Archaeologically documented population aggregates are used to estimate the population of eastern North America around A.D. 1500 and by extension the entire continent north of heavily populated Mesoamerica. Occupied areas plotted from archaeological and historical information were increased by buffer areas with widths determined by average nearest neighbor distances. Population sizes assigned to these areas were based on three compilations of historic sources, each handled in various ways. Local densities were calculated and then used to interpolate density surfaces for a ca. 3.1 million km2 area. The surfaces were further modified by assessments of data quality and overall occupation intensity to provide upper and lower bounds for each estimate. The procedure, designed to produce a range that was overly wide, resulted in an eastern population between .5 and 2.6 million and a continental total, north of Mesoamerica, of 1.2 to 6.1 million. These figures fall in the lower third of current authoritative estimates for the continent as a whole, which range from 2.4 to 18 million.

A bottom-up approach based in structuralism and Marxism cast in the "old language of rights" is used to explain traditional Hawaiian import of metric tons of poor-quality oven stone to the Waimanalo Plain, and to explain decline in the traditional use of tree firewood. The presence of poor-quality oven stones and the pattern of tree firewood use are linked to a long-term decline in the importance of rights of person and a concomitant increase of rights of property associated with the demise of lineage organization and the development of social stratification. It is argued that a bottom-up approach is more productive in the current archaeological situation than a top-down approach based in functionalism and neoevolutionary theory.

This paper postulates that cultural entities with long term structural integrity are characterized by symmetrical relationships between and among the constituent sectors of society. We demonstrate how such social relationships are embedded in the symmetrical arrangements of motifs in geometric design. We test this premise with an analysis of 1000 years of ceramic design from the northern American Southwest, AD 600-1600, with a description of the continuities and changes in the plane pattern symmetries that structure design. Two major points of change in symmetry use at c. AD 900 and AD 1300 correlate with changes in settlement type from pithouses to unit pueblos and from unit pueblos to multi-storied plaza oriented pueblos that accompanied adjustments to changes in environmental conditions. We propose that in the American Southwest the predominant use of bifold symmetry is a structural metaphor for the reciprocal social relationships basic to the organization of small puebloan agricultural communities and that the changes in these symmetries reflect the changing integration of the household into an increasingly complex social system. This interpretation of the meaning of design structure is derived from cosmological principles embedded in 20th century ritual songs of the Hopi, descendents of the prehistoric puebloans, as well as depicted in images in their 15th century kiva wall murals. We present this interpretation of the sequence of pueblo development in the American Southwest in terms of the changing symmetrical nature of the social relationships that integrated the agricultural communities as an example of the insights possible with this new approach to design analysis.

This paper presents a multivariate statistical and spatial analysis of rock art site content and composition for the Didima Gorge, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. In presenting an experimental set of methodological approaches, the paper attempts to identify categories of rock art sites based on their image content and other archaeological characteristics, and then explores how these types might have related to various social, religious, and economic contexts in the past. The paper finds evidence for three kinds of rock art site use in the Didima Gorge: (1) large residential "home bases" that were centers of economic activity, (2) large unoccupied sites that were special locations for ritual activities, which the paper argues were sometimes the locations of puberty initiation, and (3) small isolated sites that were locations of private magical activities done by lone individuals. The central theme of this study is that there is clear evidence for diversity in terms of the contexts in which rock art sites in the Didima Gorge formed, and that no single account is adequate for their explanation.

While rock art is global in distribution, it remains a media fix in placed within particular physical environments. Because of this, it can be examined using various spatial approaches and technologies. By integrating a variety of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applications to examine the location and position of rock art in relation to both natural features and other archaeological deposits, a detailed understanding of the positioning of rock art can be advanced. In this case, I employ this methodology to address the presence that rock art exerted within the Emgidiano/Hulkuhku Chumash landscape of South-Central California. In so doing, I demonstrate that specific research questions concerning rock art in public or private contexts can be addressed, and that in this example, the pictographs of the Hulkuhku were visibly integrated within the intimate confines of the most important economic places in the landscape, showing that subsistence and symbolic practices were conjoined through ideological media.

A new cognitive model is proposed and applied to the analysis of the anthropomorphic-dominated paleoimagery or rock art of both the Archaic Barrier Canyon Style and the Basketmaker San Juan Style of the Colorado Plateau, including the attributes of headdresses and messengers. Under the cognitive model, the decision to execute rock art is culturally and historically conditioned; the interaction of narrative language and visual imagery takes precedence over hallucinatory and trance mechanisms. The cognitive model examines the interplay between perceptual imagery and stored mental imagery, both of which occur within the human cognitive system. Such an interplay arguably has been as important in the shaping of human cultures as the role of language. These Archaic and Basketmaker ecologies and cultures also may have developed group ritual, an early adoption not requisitely tied to the transition from a mobile hunter-gatherer ecology to an agricultural ecology. Such interpretations redefine the predominant images of the region's Archaic and Basketmaker anthropomorphic figures, bird-headed imagery, messenger spirits, supplication panels, and processional panels. The model reinstates the praejudico role that visual imagery plays in the construction of culture.

A number of researchers have shown that the abundance, diversity, and size of prey consumed or displayed at a feast can be used by elites to solidify and/or aggrandize their social position. Expectations for archaeological signatures of elite feasting—derived from ethnographic studies, archaeological research, and ecological theory—are used to assess the archaeofaunal record from selected contexts of the Marana platform mound site, located in southern Arizona. The magnitude of work conducted in the region provides a unique opportunity to address the importance of feasting as a mechanism of power consolidation among Hohokam elites. Here, we examine a hypothesized locus of elite feasting among the Classic period Hohokam (ca. A.D. 1250). A relatively high concentration of animal bone derived from a burned room adjacent to the Marana platform mound was first thought to represent debris from elite feasting. Analysis reveals a proportionate taxonomic profile that is similar to the remainder of the community and an overwhelming abundance of small game relative to large prey. Neither situation is consistent with elite feasting expectations. These results argue for a form of feasting among non-elites that likely served to promote intragroup solidarity or political support within the community.

Mobility is a common theme in Paleoindian research throughout North America including in the Great Basin. One recent model based on results from the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis of Paleoindian artifacts holds that early groups occupied geographically discrete foraging territories throughout the Great Basin during the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene, ca. 11,500–7500 radiocarbon years ago (14C B.P.), that covered between 46,000 and 107,000 km2. While this model is innovative, its implications regarding Paleoindian mobility are difficult to reconcile with our knowledge of foraging populations. In this article, I evaluate the model using XRF data for 260 Paleoindian projectile points from northwest Nevada. The results fail to support the hypothesis that a single, expansive foraging territory once covered the western Great Basin. However, when compared to a sample of 1,085 projectile points from later periods (ca. 7000 14C B.P. to the historic era), data from the Paleoindian sample indicate that the foraging territories of early groups differed from those of later groups living in the same region. I suggest that these dissimilarities reflect differences in how groups moved across the landscape and procured lithic raw materials.

"Assemblage" is a fundamental archaeological construct. By their composition, we interpret assemblages as expressions of activity or cultural identity. Yet they are not simple products of these factors alone but also of formation processes. Assemblages accumulated over varying spans, with varying combinations of tool types and discard rates. They are contexts for the playing out of complex relationships, not static types. This is a materialist view, against the essentialist view that assemblages are exemplars of ideal types (e.g., "base camps," "Quina Mousterian"). Materialism implies that their size and composition, fundamental assemblage characteristics, are correlated variables, not fixed properties, and that composition varies as size increases. I document size dependence consistent with materialism in Paleoindian and Paleolithic assemblages. Among ways to analyze size-dependent assemblage data, I apply "SHE analysis"—the joint study of assemblage richness, heterogeneity, and evenness—to gauge data’s fit to theoretical models. Archaeologists acknowledge size dependence, but we misapprehend it as a methodological bias of assemblage measures that must be suppressed when, in materialist perspective, it reveals meaningful relationships that an essentialist view cannot.

Clovis hunters of the North American Great Plains are known for their ability to hunt and scavenge mammoths. Less is known of their hunting strategies for other large animals, such as horse, camel, and bison, although remains of these animals have been found at several Clovis camps. Recent investigations of the Jake Bluff site on the southern Plains have identified a Clovis bison kill in an arroyo. The apparent use of an arroyo style trap for bison hunting provides the opportunity to study Clovis hunting strategies that came to be widely used during later Paleoindian times. The arroyo style bison trap is generally attributed to Folsom and later groups, and yet the Jake Bluff site yielded an association of Clovis-style projectile points with the remains of 22 Bison antiquus at the bottom of a short arroyo. The late date of 12,838 cal. BP suggests that the site spans the gap between the Clovis mammoth hunter and the Folsom bison hunter, indicating that some Clovis hunters developed the arroyo style bison trap to capture multiple bison at the same time, and as mammoths were extirpated from certain areas during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition.

Mound A is the largest platform mound at the Angel site (12VG1), a Middle Mississippian town along the Ohio River in southwestern Indiana, and consists of an upper and lower platform joined by an offset conical peak. Solid-earth cores, geophysical data, and 14C ages indicate that mound construction began at 900 B.P. by stacking 10–15 cm-thick turf blocks two meters high at the junction of the upper-lower platform and that by 890 B.P. the upper platform was built to nearly its full 8m height. The dates from Mound A are among the earliest recorded from the site, which implies that earthwork construction coincided with the initial occupation of the site and was among the first construction tasks undertaken. Cultural features associated with a structure partly buried under the conical offset on the upper platform of Mound A yielded 14C ages of 750–520 B.P., which show that the upper platform surface was probably used throughout occupation. As also occurred on Mound F (the only other platform mound investigated at the site), the Mound A structure was destroyed and covered with a fresh layer of fill just before site abandonment. This final filling episode to cap the mounds may have been part of a "ceremonial closing" of the site. The youngest dates from the structures buried on Mounds A and F, as well as others across the site, suggest that the Angel site was essentially abandoned by 500 B.P., which also corresponds with the abandonment of Mississippian sites throughout the region.

Hockett's (2005) examination of the faunal deposition rates at three sites in the Great Basin contains two fundamental errors. The rates are calculated using uncalibrated radiocarbon determinations, and ignores the fact that atmospheric radiocarbon has fluctuated through the millennia. Second, despite pronouncements on significant differences, no formal significance tests were done. This comment re-analyzes two of the sites discussed by Hockett using calibrated radiocarbon determinations and formal statistical significance tests.

This Comment interrogates claims made by Foster and Cohen (2007) regarding eighteenth-century Creek Indian hunting strategies. It argues that Foster and Cohen’s attempts to link the archaeological and ethnohistorical record are flawed because of their misreading of the latter. The "Comment" demonstrates that Creeks did not—contra Foster and Cohen (2007)—conduct large-scale hunts near their communities or frequently rely on fire-drives. Thus, pollen and charcoal samples gathered by Foster and Cohen (2007) from the neighborhood of those communities speak to activities other than hunting.

Hall's (this issue) comment to my paper published in American Antiquity five years ago (Hockett 2005) makes the following statements: (1) I calculated "depositional rates" for a series of Great Basin faunal assemblages; (2) my analysis did not account for atmospheric radiocarbon fluctuations; and (3) my paper argued "against an increase in hunting artiodactyls from the Middle to Late Holocene." He further argues that recalculation of the data I presented demonstrates that both large-and small-game hunting increased from the Middle to the Late Holocene. Hall is wrong on all accounts. I agree, however, that calibrated dates should now be used instead of the raw radiocarbon dates I used in my original paper. Using calibrated dates, however, does nothing to change the initial patterns I outlined five years ago. Three more recent papers (Hockett 2007, 2009; Hockett and Murphy 2009) on large game hunting in the Great Basin also corroborate my 2005 interpretations.

In response to Joshua Piker's (this issue) comment on our article (Foster and Cohen 2007), we point out that our article was a description of a test of a hypothesis. Piker's (this issue) criticism of our paper is grounded in the differences between historians and anthropological archaeologists. The historic literature that Piker (this issue) cited does not inform about whether or not Creek Indians hunted where we performed the sediment cores. It merely points out that Creek hunters may have hunted with greater frequency elsewhere. But that is irrelevant to our study, which tested whether the eighteenth-century deerskin trade increased the frequency of forest fires in a particular region. Archaeologists will benefit from using historical documents but archaeologists still have to be clear about the potential biases of those interdisciplinary data sources.

The rapidly growing archaeological literature on Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) reconstructions (e.g., Benson et al. 2007; Cooper 2008; Stahle et al. 2007) demonstrates the significant gains that can be made in explaining cultural developments in prehistory when appropriate climate data are available. Benson et al. (2009) added to this literature with an analysis of the climatic conditions associated with peak social complexity in the American Bottom. They focus on abundance of precipitation. We applaud their effort and offer an additional perspective on the development of social complexity using the same data, by highlighting the importance of variability in conditioning complexity.

The following reply to the comments by Nolan and Cook makes the following points. The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is not a measure of summer rainfall. Cahokia's "Big Bang" dates to the end of the Edelhardt phase and continued through the Lohmann phase. The "American Bottom" refers only to the Mississippi River floodplain in the vicinity of East St. Louis, and the exact nature of human response to climate change cannot be predicted from PDSI data alone.