Research in experimental archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, geoarchaeology, and vertebrate taphonomy has appreciably increased our general understanding of the formation processes—cultural and natural—of archaeological sites. In synthesizing some of these recent advances, this paper focuses on the traces of artifacts and characteristics of deposits that can be used to identify the formation processes of specific deposits. These observational phenomena are grouped into three basic categories that structure the presentation: (1) simple properties of artifacts, (2) complex properties of artifacts, and (3) other properties of deposits. Also considered is the way in which prior knowledge can help the archaeologist to cope with the large number of processes and the nearly infinite combination of them that may have contributed to the specific deposits of interest. Several analytical strategies are proposed: (1) hypothesis testing, (2) multivariate analysis, and (3) use of published data to evaluate formation processes. This paper demonstrates that the identification of formation processes, which must precede behavioral inference and be accomplished by any research endeavor that uses evidence from the archaeological record, can become practical and routine.

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.

The Black Mesa Archaeological Project has been conducting field investigations and archaeological research in northeastern Arizona since 1967. The work is contracted for by Peabody Coal Company in order to comply with federal, state, and tribal statutes. The longevity of the project, as well as its size and complexity, affords a unique opportunity to evaluate and refine research, project administration, and legal compliance procedures. In most situations, clear advantages have resulted from the opportunities to learn from the project's history. Unfortunately, changing statutes and changing interpretations of the same statutes have resulted in major problems—both for the archaeologists and for the Peabody Coal Company.

Although the concept of significance has been widely discussed in cultural resource management, the origin of the idea and the epistemology underlying it have remained unexamined. This paper outlines the history of the significance concept in historic preservation and traces the current view of significance to the empiricist-positivist school of Western philosophical thought. Flaws in the arguments of this school, and in the logic of the significance concept, are raised and discussed. Potential approaches for dealing with aspects of the significance dilemma are proposed.

The Lowland Maya region has seen an enormous increase of new data over the last decade, but our progress is hampered by a tendency for cyclic return to previous theoretical positions. This results from several factors: too short a view of the discipline's history; a lack of familiarity with the rest of Mesoamerica; a lack of collaboration among archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and epigraphers; and a tendency to view alternative methodologies as competing rather than complementary. This paper synthesizes some of the major new discoveries and suggests where progress might be made if differing approaches were used in concert rather than in isolation.

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.

The results of a study on the relationship between stylistic variation in Kalahari San projectile points and aspects of San social organization are summarized. Five issues relevant to archaeology are discussed in light of the San data: (1) stylistic behavior and the different aspects of style, (2) which items of material culture carry social information and why, (3) which attributes on San projectile points carry social information, (4) what the results of the analysis of stylistic variation in projectile points imply for current methods of stylistic analysis and interpretation, and (5) the correspondence between style in San projectile points and San organization.

The Late Preclassic Maya center of Cerros, northern Belize (300 B.C. to A.D. 150) has revealed evidence of a sophisticated water control system. Canals and raised field platforms have been examined inside the community center. An underlying limestone caprock was systematically removed during the quarrying of monument fill to maintain adequate drainage in the community. The result was a man-made relief or watershed across the entire core site area. The role of present and past microenvironments at Cerros is addressed.

Six types of rock features have been identified in a northwestern California mountain range. The features, including cairns, alignments, hearth rings, stone circles, rock stacks, and semicircular enclosures (tsektsels) form a complex in association with traditional trails and mountain high points. Combined ethnographic and archaeological research reveals this complex to be associated with patterns of traditional religious activity involving power quests, ritual and medicinal training, and individual prayer among the Yurok and their neighbors. The complex can be traced from prehistoric beginnings to the present time, indicating the persistence of this ideological pattern through a period of severe cultural change associated with Euro-American settlement of northwestern California. It is not known yet whether the complex is unique to northwestern California or is manifested over a wider region.

Conspicuous disturbances in archaeological sites are readily detected during excavation. However, one animal whose destructive effects are not often recognized is the earthworm. Work at the Carlston Annis mound in Kentucky, an Archaic shell midden, has resulted in the identification of areas of extensive earthworm disturbance. Archaeological sites most readily affected are those with the appropriate vegetation cover, moisture and temperature conditions, and available chemical elements. The type of disturbance a site will undergo depends on the species of earthworms present. Subsurface-casting species mix matrix only below the surface while surface-casting species bring the fine-grained matrix to the surface, thus concentrating larger objects below ground. If earthworm casts are identified in a profile, one should proceed cautiously with interpretations concerning soil matrix.

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.

A common procedure in paleodemography is to use mean skeletal age to estimate the expectation of life at birth in a population. This paper shows that skeletal age and expectation of life at birth are not equivalent unless the population is stationary. This assumption is not justified for most real populations. We show that mean skeletal age is approximately equivalent to the reciprocal of the birth rate and is not correlated with the death rate. Thus, the practice of inferring changes in life span and death rates from changes in mean age at death is not reliable and most conclusions of paleodemographic studies should be revised. On the other hand, skeletal age may provide high-quality information about fertility in archaeological populations. Several published paleodemographic studies are reinterpreted in light of the model presented.

Samples of microdrills, microblades, and microcores from the Powell Mound (11-Ms-46) and the Dunham tract (11-S-34/4) of the Cahokia site near St. Louis, and a small number of Jaketown perforators from the Poverty Point site, Louisiana, were examined for microwear traces, using the methods outlined by L. H. Keeley. Many archaeologists have assumed that the microdrills in the Cahokia microlithic industry were used by craft specialists to produce drilled disc beads and other items made from marine and freshwater shell. Microwear analysis of the Cahokia microdrills showed they were specialized tools, used almost exclusively to drill shell material, while the Jaketown perforators were used to drill a variety of materials. This alone does not establish the existence of craft specialization at Cahokia. The distribution of microdrills and shell artifacts at Cahokia and throughout the Cahokia settlement system on the American Bottom indicates shell craft production was not restricted to “guild areas.” The shell beads produced by the microdrills may have served as ritual tokens or currency as well as ornaments, but they were not necessarily produced by full-time specialists who were part of a state-level society.

This brief review is intended to acquaint the reader with recent research and thought on the European Mesolithic. The period is characterized by hunter-gatherer adaptations between the close of the Pleistocene and the introduction of food production. A number of developments support an argument for a rapid intensification of human subsistence and settlement practices and organization, prior to the utilization of domesticated plants and animals.

Tree-ring data from the Canyon Creek Ruin, east-central Arizona, are analyzed to evaluate two competing interpretations of pueblo growth at this well-preserved cliff dwelling. Despite an anomalous dating pattern, a logistic model best describes pueblo growth. Room construction activity is linked to population increase, which, in turn, may be divided into two varieties: natural increase, and immigration of households into the settlement. Logistic growth also accounts for population increase within the larger area of the Grasshopper region. I review the processes promoting both local and regional population increase, as well as subsequent abandonment of the mountains of Arizona. I suggest that rapid depopulation may have occurred after A.D. 1375 because late prehistoric communities lost access to nonlocal goods that had previously allowed populations to increase beyond local resource constraints.