The role of the New Archaeology of the 1960s is recognized as decisive in the history of archaeology: an awakening from the “long sleep of archaeological theory” from about 1880 to 1960. But at the same time, limitations in the New Archaeology are responsible for corresponding defects in the present scene. The first of these is the lack of clear policy for the handling and especially the publication of data. It is argued that the outstanding defect of Cultural Resource Management, especially in the United States, is the failure to promote a clear policy that all survey work and all excavations should be adequately published. Accompanying this is the inadequate provision for the effective retrieval, at a national level, of the information which does emerge from CRM projects. The responsibility for this lies at the door of the academic archaeologists.

The second defect is the failure to recognize that the New Archaeology primarily offered new and interesting problems, not ready solutions. The widespread misconception that processual archaeology has become “normal science” is partly responsible for the lack of steam in the current theoretical scene in the United States. Some alternative approaches are indicated, and it is suggested that cognitive archaeology may, in the 1980s and 1990s, take its place alongside the social archaeology of the past two decades as a significant growth area.

Large-scale excavation data are used to reconstruct some of the organizational features of a small village of the Early Formative period (ca. 1500–850 B.C.) in the southern Mexican highlands. Data from the community's residential and cemetery zones are analyzed in consideration of (1) the nature and number of village components; and (2) methods used to integrate these components. It is argued that the community was organized around some form of lineal descent group, which held corporate title to essential resources. Low-level redistribution of foodstuffs and the display of supralocal symbols are also suggested to have been aspects of community organization. The data and interpretations of this investigation are compared to the results of Early Formative studies in other areas of highland Mesoamerica.

A living Hopi village is used to develop architectural analogues to room use and social organization in the Pueblo Southwest. These models are then tested against prehistoric sites. For interpretation of room use, factors such as room size, room location, and number and location of doors are shown to be significant. Room size criteria are found to segregate room use in prehistoric sites dating at least as early as A.D. 860. The boundaries of households and lineages are determined by room use and presence or absence of doors between rooms. This model is limited to large, multiple-story pueblos and was tested on Hawikuh, a seventeenth-century Zuni town. The advantages and limitations of using architectural data for such behavioral models are discussed.

Over the last three decades archaeologists of Africa have developed distinctive perspectives in their use of oral traditions in historical archaeology and ethnoarchaeology. Many of these innovations reflect the cultural attitudes of Africans about their own history and have lead to an archaeology that is increasingly sensitive to questions of an African historical identity free from the Western structure of thought. The African archaeological tradition accepts, with materialist interpretations and explanations, the importance of symbolic subsystems in a synthetic and systemic approach. Consequently, the application of structural and symbolic analysis to interrelated archaeological and ethnographic information is an integral part of an anthropological approach to the later prehistory and history of Africa.

In the lowlands of Central Veracruz, as in various locations across the base of the Yucatan peninsula, Prehispanic agriculturalists sought out wetlands with a limited fluctuation in water level for adaptation to intensive cultivation. Vestiges of canals and raised fields show through the dry season pastures of many ranches. The rectilinear remains of the earlier incursion show considerable accordance, from wetland to wetland, in their astronomical orientation: about 15 degrees clockwise of our own cardinal directions. It may be hypothesized that this orientation was imposed from Teotihuacan and that the majority of the raised field vestiges seen in the wetlands of Central Veracruz date back at least to a time between A.D. 100 and 600.

During observational fieldwork in undisturbed ranges of free-roaming bison and moose, I have identified approximately 8% of surface bones as spirally or green-fractured due to documented carnivore activity, and 5% as spirally or green-fractured due to trampling or dust wallowing by bison. The bones of smaller species suffer up to 50% breakage. Bone modifications by wild wolves and bears are briefly described, as are characteristics of fractures caused by trampling and wallowing.

The Maya text on an all-glyphic stone column now in the Museo del Camino Real in Hecelchakan, Campeche, Mexico, is deciphered. The inscription consists of an unusual truncated Initial Series with an associated Tun-Ahua statement. Arguments are given to justify assigning a Xcalumkin provenance to the monument. The Initial Series is only the third such record known from this site. Other epigraphic highlights include a rare head variant formation of the numeral for 16 by tandem heads for 6 and 10 and a new version of the head variant for 2. A summary of the chronological information available from the site of Xcalumkin is included.

Of the four late Pleistocene and early post-Pleistocene lithic complexes defined by Edward P. Lanning, only one, the Las Vegas complex, is supported by existing evidence from the Santa Elena Peninsula of southwest Ecuador. The Achallan culture, previously defined by Stothert and assigned to the post-Las Vegas period, is now unsupported by satisfactory evidence.

A recent statement by the five authors purports to demonstrate that the fruit we previously identified as ramón was really achiote. This response points out several weaknesses in the five authors' ethnohistorical methodology that makes their identification far less secure. The original aim of our paper is restated to turn discussion away from the minor point of ramón versus achiote.

A critique of the methods of locational analysis used by Carmack and Weeks (1981) at the Maya site of Chisalin, Guatemala is presented. The applicability of the “nearest neighbor” statistic to this densely occupied hilltop site is questioned, as is its use to discriminate architectural groups.

Lewis R. Binford has recently disputed the inference, advanced in Behavioral Archeology, that the inhabitants of the Joint Site hunted more often during the last years of the site's occupation. As an alternative he suggests that the site was used after abandonment as a hunting camp. These conclusions, which stem from a misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the analytic units employed in the Joint Site study, are shown to be without substantial foundation.

Further consideration of the Pecos data reveals two important limitations to paleodemographic reconstruction. First, a significant bias in the age profile of the ceramically dated portion of the skeletal sample raises doubts about the suitability of these data for diachronic studies. Second, Ruff has shown that the original adult ages given for Pecos were systematically overestimated. This biases the age profile and variously affects life table values.

While acknowledging the possible former role of floodwater in Chilca's sunken fields, this paper expresses concern about the limited and inconclusive evidence that Knapp presents in support of floodwater management. Too much reliance is placed upon inferences from integrated field layout while we still appear to lack either unequivocal and consistent stratigraphic evidence or firsthand experience of river flooding at Chilca. It is also doubtful whether one can legitimately assess the archaeological or hydraulic status of these fields without considering (1) the wider context of local irrigated farming, (2) the perennial source of underground water, and (3) the near certainty that fishing rather than agriculture was the subsistence base in such localities without perennial streams.

The distinction between embanked and sunken fields is not merely semantic. There is good evidence for frequent flooding at Chilca. Archaeostratigraphy provides neither privileged nor unambiguous evidence for original field function. The full range of environmental, archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic evidence is more consistent with the embanked-field theory than with Smith’s alternative.

In a recent article Thomas W. Stafford, Jr., outlined results of geological investigations (1974–1978) at the Lubbock Lake site (41LU1). Geological, pedological, and archaeological investigations conducted by the authors since 1972 govern these clarification comments offered. Numerical or stratigraphic corrections are included for several radiocarbon ages presented by Stafford. Five stratigraphic units at Lubbock Lake span the past 11,000 + years, grading from alluvial to lacustrine to marsh and finally eolian sediments. Assessing the archaeological potential of the Southern High Plains on the basis of Lubbock Lake is inadvisable due to limited and possibly biased data.

Geologic conclusions on Llano Estacado Late Quaternary stratigraphy are further quantified to strengthen previously published interpretations.

The suggestion of Brecher and Haag that the Poverty Point, Louisiana, earthwork structure possesses solar alignments is shown to be incorrect. The existence of other astronomical markers is problematical.