The measurement of ceramic strength is an important source of evidence for assessing any pottery technology. However, the adoption of strength testing within comprehensive ceramic analyses in archaeology has been hindered by the absence of a reliable format for testing archaeological specimens. This paper presents results of research undertaken to develop the ball-on-three-ball test, which measures the tensile strength of archaeological, ethnographic, and experimental ceramics in biaxial flexure. Laboratory experiments demonstrate that the test produces reliable and accurate results largely unaffected by the irregularities of sherd-shaped specimens. In an example from the prehistoric Southwest, strength tests are used to investigate technological change in the Cibola White Ware sequence and the role of strength in the formation of archaeological assemblages. It is suggested that the development of a versatile, dependable technique can help to move strength testing out of experimental laboratories and into mainstream ceramic analyses.

Settlement-pattern studies are plagued by the problem of analyzing site distribution maps for time periods during which not all sites are contemporaneous. In a key insight, Dewar (1991) used counts of sites occupied at the beginning and end of a period to estimate, through simulation, the number of simultaneously occupied sites. While Dewar's treatment is an important contribution, drawbacks to his method are identified and remedies proposed. First, an equation that obviates the need for the simulation is provided. It is then shown that Dewar's method fails to take into account those sites that are both established and abandoned during the period. Finally, this problem is remedied through a modification of the equation that incorporates the single-period sites in the estimate of the number of contemporaneous sites. Application to Valley of Mexico settlement data suggests larger numbers of simultaneously occupied sites and shorter site use spans than were obtained by Dewar.

This paper examines the historical development and theoretical underpinnings of the connections established between archaeology and Marxist social thought in Latin America. This dialogue began before the Russian Revolution and persists to the present day in the form of Latin American social archaeology.

A series of experiments making and using bone and antler tools show that functional identifications of these tools can be made with confidence in some circumstances. Using principles from the field of tribology, the experiments demonstrate that different uses leave different microscopic traces on bone and antler. They also show that when the materials used are similar, the wear produced will be similar. In particular, wet materials, including snow, ice, wet hide, and wet antler all produce nearly identical microscopic patterns. Other groups of similar materials, such as bone, antler, and wood, or fish scales and hair, present the same problem. Although differences can be detected, these may not be preserved on archaeological tool specimens. Application of the experimental results to bone and antler tools from the Mackenzie Delta illustrates that functional identifications of tools can be made with confidence, despite the problem of similar microscopic patterns, when other lines of evidence (ethnographic and historical accounts, distribution of wear) are taken into account. When such information is lacking, functional identifications are more difficult and must be made with more caution.

Alison Wylie (1992) provides an important discussion about the contribution of feminist research in archaeology by arguing that a feminist perspective can lead to a better, more rigorous science of archaeology. Her article inspires comment in three areas. First, the diversity within feminist theory and practice is emphasized by describing liberal, separatist, and socialist perspectives and how they might manifest themselves in archaeology. Second, the historical and political context of gender ideology and metaphor in the development of Western science is noted. The apparent need for feminist theory to defend its appropriateness is tied to this context. Third, feminist theory must, and will, rehabilitate the structure of that historically and politically constituted science.

The frequency and morphology of notches produced on bovid long bones by carnivore gnawing (tooth notches) and hammerstone-on-anvil breakage (percussion notches) are quantified. Notches are semicircular- to arcuate-shaped indentations on fracture edges with corresponding negative flake scars on medullary surfaces. We restrict our analysis to notches produced under controlled conditions by either carnivores or hammerstones when diaphyses are breached to extract marrow. Percussion notches are characteristically more frequent, and, in cortical view, broader and shallower than tooth notches. The flakes removed from percussion notches are typically broader, and have a more obtuse release angle, than those removed from tooth notches. These morphological differences are statistically significant for notches on Bovid Size 1 and 2 long bones but not on Bovid Size 3 long bones.

Notches should be more durable than marks produced by carcass consumers on bone surfaces because they penetrate the entire thickness of the bone. As a result, notches are not easily obscured by weathering, chemical corrosion, or adhering matrix. Given this durability, and the initial success we have had in distinguishing the actor responsible for notch production on modern bones, notches can be used, with some limitations, to identify bone consumers archaeologically.

Red-slipped pottery and a multiterrace platform mound at Trempealeau, Wisconsin, indicate the presence of an early Mississippian outpost in the upper Mississippi Valley ca. A.D. 1000. Trempealeau apparently represents a Mississippian elite site-unit intrusion from the American Bottom, and it probably served as a nodal point of early contact between Cahokia and peoples of the upper Mississippi Valley. By establishing a mound center at Trempealeau, its founders not only secured access to material goods but also facilitated the flow of information from the northern Mississippi Valley to the newly emerged elites in the American Bottom.

While Kintigh's (1994) proposed modifications of the methods I described in 1991 for estimating the mean number of simultaneous occupations and mean use span of occupations have certain strengths and weaknesses, they do offer a viable alternative approach. However, I show here that the original and revised methods derive from a different conception of settlement-pattern processes.

In her recent work, Alison Wylie has sometimes claimed an important role for present politics in the constitution of archaeological facts, yet she has not fully documented such claims. Using the same materials as Wylie, namely the research on gender presented at the conference “Women and Production in Prehistory,” held in South Carolina in 1988, I attempt to provide such documentation, arguing that its absence may undermine Wylie's (indeed, archaeology's) “mitigated objectivism” as well as the facts emerging about prehistoric gender. I dispute neither the scientific integrity of those facts nor the rigor of Wylie's analysis. Like many before me, I puzzle about the relationship between truth and politics, and I regard the disjunction of the two notions, so obdurate in archaeology, as counterproductive, the source of contradictions and disabling ambivalences. I make at the end two suggestions about overcoming the notional disjunction of truth and politics, one adopted from Brumfiel and from Conkey (archaeological facts as allegories), the other from Foucault (archaeological evidence as a network of sites of power).

Pollen deposited on the ground surface is carried down into the soil by percolating groundwater. Such postdepositional pollen transport preserves the record of historical vegetation and land use in slowly or nonaggrading sediment profiles by separating the pollen spectra of successive ground covers. This is demonstrated at Great Meadows, Pennsylvania, where pollen spectra in hillside cores indicating a preagricultural-era forest are succeeded during the clearance and agricultural period by weed and cereal pollen during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These are, in turn, replaced by grass during the park period of the last 65 years. The preagricultural pollen spectra indicate that differences in historical ground cover across relatively short horizontal distances and elevations can be reconstructed with pollen analysis.

Animal bones discarded by people are commonly subject to disturbance by carnivores. These carnivores are present throughout the world and include wolves, coyotes, hyenas, and many others. This disturbance not only modifies and destroys bone, but also moves many of the bone fragments away from their original position of discard. Intrasite spatial analyses of bone that seek patterns meaningful to human behavior thus need to subtract the effect of carnivore disturbance. Experimental studies with spotted hyenas show that the position of a bone fragment on a limb bone, combined with bone surface modification, can be used to identify a class of bone fragments that are minimally affected by carnivores and are thus the best indicators of spatial patterning resulting from human behavior. Limb-bone ends are moved significant distances, as are shaft fragments as a general class. However, middle-shaft portions of limb bones that preserve percussion marks from hammerstone breakage retain nearly the precise spatial position as originally discarded by hominids. Thus, any spatial analysis of bone, when carnivores are implicated as contributors or consumers at an archaeological site, should focus on middle-shaft portions of limb bones with percussion marks.

Michael Fotiadis (1994) and Barbara Little (1994) both question the oppositions that structure current debate about the “objectivity” of archaeological science; they raise concerns about my own proposal for a “mitigated objectivism” where it reaffirms these oppositions. I welcome their discussion and offer three responses to clarify and situate my own position. Most valuable, they identify several lines of inquiry that should be pursued beyond the philosophical analyses I have developed, in this instance of gender research.

Controversy has surrounded the All American Man pictograph in southeast Utah since its discovery in the 1950s. Its coloration, similar to the flag of the United States of America, has led to questions regarding its authenticity. We have obtained two radiocarbon values on a single sample comprised of pigmented sandstone fragments from one small area of this pictograph. They suggest the pictograph dates to the fourteenth century and indicate that it is an authentic, prehistoric pictograph, probably Anasazi in origin.