exhibit a size continuum of centers, consistent with the rank-size rule. The Rio Bec and Chenes regions exhibit a size distribution characterized by the existence of several large centers of nearly the same size, i.e., a situation of pluralism. These findings suggest that at the end of the Classic period, Tikal and Calakmul were dominant centers in economically mature regions, with a balance between external and internal growth forces. On the other hand, the later Rio Bec and Chenes centers appear to be in a state of growth redistribution or decline, their external ties truncated by the collapse to the south. Spatial patterning is less conclusive and suggests a relatively dispersed pattern of centers in all regions. The overall conclusion, especially from the frequency distributions of centers by size, is that the "periphery" (exemplified by Rio Bec-Chenes) developed first, reached a period of stasis, and developed further only on the collapse of the "core" centers (Tikal-Calakmul).

Recent studies of sixteenth century Quiche-Maya society have resulted in a sociocultural reconstruction based on the integration of archaeological and ethnohistorical data sets. Certain aspects of the internal social system of two contemporaneous settlement centers are examined in the context of this model and correspondences are noted. Contradictions between data sets suggest the applicability of an explicitly dialectical perspective.

The 13C/12C ratio in human collagen was determined for 19 individuals from Hopewell sites in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio and compared with 27 new measurements from individuals of Archaic, Mississippian, and Late Woodland affiliation. Additional measurements were made of elements in the food chain and on experimental animals fed on a diet of known composition containing maize. The similarity of the Hopewell measurements to those of nonmaize diets indicates that corn was of little importance in the Hopewell diet for those populations tested.

A newly discovered paleo-Indian site in the mountainous interior of northwestern Maine yields tools identical to those reported for the Debert site in central Nova Scotia.

Infant and child skeletal remains from the site of Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico, were examined for particular skeletal pathologies. The observed frequencies of those pathologies do not support a hypothesis of a temporal shift in subsistence patterns. A hypothesized change in settlement pattern is supported by the increase of a particular class of skeletal lesions.

Historical and archaeological evidence indicates that unoccupied buffer zones were a pervasive feature of the aboriginal cultural ecology of Amazonian floodplains. Buffer zones in Ucayali culture history are examined in detail, and the more general implications that such zones have for interpretations of Amazonian prehistory and ecology are discussed.

The application of extremely complex multivariate models of classification to subjective inspectional methods of categorization is analyzed in detail, with the widely used Texas system of dart point typology as a case study. The history of the development of the Texas dart point typological system is sketched. An attempt by Gunn and Prewitt (1975) to objectify the classificatory system by multivariate methods is criticized. The techniques applied were too idiosyncratic to the particular data set used to be of predictive value. Discriminant function and multivariate classification analysis are discussed in detail, emphasizing simple geometrical examples by which the major principles may be grasped. Suggestions for improvement are offered for those who wish to follow Gunn and Prewitt in constructing automatic classification schemes.

Interpretations of prehistoric social organization based on multivariate statistical analyses of burial practices are becoming increasingly common in the North American archaeological literature. Unfortunately, these analyses and interpretations can incorporate weaknesses ranging from faulty data coding and the mis-application of statistical procedures to biases in the statistical and logical procedures employed. These problems are discussed in light of recent analyses (Tainter 1975a, 1975b, 1977a, 1977b, 1978) which use burial data from six Woodland sites in the riverine midwestern United States to develop a model of social change for the period A.D. 200-800. The results of these particular analyses are shown to be, at best, highly ambiguous and, at worst, contradictory to the proposed interpretations. This paper summarizes the weaknesses in these analyses, both to show the absence of support for the particular proposed interpretations and to illustrate how inappropriate methods can negate potentially useful mortuary research.

Webster's (1979) thesis that the Huron were prepared to hunt deer at a considerable energetic loss is vitiated by a serious factual error.