Social interactions within a region may reduce the risk of resource stress by facilitating access to resources in other areas. Archaeological implications of this view of social networks are considered for the part-agricultural inhabitants of central New Mexico during the Pithouse period (ca. A.D. 900—1250). Spatial patterning of climatic variables suggests that social networks at least 50 km in extent and oriented in an east-southeastern direction from the focal site toward the Sierra Blanca region could have provided access to extralocal resources during years of poor local productivity. Similarity of ceramic assemblages (measured by Brainerd—Robinson coefficients) between the focal site and sites in the proposed alternative resource area confirms some degree of social contact during the Pithouse period; dissimilar ceramic assemblages from comparably distant sites to the west (in the Socorro area) indicate that geographic distance alone is not a good predictor of social interactions in this region.

The belief that the bow and arrow replaced the spear and/or dart as hunting weapons in eastern North America between 1500 and 1200 B.P. is tested using a classification function that identifies bifaces as either spear/dart or arrow points. Results and their alternative interpretations bear important implications for the timing and nature of the technological transition. Moreover, the economic consequences of the transition are at once subtler and less profound than often supposed. Ethnographic data do not support simple notions of a uniform increase in acquisition efficiency across target species with the adoption of the bow and arrow.

The organization of hunter—gatherer lithic technology is examined as a dynamic process, with reference to a case study from the Late Prehistoric period of the Texas central Gulf Coast. Several lithic data sets from sites of the Rockport phase (ca. A.D. 1200—1700) indicate that three modes of behavior operated to maintain technological efficiency, and that each was adopted in response to inefficiency thresholds associated with increasing, distance-related costs in the procurement and transport of lithic material. In combination with information on the settlement and subsistence patterns, it is apparent that the organization of lithic technology was adjusted to the more basic needs for biotic-resource procurement. As a result, lithic efficiency was not a constant, but fluctuated within a dynamic cultural subsystem that articulated with the scheduling demands of overall adaptive behavior.

Excavations at Modoc Rock Shelter, Illinois (11R5), between 1952 and 1956 documented the antiquity and cultural sequence of the Archaic period in the midcontinental United States. Some researchers questioned the site's stratigraphic integrity because of apparent inconsistencies between the radiocarbon assays and associated artifacts. Excavations in 1980, 1984, and 1987 documented stratigraphic sequences and produced assays of over 40 additional radiocarbon samples from controlled stratigraphic contexts. This report describes the stratigraphic sequences at Modoc Rock Shelter and presents critical evaluations of the radiocarbon assays. This information is used to summarize the depositional and occupational history of the site. Two related stratigraphic sequences are present, one in the Main Shelter and a separate, physically uncorrelated sequence in the West Shelter. Each sequence includes occupations dating to the Early, Middle, and Late Archaic periods, with age ranges between 9000 and 4000 B.P. Questions about the site's stratigraphic integrity, artifact sequences, and analytical procedures are resolved.

Recent discussions of the relation between sample size and assemblage richness suggest that researchers should control for that relation before behavioral interpretations of richness levels can proceed. We suggest that such automatic decisions should be avoided because a strong correlation between sample size and richness alone is not sufficient evidence for dismissing behavioral factors as the primary causes of the variation in richness. Instead, we must first explore the causes of the observed variation in sample size and the relation of those causes to our research questions.

Analysis of seed morphology in paleoethnobotany typically focuses on identification of domesticates. However, the wild and weed forms that are sometimes recognized in archaeological contexts can provide pertinent information about garden ecology. Morphometric studies of Chenopodium from the eastern United States have revealed patterns of variation compatible with the coexistence and interaction of crop and weed populations. The character of this interaction reflects considerable flexibility and diversity in prehistoric agricultural systems. In addition, the frequency of weed seeds in archaeological collections can be used to assess the nature of selection in managed habitats and the husbandry practices associated with it.

Skeletal remains from the Santa Barbara Channel Islands, California were analyzed to evaluate the health consequences of an economic shift from a generalized maritime hunting-and-gathering adaptation to one focused increasingly on fishing. Changes in stature and in the frequency of inflammatory bone lesions suggest that health generally declined during this economic shift. This occurred despite an increase in the protein content of the diet. These data provide a basis for evaluating the significance of protein deficiency as a cause of the deterioration in health seen with the development of intensive agriculture.

Frequently, only five percent or less of a midden site is excavated for environmental-analysis purposes before it is turned over to the bulldozers for destruction. Such exceptionally small sample sizes have become accepted in cultural-resource-management work as adequate for gaining a good understanding of the chronology and cultural activities at a site. This assumption was tested by the author with a 63 percent excavation sampling fraction from a southern California midden. The data indicate that a far-from-complete understanding of a site may result from small sampling fractions and that more carefully designed sampling strategies and statistical manipulation of the data may not overcome this problem.

For ceramic assemblages composed exclusively of sherds, inferences at the scale of artifact are often problematic. Drawing on information provided by experimental studies, observations can be made such that technology and use are expressed at the scale of assemblage. A simple classification is used to describe variation in paste composition for an assemblage of shell-tempered ceramics from southeast Missouri. Using these classes as a set of analytic units, variables reflecting on technology and use are examined. The analytic results suggest that while some coarse-shell ceramics may have been used preferentially for cooking vessels, the distinction between coarse and fine shell is not as straightforward as cooking vs. noncooking, and that coarse-shell pastes were used to manufacture vessels used in a wider range of contexts than fine-shell pastes. Furthermore, not all variation can be understood in terms of the mechanical or thermal properties usually emphasized in experimental studies.

A two-year mapping project at Fort Clark State Historic Site produced a 15-cm contour map of the Native American (Mandan and Arikara) earthlodge village and a planimetric map of that part of the historic district that lies above the Missouri River flood plain. Aerial photography and ground-level transit mapping detected more than 2,200 surface features at the site, including 86 earthlodges, 2 fur-trading posts, hundreds of storage and grave pits, and Euroamerican and Native American roads and trails. More than 80 percent of the site as mapped lies outside the fortification ditch of the Mandan/Arikara village. When we are trying to determine the potential impact on sites such as this one of such activities as nearby road construction, our recommendations must consider the broader context of the site, not simply the narrow spectrum provided by the settlement core area. A buffer zone as presently exists at Fort Clark is not only necessary to preserve its visual integrity but also to preserve the record of the activities that took place in its immediate vicinity.

In his interpretation of the introduction of the calumet ceremony into the southeastern U.S. in this journal, Brown (1989) has perpetuated a common error that the lithic nickname "catlinite" correctly describes any of the red Plains pipestones from the three well-known midwestern localities he cites. In truth, the mineralogy of each of the pipestones from those three geologic sources (provenances) are distinct from one another, and that of catlinite is diagnostic. Although most of the artifacts he evaluates are probably true catlinite, many of them might not be. Unless archaeologists know of what material an object is made, they do not know from where the material originated; thus they cannot know who obtained the material nor how the artifact reached its archaeological location (provenience).

In a recent article, Spielmann et al. (1990) cited Spanish abuse of Indian labor and food stores as a major cause of dietary change at Pecos Pueblo. Of equal or greater significance were Old World diseases, which reduced the population of Pecos and other Pueblos and which necessarily impacted subsistence strategies.