In this study of an Anglo-American cemetery used between the 1830s and 1907, contemporary mortuary trends and cultural attitudes toward death provide the historical context necessary to interpret variation in mortuary display. Analysis of skeletal remains provides information on dental caries, dental care, and enamel hypoplasia and allows comparison of the relatively high-status Weir family"s health with that of other population samples. Analysis of artifacts reveals four styles of grave decoration attributed not to intrasite status variability but to the appearance, peak, and decline of Victorian era cultural expressions of the "beautification" of death. Within this wider cultural trend, intersite comparisons may be made of status display. The rise and decline of the nineteenth-century ideal of the beautification of death adds vital cultural content for understanding the material expression of an observed process that is a cycle of display.

The Garbage Project has excavated eight sanitary landfulls from California to Florida and analyzed 6.71 metric tons of refuse deposited between 1952 and 1988. While the ultimate goal of this continuing endeavor is to collect archaeological data on contemporary discards using a methodology that will link our society to the past, this initial report relates Garbage Project data to three issues of current public concern. This first applied archaeology of landfills has identified: (1) the contents of specific landfills and possible refinements for "national" estimates of U.S. landfill contents; (2) a link between moisture level and rate of refuse decomposition; and (3) part of the pathway of migration for heavy metals.

In this paper we situate and discuss critically Ian Hodder's contextual archaeology in relation to a broader tradition of philosophical hermeneutics. We argue that Hodder's position comes close to the romantic conception of interpretation developed by German philosophers and historians. Central to this position is the equation of meaning and intention, context and origin, making historical understanding a transaction between the creative consciousness of the prehistoric agents and the receptive or reconstructive consciousness of the archaeologist. Drawing on Gadamer's critique of early hermeneutics we argue that Hodder's contextual archaeology disregards the dialectic between past and present horizons, a dialectic embedded in past material culture itself lying before us as present traces of a past.

A survey of presentations at recent Society for American Archaeology annual meetings (1983, 1991, and 1992) is taken to examine the state of American archaeology. Roughly 80 percent of the presentations focus on New World archaeology, and between 60 and 80 percent are concerned with the last 3,000 years. In the last 10 years, there has been a slight shift away from subsistence and production studies to a greater concern with settlement and regional systems, sociopolitical organization, and public archaeology. A major trend has been increased participation by women.

The introductory archaeology course at the University of California at Santa Barbara has undergone a dramatic metamorphosis in the past two years. The course has gone from a largely passive, lecture-centered learning experience to a much more student-centric one. One aspect of that shift has been the incorporation of interactive computer exercises and simulations. While a substantial change in itself, the incorporation of computer exercises is only a small part of the total transformation of the course. The key to the successful use of the new technology in the course was a fundamental shift in our approach to teaching the material. Some elements of that shift include: reducing lecture time; increasing opportunities for one-on-one interaction between instructors and students; mixing small-group and individual exercises; and creating a more democratized information network incorporating instructors, teaching assistants, computer resources, readings, and students into a learning community.

Optimal-foraging theory and the concept of energetic efficiency have been used in archaeology for over a decade, usually to explore subsistence behavior. People, however, made choices for energy expenditure in other areas of culture, including lithic technology. It is suggested that a shift in the allocation of energy as an adaptive response to changes in social organization caused the widely noted decline in formal tool types and stone-tool refinement in the late prehistoric periods in eastern North America. Data from an Upper Mississippian village are used to demonstrate the economic use of poor-quality lithic raw material. A bipolar technique was used to produce flake blanks for triangular projectile points as well as a peculiar but common Upper Mississippian tool, the humpback biface. It is suggested that bipolar reduction and other lithic efficiency and economizing strategies are indicators of stress on the energy budgets of human populations.

We present new evidence suggesting that the Late Glacial worldwide episode of cooling known as the Younger Dryas (ca. 11,000-10,000 B.P.) had a significant impact on climate, vegetation, and human economy in southwest Asia. In the Levant a new pollen core extracted from Lake Huleh and plant remains from the early village of Abu Hureyra 1 indicate that forest gave way to steppe in response to the onset of drier climatic conditions contemporary with the Younger Dryas. Similar effects may be seen in pollen cores from elsewhere in southwest Asia. This alteration in climate and vegetation obliged the inhabitants of Abu Hureyra to modify their plant gathering, and led to significant disruptions in culture and settlement over a wide area. We argue that the stresses induced by these events were a contributing factor in the subsequent development of agriculture in southwest Asia.

Eidt (1973, 1977, 1984a) suggested that the analysis of soil phosphate fractions (I-III) could be used to identify land-use areas on archaeological sites as well as serve as a relative-dating technique. He noted that the total inorganic phosphate value (I + II + III) reflects the type and intensity of land-use practice, and he hypothesized that the ratio of Fraction II/I correlates with the time elapsed since soil enrichment. A test of these propositions was carried out in conjunction with the excavations at the settlement of Agroal (Portugal), which was occupied during the Bronze Age (2000-1000 B.C.) and Middle Ages (A.D. 1300-1640). Samples were taken from all archaeological levels of the site as well from soils with known land-use histories in the area of Agroal. Results of this study support Eidt"s two principal hypotheses. First, there was a strong correspondence in the control soils between total phosphate values and the nature of land-use activities. Second, the ratio of Fraction II/I in the archaeological samples did, in fact, correlate with the relative age of the associated artifacts. A model of the site"s land-use history, based on the total inorganic phosphate and the Fraction II/I values, suggests a significant alteration and degradation of the soil landscape during the Bronze Age, as a consequence of agriculture, herding, and refuse disposal, followed by less-intensive use during the Middle Ages.

Punctured human long bones have been reported at numerous midwestern sites, but none have as large a concentration as Smith Mound Four (21KC3). This northern Minnesota mound was built by the people of the Laurel culture and dates to A.D. 565. Analysis of the bones suggests that they were perforated on the basis of inherited group affiliation for purposes that did not involve marrow extraction and may have related to ideas of spirit release.

Hatch et al. (1990) recently presented the results of research on the sources and ages of obsidian artifacts from four Hopewell sites in Illinois and Ohio. The present comment identifies ambiguities in artifact-to-source attributions that compromise the subsequent source-specific obsidian-hydration objectives of the study. Examination of obsidian-hydration rim-measurement resolution and associated error estimates, disagreements about the validity of laboratory-induced obsidian-hydration rates used in the study, and contradictions between rim measurements on the same specimens lend no support to the authors' conclusion that obsidian was conveyed into these sites throughout the entire temporal duration of Hopewell mound construction.

Hughes (1992) raises two points in his evaluation of our paper on Hopewell obsidian studies (Hatch et al. 1990): (a) Why did we not attempt to identify the several possible western United States sources from which our Hopewell specimens were derived, and (b) was it legitimate to report hydration-rim measurements with a.1 μm or less level of accuracy? These issues are addressed within the context of our initial research goals and through reference to the literature on optical microscopy.