Karen Harry's study indicates that agricultural marginality is an unlikely explanation for ceramic specialization in the prehistoric U.S. Southwest. Economic theory provides an alternative model for the exchange of pottery for food.

A computer program for converting dates from the Mayan Long Count to the Gregorian calendar and vice versa is presented. The program also computes and prints the date's Julian Day Number, position in the Mayan Sacred Round, and Lord of the Night.

The development of social complexity at the Formative period site of Chalcatzingo, Morelos, Mexico, is traced through its effect on the distribution of variability in the anthropomorphic figurines found there. A new methodology for the analysis of stylistic data is applied. The implications of the character and timing of elite developments at Chalcatzingo are placed in the more general context of highland developments in central Mexico. It is suggested that complex society arose in the region primarily as a result of internal processes and that external stimulus from the Olmec area was relatively unimportant.

Unless the results of archaeological research are disseminated, the value of conducting that research is questionable. Mechanisms currently utilized by archaeologists to publish or otherwise distribute reports are inadequate to handle the number of reports being written. Archaeologists should begin utilizing the National Technical Information Service's abstracting and microfiche program. This program would publicize reports and make them available to interested archaeologists.

Since publication in 1955 of a comment by R. F. Heizer and the present author concerning fired clay figurines in California (Heizer and Pendergast 1955), some additional data have come to light which are suggestive of a need for revision of views on the distributional pattern of this trait on the Pacific Coast.

In March of 1956 Roscoe Barkhurst of Tulelake, California, submitted to the author for analysis 2 fragmentary figurines which had been collected at a site near Sara, Washington, in 1932.

Red Bird was a Cherokee murdered at the Red Bird River Petroglyph site (15Cy51) and buried at the Red Bird River Rockshelter (15Cy52) during the late eighteenth century, where he left an important record of traditional petroglyphs. His legacy is key to understanding the origins of Sequoyah's Cherokee Syllabary and its relationship to rock art. Personal testimonies of Red Bird's descendants are supported by primary documents and archaeological evidence, including the letters of Sequoyah's maternal uncle, John Watts, and prototypes of Cherokee Syllabary characters engraved at 15Cy52 in 1808, when members of Sequoyah's matrilineal family resided nearby.

The common assumption that Maya stelae record contemporaneity of carving, style, erection, and calendar date is challenged by evidence that shows instances in which (1) stylistic inconsistencies have been caused by alterations of a monument during different periods of time; (2) the latest recorded glyphic date is not the date of erection but rather the date of the latest completed alteration of the monument; (3) the practice of recarving and the associated innovations served as determinants of change in stylistic development. Physical evidence of the removal of carved elements and recarving is reviewed for carved wooden lintels at Tikal and stelae at Xultún, Yaxchilán, Uaxactún, Quiriguá Tikal, Naranjo, Piedras Negras, and Copán. Details of substela chambers, the placement of caches, the presence of multiple floors, and the condition of stela bases at Copán, Quiriguá, and Uaxactún indicate that stelae were raised in position as well as recarved. It is suggested that the period of the original erection of a monument is most closely related to the earliest date present, while the latest date present refers only to the latest completed alteration of the monument.

The Tennessee Division of Archaeology documented an extensive Paleoindian lithic quarry and workshop at the Sinclair site in Tennessee in 2008. We present the first detailed description of the lithic assemblage here, which focuses on aspects of its prismatic blade technology. Quantitative and qualitative attributes of 117 blades are assessed to characterize the assemblage and investigate human behaviors related to its formation. We then compare the blades from Sinclair to other blade assemblages. Blades at Clovis workshop sites are large and generally unstandardized. Mobile Clovis bands selected long, highly standardized blades from workshop sites, cached them as resource insurance, and crafted and used them as tools at campsites. The prismatic blade assemblage at Sinclair and other sites throughout the Midsouth suggests that this region played an important role in the development of prismatic blade technology at the end of the Pleistocene.

Midpassages are the most recognizable architectural feature associated with the entire Paleoeskimo period (2800 BC–AD 1300) in the Canadian and Greenlandic Arctic. Usually built of stone, midpassages are rectangular-shaped axial structures that run through the center of tent rings and semisubterranean house depressions. However, a unique triangular form of midpassage developed in association with the Late Dorset complex in the Boothia Peninsula area of the Canadian Arctic around AD 400. Unlike the rectangular-shaped varieties that were built contemporaneously across the Arctic, distribution of the triangular form is limited, and occurrences are rare. Initially, construction appears restricted to the Boothia Peninsula region, where the form persisted for the subsequent 400 years. After AD 900, they are found in Inglefield Land, Greenland, and a few other locations in the Canadian Arctic where they continued to be built until around AD 1200, representing an over 800-year period in a remarkably unvarying configuration. Further, these triangular midpassage structures very likely represent a regional architectural variant that moved northward with the Late Dorset diaspora after AD 800.