As contract salvage programs have come to support more and more archaeological fieldwork and analysis, and as archaeologists have become increasingly concerned with the relevance of their sub-discipline to the larger explanatory goals of anthropology, a strategic conflict has arisen that threatens to severely limit the potential of American archaeology for long-range explanatory research. It is contended that this conflict has arisen because salvage-support agencies have been led to organize their contract procedures along lines amenable to inductive, laissez-faire research. These procedures have become canonized while archaeology has begun to drift toward deductive, interdisciplinary team methods. Proposed salvage programs in the North Coast Ranges of California are used to illustrate the self-defeating nature of present procedures, and reorganization is suggested to permit increased theoretical input and the integration of salvage operations into large-scale regional research programs.

This paper considers two recently developed mathematical techniques in archaeological seriation. Both techniques take as given, a similarity matrix between the objects to be ordered. The first method is a "linkage" procedure, while the second (and preferred) is an "averaging" procedure. The second method, though a bit more mathematical, has been very successful in application to real data. Both techniques have several good features which will be considered. For both illustrative and comparative purposes, the methods have been applied to several sets of archaeological data considered by other researchers. As the comparisons will show, the results have been surprisingly good. More specifically, for such comparisons to be made, a criterion for comparing the "goodness" of different serial orders for a particular set of data is of great interest. A criterion, or "goodness of fit" index of this type will be developed and interpreted as well as used for the comparisons of interest. Lastly, a section is devoted to more general discussion of what sorts of data are suitable for reduction by seriation techniques.

The southern Maya lowlands present a largely redundant environment which does not possess the potential for major internal symbiotic regions or for irrigation. In fact, the interior of this region is uniformly deficient in resources essential to the efficiency of every individual household engaged in the Mesoamerican agricultural subsistence economy: mineral salt, obsidian for blades, and hard stone for grinding. Yet, in the core of this rain forest region, the basic elements of Classic Maya civilization first coalesced. A model involving methods of procuring and distributing the resources necessary to the efficiency of an agricultural subsistence economy explains the loci of lowland Classic Maya development and the order in which these loci developed. This model can also be applied to the Olmec civilization.

The weathered zones of ore deposits, which no longer exist, are reconstructed by inference to provide estimates of relative abundances of usable nuggets of native copper, silver, and gold in ancient times. New analyses and selected data from the literature summarize metallic impurities in native copper, silver, gold, and lead and in the oxidized copper minerals, oxide, silicate, carbonate, chloride, and sulfate, together with impurities in lead carbonate and silver halide minerals. The influence that these occurrences and compositions exerted upon the origin and development of metallurgy in Mesoamerica and South America is discussed in relation to new analyses of artifacts and selected data from the literature. Topics emphasized are: the discovery of smelting and melting by the Moche; the inability of New World metallurgists to smelt copper from sulfide ores or silver from lead ores; and the lack of influence by transoceanic contacts. This paper is contribution number 1702 of the Division of Geological Sciences, C.I.T.

Experimental techniques have provided an exciting breakthrough for the functional analysis of Maya chultuns. While deep cistern-like chultuns, common at certain sites in the northern lowlands, have been shown to be functional for water storage, smaller lateral-chambered chultuns characteristic of certain parts of the southern lowlands probably had a very different function. Excavation and examination of the latter features, in light of a whole range of possibilities, suggest that they were constructed to be used for food storage. Experimental studies, however, reveal them to be unsuitable for the storage of most traditional foods, including maize. At least one local food crop, the seed of the ramon (Brosimum alicastrum, Moraceae), appears to be ideally suited for long-term storage under these conditions. Chambers constructed beneath platforms in the northern lowlands may have been used for the storage of maize. A need for more experimental work is indicated.

Cultural change from the prehistoric to the protohistoric period is seen as a subject of anthropological study in which archaeological and ethnohistorical data are complementary sources. It is suggested that an interpretation of the effect of the postconquest economic and political innovations in Tepexi, a Mixteca-Puebla community in Mexico, can be made only after an examination of the condition of the preconquest economic and political systems. Tepexi was economically overburdened in preconquest times as a result of Aztec tribute demands, and the introduction of the silk industry by the Spaniards may have been responsible for sustaining the failing community.

An Archaic Indian cemetery at Port au Choix, Newfoundland, dating from about 2000-1700 yrs B.C. is described. For the first time, excellent bone preservation allows a relatively complete reconstruction of the culture of the Archaic inhabitants of Newfoundland. Comparing the assemblage from Port au Choix with other Archaic assemblages from Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, especially the Moorehead or Maine Cemetery complex sites leads to the description of a "new" whole cultural tradition, the Maritime Archaic tradition, which existed throughout the Atlantic provinces and northern New England during the second millennium B.C. This tradition was based upon the distinctive resources found in that area- caribou, sea mammals, sea birds, and fish-and is very different from the Laurentian and Shield Archaic traditions as regards adaptation to a coastal environment and all the cultural variations concomitant with such an ecological adjustment.

A prehistoric Hopewell copper earspool was analyzed by a number of metallurgical techniques including transmission electron microscopy. While optical photomicrographs and micro-hardness data suggest that the final fabrication process was annealing, transmission electron microscopy indicates that some final cold working was applied. This paper illustrates a new application of physical analytical techniques to archaeology.

For many years, small, serrated, obsidian artifacts characteristic of late central California cultural manifestations (Late Horizon), have been regarded as projectile points (arrow and dart points). A functional analysis of a number of these tools based on examination with a binocular microscope revealed evidence of wear patterns including striations which makes it quite clear that these artifacts were used for other purposes. This brings the projectile point interpretation up for serious questioning, at least for the area under consideration. It is suggested that further investigation of artifact assemblages, using similar methods, will in all likelihood alter many existing ideas regarding the functional significance of many artifact types. It is further pointed out that many times discrepancies exist between ethnographic accounts and other sources of data relative to the functional significance of artifacts.

A quantitative method is presented which assists the archaeologist in distinguishing between bones resulting from human activity and those deposited in archaeological contexts by non-cultural means. The assumption is that relatively incomplete carcasses are more likely to have been deposited or disturbed by extra-corporeal activities such as carnivores, raptorial birds, rodents, stream action, or man. This method is illustrated on faunal data from 3 sites in the High Rock county of extreme northwestern Nevada.

The statement of Fritz and Plog that an explicit formulation of potential laws must precede the collection of data is challenged on the grounds that (1) the collection of data, from some areas at least, must be made now or it will be lost forever, and (2) relevant archaeology can be done with salvage materials, gathered without knowledge of their ultimate use.

Thomas criticizes the authors’ use of cumulative curves for the comparison of Paleo-Indian industries. While accepting Thomas’ theoretical point of view, we attempt to explain the use of the curves in meaningful and pragmatic terms.