Southwestern archaeologists have debated the nature of late Prehispanic western pueblo social organization for nearly a century. Were the fourteenth-century pueblos egalitarian or hierarchical? This issue remains unsettled largely because of the oppositional thinking that has informed most contributions to the debate: that is, the tendency to frame questions about Prehispanic sociopolitical organization in dichotomous “either-or” terms. We critique this approach to the problem and examine one of the most prominent controversies about Prehispanic social organization: the Grasshopper Pueblo-Chavez Pass controversy. We propose an alternative approach rooted in a dialectical epistemology, and a theory of social life that emphasizes the lived experience of people. What impresses us most about late Prehispanic western social organization is not that it was egalitarian or hierarchical, but that it was both. We discuss how this basic contradiction between communal life and hierarchy was a major internal motor driving change in these pueblos.

Two recent developments in southwestern archaeology are brought together in this paper. First, theoreticians have begun to argue that the archaeological record should be viewed as the product of selection-driven evolution. Second, tree-ring research has produced a highly detailed history of climate for a large area of the northern Southwest. We view the record of climatic oscillations and extreme events as a record of the strength of selection favoring stabilization of specialized agricultural strategies in the arid northern Southwest. Published data from Black Mesa provide a cultural record of sufficient precision to permit comparison with the climatic record, while new data from Vermillion Cliffs, southern Utah, document one local end-product of an evolutionary sequence shaped to an important degree by the long-term variability of climate. Anasazi occupation of many regions failed to persist through the “Great Drought” of the 1270s. From a local perspective, this extreme climatic event caused adaptations shaped by selection prior to the 1270s to fail; from a broader temporal-spatial perspective, however, the drought must be seen as part of the selective regime that shaped subsequent human adaptation to the northern Southwest.

The mortar and pestle, technologically linked to intensive acorn economies, appeared initially in low frequencies over a large portion of California ca. 4000-3500 B.C. Three sites on the Big Sur coast of central California illuminate the circumstances surrounding the advent of this new technology, which initially supplemented hand stones and milling slabs. Excavation results suggest that ca. 3500 B.C. production of hunting-related flaked-stone tools increased relative to ground stone, and hunted resources became more important, as part of a transition from a highly mobile, selective use of the coastal resources, heavily focused on gathering, to a less mobile, more intensified lifeway. Obsidian hydration profiles indicate that interregional exchange increased at the same time. Evaluation of alternative mussel collection techniques further indicates that shellfish-harvesting strategies became less efficient at this juncture, promoting the emergence of a processing specialization, concomitant with increased hunting intensity. These transitions apparently mark the appearance of lineal descent organization and the system of gender-specific task appropriation observed at European contact.

The inventory and analysis of 4,294 pieces of wood remaining in Pueblo Bonito are described. This site, long a keystone for interpreting the Chacoan Phenomenon in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico, reveals a fascinating history in the procurement, use, and reuse of wood through time. The long use of the site portrays a complex picture of wood procurement for construction from the A.D. 800s through the early A.D. 1100s, and its reuse in both prehistoric and historic times. Major construction periods are tree-ring dated to the mid-A.D. 800s, between A.D. 1047 and 1049, and between A.D. 1077 and 1082. Many of the construction events appear causally related to decade-long wet periods, when food surplus could accumulate. The use of wood at Pueblo Bonito mirrors a larger system of cultural behavior important for our interpretation of the development and demise of the Chacoan system.

Fresnal Shelter is one of few known preceramic sites in southern New Mexico with evidence of early agriculture. Recent tandem accelerating mass spectrometer (TAMS) radiocarbon determinations on corn and bean samples indicate that cultigens were used at this site as early as 2945 ± 55 B.P. In addition to providing more evidence of Late Archaic agriculture in the desert regions of the American Southwest, these new data and other previously unpublished radiocarbon dates from the site also illustrate the problem of relying on wood charcoal dates in association with cultigens to determine the age of early agriculture.

Production organization of Tusayan White and Gray wares (A.D. 850–1150) in northeastern Arizona was inferred from four independent lines of evidence: (1) association between temper class and geological zone, (2) distribution of intermediate pottery having characteristics of coterminous wares, (3) portable vessel frequencies in the core and peripheral areas, and (4) distribution of items and features related to pottery making. In spite of the propositions made by some scholars that specialized ceramic production and a large-scale ceramic exchange were the case, the present analysis strongly indicates the prevalence of household production with a minimal occurrence of exchange in the core area of these wares during the period. In the right circumstances, a low-technology approach is more useful than high-technology and high-cost approaches, e.g., neutron activation, X-ray emission, thin-section analysis, in the study of production and exchange of prehistoric ceramics.

The ability to identify distinct types of cherts and chalcedonies at the large prehistoric housepit site of Keatley Creek on the British Columbia plateau has made it possible to infer important aspects of socioeconomic organization from ca. 2400 to 1100 B.P. Each large housepit tested at the site appears to have a distinctive and characteristic composition of chert and chalcedony debitage which remains coherent over time (for at least 1,000 years). Three inferences concerning socioeconomic organization are derived from these observations: (1) residents of each large housepit probably foraged in distinctly different ranges during nonwinter months where they procured their raw stone materials; (2) residents of each large pithouse formed “residential corporate groups” that differed in their access to stone resources; and (3) the “residential corporate groups” that occupied large pithouses retained economic rights, corporate identity, and ownership of specific pithouse premises for unusually long time periods spanning more than a millennium. Differences between lithic assemblages of housepits were confirmed by three separate and independent analyses employing successively more sophisticated techniques.

In the excavation of Pendejo Cave (FB 9366) near Orogrande, New Mexico, 16 friction skin imprints were found in five stratified zones on clay nodules, baked at over 120°C. After careful analysis, expert dermatoglyphologists determined that these imprints had positive primate characteristics. The imprints are probably of human origin, since no other primates are known to have existed in prehistoric New Mexico. Eight of the imprints occurred in three well-dated zones falling in the late Pleistocene. These zones have direct radiocarbon dates between 12,000 and 37,000 B.P. In addition to their association with radiocarbon determinations, the prints come from three of 24 stratified zones, intensively studied by geologists and pedologists, that are dated in sequence by 34 other radiocarbon determinations acquired from four different laboratories. The imprints are associated with a column of over 35,000 paleontological specimens and more than 15,000 botanical remains. These specimens indicate Pleistocene changes and supply evidence of human transportation and modification of various materials. The prints are also associated with artifacts, ecofacts, features of human construction, and human remains. The imprint specimens therefore provide evidence of Pleistocene human occupation in the New World.

Based on the analysis of assemblages from the French sites of Pech de l'Azé I, La Quina, and Combe-Capelle has, a model of stone-tool resharpening is proposed for Middle Paleolithic notched tools. This model is based on the observation that tools with a larger number of notches have greater mean blank lengths irrespective of their typological designation. This pattern is then used to help investigate the relationship between raw material availability and tool reuse. Our results indicate that the number of notches found on a tool is a function of both the size of the tool blank and the availability of raw material.

We criticize the acid-extraction approach to chemical characterization of ceramics previously advocated in this journal by Burton and Simon (1993). The instrumental technique used by Burton and Simon (inductively coupled plasma emission spectroscopy [ICP]) is a highly precise chemical characterization technique, but noise introduced by characterizing acid extracts from sherds nullifies the usefulness of the resulting elemental concentration data for archaeological sourcing.

There are some fundamental errors in the arguments of our critics: equating acid extraction with bulk techniques; confusing extractability, the signal of interpretive interest, with analytical error; and, most importantly, presuming that the influences of behavioral choices of prehistoric potters are unwanted “noise” in the data. In confirmation of our original statements, Neff et al., demonstrate that neutron activation analysis (NAA) and acid extraction are independent methods, that the data are not commensurate, and that acid extraction is sensitive to technological choices of prehistoric potters. We agree emphatically. Because ceramic vessels are not idealized geologic materials mined from quarries, but complex technological products, richly embedded with behavioral attributes, we see this behavioral sensitivity of acid extraction as its virtue, not its vice. Acid extraction is a viable compositional tool currently producing significant archaeological results.

Larson and Michaelsen (1990) suggest that Virgin Anasazi cultural development can be explained as a response to population growth and climatic variation. They present demographic and climatic data to argue that abandonment of the Virgin Anasazi region was a response to a severe mid-twelfth century drought. Reconsideration of their data shows that Virgin Anasazi populations probably did not grow or decline as rapidly as they suggest. Further, radiocarbon dates suggest that the Virgin Anasazi occupied the area until the late thirteenth century. The Virgin Anasazi abandonment did not coincide with the twelfth-century drought, and cannot be explained solely by reference to population size and climatic change.