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.

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.

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 potential importance of the Monte Verde site for the peopling of the New World prompted a detailed examination of the collections from that locality, as well as a site visit in January 1997 by a group of Paleoindian specialists. It is the consensus of that group that the MV-II occupation at the site is both archaeological and 12,500 years old, as T. Dillehay has argued. The status of the potentially even older material at the site (MV-1, ∼ 33,000 B.P.) remains unresolved.

More than 20 examples of probable prehistoric water basins with minimum storage capacities of 10,000–25,000 gallons of water are known in the Mesa Verde region of the American Southwest. The temporal placement of these artificially constructed basins, their exact uses, and their importance as public architecture have been poorly understood. We summarize the general literature on these features, give a detailed account of the excavation results of a dam and basin that we tested and dated, and then synthesize all available data from the gray literature on prehistoric water basins in our area. We argue that water basins and reservoirs in the northern Southwest typically stored domestic water for particular communities and that the first evidence of these public features is probably associated with Chaco-era communities. These features represent early experiments with large-scale water conservation and suggest a long-term commitment to locales by specific communities. Their locations along the canyon edges foreshadow shifts in settlement and increased water conservation strategies that become more pronounced in the later Great Pueblo-period villages-the last villages in this area before the migration of Puebloan people to the south after A.D. 1280.

Simulation can be an effective tool for investigating the demography of small, prehistoric Southwest Pueblo communities. The model presented here incorporates biological and physiological, cultural, and behavioral characteristics and tracks each individual as the simulation of a small population is carried forward through 70 years of annual iterations. Sensitivity analyses are performed for a suite of critical parameter values. Many of parameters and functions are probabilistic, and Monte Carlo techniques are used to obtain statistically significant results. Simulation results are collected on numerous variables that profile the individual and group characteristics such as mortality, immigration to emigration ratio, nuclear family formation, and distribution of population size and mix. Initial success is dependent on the attributes of the founding population and its gender mix. The long-term survival of a small population is extremely sensitive to the mortality schedule, attributes of the founding population, and marriage-residence rules. Small shifts in the age-specific mortality statistics dramatically affect the population growth and the frequency of site collapse. The consequences of inaccuracies in mortality statistics are highlighted.

Utility-based studies are attractive to zooarchaeologists because they afford the opportunity of investigating economic decisions relative to particular contexts. While a positive relationship between utility and skeletal element abundance is anticipated at residential sites, a reverse utility curve is most common. A popular mechanistic explanation argues that reverse utility curves result from density-mediated destruction of bone, suggesting that utility-based studies will rarely be successful as density-mediated destruction will overwhelm any skeletal element patterning created by differential transport. We show with archaeological and experimental/naturalistic taphonomic data that the mechanistic explanation is overstated. Fauna from Kobeh cave (a Mousterian site) and "Ain Dara (an Iron Age site) both show a reverse utility pattern when estimates of long bone abundance are based just on ends (the procedure followed at all sites that have shown a reverse utility pattern), and all bones are plotted together. When long bone abundance is estimated from the middle shaft portion, the reverse utility pattern collapses and a positive relationship arises. The ubiquity of the reverse utility curve derives in many cases from basing long bone abundance estimates on ends and scatter-plotting the abundance of long bones with non-long bones, thus restricting the analysis to the least dense most spongy bone portions. Long bone abundance estimates must include the middle shaft portion to attain accurate estimates of element abundance. Long bone abundance, when based on shaft portions, can be usefully compared to utility to investigate utility-based models of human behavior.

Plog and Hegmon (1993) focus on my research (Leonard 1989) on Black Mesa, Arizona, faunal assemblages as part of a broader critique of the work of a number of researchers who consider the effects of sample size on assemblage richness values. I suggest that their critique is problematic for a number of reasons, primarily statistical, but also because they do not provide an alternative hypothesis for the observed pattern.

We are in full agreement with Leonard, and many others, that the sample size-richness relation is an important concern for archaeologists, and we appreciate his evenhanded discussion of our paper. However, we disagree with Leonard regarding the point in the research process when variable prehistoric behavior can be used to explain differences in richness. Leonard and others argue that we must always begin studies of richness by controlling any observed relation to sample size; we can only consider prehistoric behavior as an explanation of richness after we account for sample size effects. In contrast, we suggest that following his recommendations will obscure aspects of behavioral variation that are important to understanding prehistoric societies. Considerations of prehistoric behavior must therefore be central in studies of richness.

Although the relationship between settled area and population size has been well studied in archaeology, anthropology, and geography, with numerous empirical data sets, an established methodological approach, and a body of theory, Schreiber and Kintigh's (1996) analysis of archaeological and historical data from the Peruvian Andes found “only a weak correlation” between these variables. By employing double logarithmic data, the relationship is shown to be much better than the “surprisingly poor” one the raw data suggests. Regression analysis of these Peruvian data in logarithmic form yields power functions that conform closely with expectations derived from a body of settlement size theory based on the allometric principle.

The concern with the gender and role of Mimbres potters and painters is certainly an important one, and Hegmon and Trevathan (1996) do a good job of reviewing the various arguments about the identity of the bowl painters. Going beyond this review, they add another possible piece of evidence for the role of men in the production of Mimbres art. While I concur that the other arguments they present suggest some role for men in the painting activity, I do not believe that the particular new example they present adds any weight to this argument.

Hegmon and Trevathan's (1996) contention that Mimbres figurative pottery was probably painted by men ignorant about birthing, as evidenced by a virtually impossible birthing scene, is unsubstantiated. This claim was due to a lack of familiarity with the birthing motif they described, as well as selective and unrepresentative use of relevant ethnographic and historical data. We find no evidence that men painted Mimbres pottery.

In their 1996 article, Hegmon and Trevathan argue that the nature of birth scenes depicted on Mimbres pottery bowls provides insight into the gender of the pottery painters. Specifically, they argue that the birth position illustrated is extremely uncommon, suggesting that the potter(s) had not had exposure to birth episodes. Hegmon and Trevathan conclude that the potters were male. Their arguments are flawed by faulty premises and a severe misunderstanding of the nature of Mimbres art. A review of the evidence regarding birth-depiction bowls indicates that the images do not imply either male or female potters.

We originally concluded that because birth scenes depicted on Mimbres bowls are anatomically unusual or impossible, and men are generally unfamiliar with the details of birth, the pots most likely were painted by men. Three of the four counter-arguments presented in the comments—(1) there is no other way to depict birth; (2) one part of one painting is actually a crack in the vessel; (3) some men are involved in birthing—either are incorrect (1) or have no impact on our conclusions (2 and 3). The fourth counter-argument—that the depictions are necessary artistic conventions—is significant but does not negate our conclusions. The comments by Espenshade and by Shaffer et al. misrepresent and distort our argument and in one case misquote us.