This article argues that the development of excavation field methods in archaeology is closely tied to the social position of fieldworkers. We also note disaffection in field contract archaeology today resulting from a wide range of factors, including the separation of excavation from interpretation. We argue that this separation and the notion that archaeological excavation can be seen as unskilled undermine the scientific basis of archaeology. A reflexive archaeology is discussed that empowers field archaeology by (a) focusing interpretation at the trowel's edge, (b) bringing multiple perspectives close to the moment of excavation, and (c) documenting the documentation process.

Recent advances in technology and practice allow geophysical surveys in archaeology to produce maps of subsurface features over large areas and in potentially great detail. It is shown through a series of case studies from two regions in North America that archaeo-geophysical surveys can produce primary information suitable for the study of site content, structure and organization, for examining spatial patterns and relationships, and for directly confronting specific questions about a site and the past. Because large buried cultural landscapes can now be revealed, it is argued that an alternative perspective on regional or landscape archaeology may be possible because space can be viewed in terms of tens of hectares as opposed to the tens of square meters typical of archaeological excavations. Moreover, by placing focus on such buried features as dwellings, storage facilities, public structures, middens, fortifications, trails, or garden spaces that are not commonly revealed through most contemporary surface inspection methods, a richer view of archaeology, the past, and cultural landscapes can be achieved. Archaeo-geophysical surveys can also play an important role in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) contexts as feature discovery tools for focusing expensive excavations, thereby reducing the amount needed and lowering costs. Their utility is weighed against shovel test pits as a primitive and costly form of prospecting.

Archaeological theory has traditionally presupposed the existence of “battleship curves” in stylistic evolution, with little understanding about what governs the width (variant frequency) or length (variant lifespan) of these curves. In terms of these variables, we propose that there is a testable difference between independent decisions, unbiased transmission, and biased transmission in cultural evolution. We expect independent decision making to be represented by an exponential distribution of variant prevalence in the population. In contrast, unbiased transmission tends to be characterized by a power law or log-normal distribution of prevalence, while biased transmission should deviate significantly from the unbiased case. The difference between these categories may be fundamental to how cultural traits spread and persist. In order to make analytical predictions for unbiased transmission, we adapt a model of stochastic network growth that, by quantitatively demonstrating the inherent nonlinearity in unbiased transmission, can explain why a few highly popular styles can be expected to emerge in the course of cultural evolution. For the most part, this model predicts the frequencies of pottery decorations remarkably well over a 400-year span of Linearbandkeramik settlement in the Merzbach valley. Because the highest frequencies of actual motifs are somewhat less than predicted by our unbiased transmission model, we identify an anti-conformist, or pro-novelty, bias in the later phases of the Neolithic Merzbach Valley.

Stone tool assemblage variability is considered a reliable proxy measure of adaptive variability. Raw material richness, transport distances, and the character of transported technologies are thought to signal (1) variation in raw material selectivity based on material quality and abundance, (2) optimization of time and energy costs associated with procurement of stone from spatially dispersed sources, (3) planning depth that weaves raw material procurement forays into foraging activities, and (4) risk minimization that sees materials transported in quantities and forms that are energetically economical and least likely to fail. This paper dispenses with assumptions that raw material type and abundance play any role in the organization of mobility and raw material procurement strategies. Rather, a behaviorally neutral agent-based model is developed involving a forager engaged in a random walk within a uniform environment. Raw material procurement in the model is dependent only upon random encounters with stone sources and the amount of available space in the mobile toolkit. Simulated richness-sample size relationships, frequencies of raw material transfers as a function of distance from source, and both quantity-distance and reduction intensity-distance relationships are qualitatively similar to commonly observed archaeological patterns. In some archaeological cases it may be difficult to reject the neutral model. At best, failure to reject the neutral model may mean that intervening processes (e.g., depositional time-averaging) have erased high-frequency adaptive signals in the data. At worst, we may have to admit the possibility that Paleolithic behavioral adaptations were sometimes not responsive to differences between stone raw material types in the ways implied by current archaeological theory.

Patterns of use of ceramic objects and masonry architecture at Chaco Canyon in the southwestern United States indicate refurbishing of some vessels and architectural forms. Ceramic cylinder jars show evidence for obliteration of earlier designs and subsequent repainting and refiring of new designs. Communal structures, or kivas, were dismantled and rebuilt. Three possible explanations for these patterns are explored: revision of errors, restoration of worn surfaces, or ritual renewal. Renewal appears the most likely explanation for most of the patterning seen, providing a fuller picture of Chacoan ritual life and beliefs. Implications for research in the Chaco area and greater Southwest are discussed.

Low lake levels, due to drought in spring and summer 2000, revealed the decayed remnants of over 100 dugout canoes buried in the sediments of Newnans Lake near Gainesville, Florida. Radiocarbon assays revealed that 41 of 55 canoes studied were from the Late Archaic period, dating between 2300 and 5000 B.P. Analysis of canoe form and comparison to the small number of other known Florida Archaic period canoes correct previous ideas about early canoes. Patterns of wood choice and manufacturing techniques known from younger canoes were in place during the Late Archaic. The Archaic period canoes from Newnans Lake are indistinguishable from canoes produced in later periods and are not the crude, short, blunt-ended type thought to represent the earliest dugout canoes. Thwarts or low partitions on almost half of the Archaic canoes studied confirm a long temporal span to the canoe-making tradition of peninsular Florida. Middle and Late Archaic groups had boat-building and related technologies in place 7,000 years ago and were expanding into areas with newly emerging freshwater resources created by higher water tables.

In recent years, zooarchaeological research has begun to examine the roles of animals as part of the suite of symbols employed in the ongoing social, ceremonial, and political dynamics of prehistoric cultural systems. In the southeastern United States, studies of late prehistoric Mississippian chiefdoms have documented differences in species composition and meat cuts associated with particular social contexts of consumption—for instance, ceremonial feasting vs. private meals—and also with gross distinctions in social rank—elite vs. commoner. Differences in the latter reflect elite control of procurement as well as cultural rules that assign meanings to certain species, which in so doing regulates access to their consumption. Faunal samples collected by recent mound excavations at the Moundville site in west-central Alabama provide the basis for an examination of more subtle differences in the consumption patterns of elite residents. Zooarchaeological samples produced by two elite households, although generally similar and fitting expectations for elite consumption well, are distinguished by differences in the distribution of rare species, the role of fish, and possibly by evidence of differences in food waste, distinctions that can be associated with interpretations of these households' relative status in Moundville society drawn from other classes of archaeological data.

Douglas Bamforth's recent paper in American Antiquity, “Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology,” charges that Darwinism has little to offer archaeology except in a metaphorical sense. Specifically, Bamforth claims that arguments that allegedly link evolutionary processes to the archaeological record are unsustainable. Given Bamforth's narrow view of evolution—that it must be defined strictly in terms of changes in gene frequency—he is correct. But no biologist or paleontologist would agree with Bamforth"s claim that evolution is a process that must he viewed fundamentally at the microlevel. Evolutionary archaeology has argued that materials in the archaeological record are phenotypic in the same way that hard parts of organisms are. Thus changes in the frequencies of archaeological variants can be used to monitor the effects of selection and drift on the makers and users of those materials. Bamforth views this extension of the human phenotype as metaphorical because to him artifacts are not somatic features, meaning their production and use are not entirely controlled by genetic transmission. He misses the critical point that in terms of evolution, culture is as significant a transmission system as genes are. There is nothing metaphorical about viewing cultural transmission from a Darwinian point of view.

O'Brien, Lyman, and Leonard's comment misrepresents my paper and obscures the problems evolutionary archaeology faces. In particular, I took the ongoing operation of natural selection among modern humans as one of my fundamental assumptions and I did not limit evolution to genetic change. The assertion that the selectionists have identified the operation of natural selection in the archaeological record fails to meet the most basic standards of archaeological reasoning.