People use food and food-related behavior to express and reinforce a multitude of social relations. We examine subsistence remains and pottery recovered from several different social-status and functional contexts in the Moundville chiefdom. Differential distributions of plant and animal remains suggest that elite members of the society received food as tribute. The analyzed contexts also differ in the ratios of serving ware to cooking ware and in the relative frequencies of the functional types of serving vessels present. Greater emphasis was placed on the presentation of food in elite contexts, and the types of vessels used to serve or display food varied depending on whether the context was public or private. This patterning in food remains and pottery assemblages from different contexts is complex and cannot be explained by a single dimension of variability. Rather, to account for the patterns it is necessary to consider the evidence in terms of the ways people used food in different social settings.

Analysis of the animal bones recovered from the excavations of residential contexts at Chavín de Huántar reveals a mixed economy that included the herding and hunting of camelids (llama and vicuña) at Chavín de Huántar as early as the Urabarriu Phase (900–500 B.C.). It also suggests that a pattern of trade in dried llama meat (ch'arki) from high altitude environments (punas) to lower ones had developed by the Chakinani phase (500–400 B.C.), while the consumption of hunted animals (especially deer) sharply declined in importance. During the apogee of Chavín de Huántar (400–200 B.C.), socioeconomic stratification is reflected in differential access to tender meat from younger animals. The role of Chavín de Huántar in the spread of camelid pastoralism and the importance of highland vs. tropical rain forest animals in Chavín ideology is discussed as well.

Rio Grande Anasazi in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries A.D. mulched hundreds of garden-sized plots with pebbles to increase soil moisture, reduce erosion, extend the growing season, and increase crop yields. This paper reports on the construction and configuration of pebble-mulch gardens in New Mexico, focusing particularly on those in the Galisteo Basin. Surfaces adjacent to these gardens were scraped and pits were excavated to collect gravel, which was placed over garden surfaces in layers 5 to 11 cm thick. Gardens averaged 15 x 23 m in size, although both size and shape were highly variable, and they collectively covered an area of 41,000 m2 Although this unique agricultural strategy has been shown to be effective, construction was limited to sites with natural gravel deposits, pebbled surfaces inhibited the recycling of crop wastes, and such gardens never became as widely used as more traditional field forms.

Two geographic information system (GIS) techniques for displaying, analyzing, and interpreting geophysical data were recently applied at two archaeological sites in northern New Zealand; a pre-European Maori pa (fortification), and a late nineteenth-century European fortification. A GIS was used to stretch and filter the conductivity data from the pa to accentuate subtle contrasts and clearly delineate boundaries between areas with contrasting conductivity readings. Magnetic susceptibility data and two different bands of conductivity data from the historic fort were used as input for a GIS-based unsupervised classification. The classification delineated five spatial entities, several of which corresponded to known archaeological features. The interpretability of the geophysical data in relation to conventional visual analysis of conductivity contour maps was enhanced through the use of the GIS procedures outlined.

The traditional architectural styles of the Apalachee of northern Florida and Spanish colonists in the New World represent distinct approaches to the organization of domestic and community space and reflect different attitudes toward public and private activities. To the degree that the Apalachee became Hispanicized or that the Spaniards in Apalachee adopted aspects of aboriginal lifestyles during the seventeenth-century mission period, we might expect to see changes in architecture and community organization. Archaeological and ethnohistorical data from Apalachee Province indicate that the shapes and spatial arrangement of native and European domestic structures changed very little as a result of contact. This suggests that each group maintained a distinct identity in the realm of residential organization, despite the profound changes that both the Apalachee and Spaniards made in other aspects of their lives as a result of European colonization in La Florida.

This paper examines the application of mammalian taxonomic diversity measures in the analysis of human subsistence. Employing qualitative and quantitative taphonomic analyses on archaeofaunas recovered from a sheltered Fremont site in Utah, numerous small- and medium-sized animal bones (especially Leporidae) are identified as nonhuman accumulations. Measures of taxonomic diversity for the shelter’s entire assemblage suggest that the inhabitants practiced a generalized, broad-spectrum subsistence strategy. Omitting the nonhuman accumulations and calculating similar measures on bones interpreted as human refuse produce a different portrait of subsistence practices. Using this investigation as a case study, mammalian faunal assemblages from six additional Fremont assemblages are examined to further demonstrate that subsistence inferences based on diversity measures should be approached with caution. We demonstrate that measures of taxonomic diversity are valuable tools but should be used in concert with analyses of taphonomic agents. Furthermore, rather than employing only those bones identified to species, we emphasize that specimens identified to taxonomic genera may offer adequate resolution in examining prehistoric diet breadth.

In southern New England, typological distinctions between Niantic, Hackney Pond, and Shantok ceramics have been used to describe changing settlement patterns for the Late Woodland (500- 350 Years B.P.) and contact (post-A.D. 1600) periods. Based on the initial typologies developed by Rouse (1947) the Shantok ceramic tradition was also considered an ethnic marker of the Mohegan and Pequot tribes based on material recovered from Fort Shantok. Reexamination of stylistic data have suggested that levels of stylistic similarity between late ceramic types actually limit their use as ethnic markers in reconstructing contact period settlement patterns (Lizee 1994; McBride 1990). In this study, neutron activation analysis is employed to determine if compositional profiles correspond with identified stylistic types. The distribution of compositional groups within the region proves to be useful in describing changes in settlement during the Late Woodland and contact periods for southeastern Connecticut. Results of this study suggest that cultural factors underlying the evolution of the historic Pequot and Mohegan tribes, and locations of focal village sites, also had an impact on access to clay resource zones at the time of European contact.

Obsidian studies in the greater American Southwest have come of age. No longer does the region lag behind other adjoining regions both in the understanding of source provenance and the integración of obsidian source studies into regional designs. Most of the archaeological obsidian sources discussed here were originally presented in semi-quantitative form in this journal in 1988 (Shackley 1988a). The purpose here is to present that same data in broadly useable quantitative form calibrated to international standards, update the source descriptions when appropriate, and, finally, present data on a few new sources recently located. This is a necessary step to continue the momentum of obsidian studies in the region and make the information available to all. Finally, some discussion is directed toward the archaeological utility of obsidian studies in the region.