The 168 metal artifacts collected at Machu Picchu in 1912 by Hiram Bingham have been examined for evidence that metallurgical artificers worked at this site in pre-Columbian times. Fifteen artifacts have been identified as metal stock, work in progress, or waste materials from metallurgical processes. Bronze was made by alloying metallic tin and copper and was cast into both finished objects and stock for subsequent forging. Hammering was done with stone tools, but bronze chisels were also in use. Silver-copper alloys were worked, but this material was not held to compositional limits as close as those for bronze. No alloys containing arsenic and relatively little evidence of the use of sheet metal were found.

An accelerator date of 1775 ± 100 B.P. obtained from a maize (Zea mays) kernel from the Icehouse Bottom site in eastern Tennessee is the most convincing early date for maize in eastern North America.

By comparing thin sections of basalt artifacts from three early and middle Holocene Aleutian sites with geological samples, we can infer the location of the artifactual rock source or sources. Contrary to the sources, the comparison shows that the basalt artifacts came from a single flow or closely related flows 15-30 km from all three sites. This finding suggests we should reassess the role of cultural continuity, trade, and exchange in the early and middle Holocene of the Aleutians.

The chipped stone industry of Cihuatan and Santa Maria, Postclassic sites of north-central El Salvador, is discussed briefly in terms of behavioral/technological typology. The industry was based almost exclusively on obsidian and emphasized specialized production of prismatic blades. Source determinations by X-ray fluorescence and neutron activation analysis of 20 obsidian specimens from Cihuatan indicate that at least three highland Guatemalan sources supplied obsidian to the site. Twelve specimens are attributed to the Ixtepeque source, seven to El Chayal, and one to San Martín Jilotepeque. The multiple-source procurement pattern is interpreted as a hedge against the fragility of Postclassic sociopolitical alliances and shifting exchange networks.

The water control system at Hierve el Agua, Oaxaca, originally described by Neely (1967), has been widely accepted as an early example of crop irrigation. Various lines of evidence including chemical analysis of the water support an alternative hypothesis that the canals and terraces were designed for salt production through solar evaporation.

New data from two sites in the municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, indicate that the practice of pecking petroglyphs in West Mexico is older than it has been possible to establish in previous studies. Petroglyphs at the La Coba site appear firmly dated to the Los Cocos phase (A.D. 200-600), and petroglyphs at the El Conchal site seem attributable to the Early Ixtlan phase (300 B.C.-A.D. 200) occupation. Hypotheses are offered regarding stylistic evolution of the pecked designs and their interpretation.

Based on examination of an extensive phytolith reference collection of domesticated and nondomesticated plants, it was determined that spheroidal and hemispheroidal phytoliths with deeply scalloped surfaces of contiguous concavities can be used as indicators of selected varieties of squash in archaeological sites in the central United States. Based on this classification and the distribution of the wild buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima), squash was identified in prehistoric sites in Nebraska and Arkansas.

The Mexican ("Aztec") 365-day calendar and the Western Maya (Yucatec) 365 day calendar in use at the time of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and the Yucatan have an invariable relation to each other. The first nine mesomonths (named 20-day intervals) of the Yucatec 365-day calendar are coterminous with the last nine mesomonths of the "Aztec" calendar. The proof reconfirms the validity of the modified Thompson (584,283) correlation between Mesoamerican and European calendars.

Specimens of desiccated Chenopodium berlandieri ssp. jonesianum from Cloudsplitter and Newt Kash Rock-shelters in Menifee County, eastern Kentucky yielded accelerator dates of 3450 ± 150 B.P. and 3400 ± 150 B.P., respectively, extending the known age of this prehistoric domesticate by 1,000 years.

Marie Cottrell's recent (1985) proposal that prehistoric long distance exchange of jasper occurred between the California coast and inland deserts is most unlikely in light of the presence of abundant secondary siliceous sediment sources (including jasper) along the nearby southern California coast. The obsidian hydration based site chronology at Tomato Springs, founded on non-source provenienced obsidian, is equally problematic. A number of other lesser potential fallacies serve to undermine the assumption of long distance transport of a raw material that was available locally.

National Register of Historic Places criterion (d) for significance is based solely on the theoretical and substantive knowledge of the discipline. Archaeologists continue to misuse and abuse the term and do not understand its meaning in terms of the cultural resource management process. In so doing, archaeologists often place federal agencies and state historic preservation offices in a quandary as to proper management decisions. Misuse of the concept of significance in the formulation of a research design may seriously jeopardize or curtail making important contributions to the discipline. In addition, the failure to understand the concept of significance may not provide the basis for rational decisions concerning data redundancy, collection strategies, predictive modeling, and mitigation. Problems are compounded when archaeologists employed by federal and state agencies do not understand significance and the cultural resource management process.

Recent research has resolved problems surrounding the chronology and archeobotanical record of the Salts Cave Vestibule. Formerly, widely disparate radiocarbon dates made assignment of the site to either the Late Archaic or Early Woodland period equally problematic. Eight new radiocarbon determinations from Vestibule charcoal indicate an occupation in the first millennium B.C., confirming an assignment to the Early Woodland period. Previous analyses of carbonized plant remains from stratified deposits in the Vestibule indicated that the domestication of two native plants, sumpweed and sunflower, preceded the introduction of cucurbits into this part of the Eastern Woodlands. Data from other Midwestern sites have contradicted this generalization. A recent analysis of a second series of archeobotanical samples indicates that cucurbits were present at Salts Cave as early as the domesticated native annuals. These new data render the archeobotanical record of Salts Cave less anomalous than previously, and support the currently accepted reconstructions of prehistoric subsistence change in the Eastern Woodlands.

Based on published lexicostatistical dates, two intervals in the prehistory of southern Mesoamerica stand out as fertile periods in terms of the generation of new languages: the Terminal Preclassic/early Early Classic Periods, and the Early Postclassic Period. After comparing archaeological evidence with language distributions within the subregions of southern Mesoamerica during the first of these periods, we conclude that the cultural processes during both periods had the same potential for producing rapid rates of linguistic divergences. Just as rapid proliferation of linguistic divisions was symptomatic of the well-known collapse of Late Classic Maya civilization, so it can be taken as a sign of a collapse of Terminal Preclassic civilization. Both collapses were characterized by severe population reductions, site abandonments, an increasing balkanization in material culture, and disruption of interregional communication networks, conditions that were contributory to the kind of linguistic isolation that allows language divergences. Unlike in the Terminal Classic collapse episode, small refuge zones persisted in the Early Classic Period that served as sources of an evolving classicism; these refuge zones were exceptions, however, not the rule. Although the collapse of each site had its own proximate cause, we suggest that the enormous geographical range covered by these Early Classic Period site failures points to a single ultimate cause affecting the area as a whole, such as the onset of a prolonged and devastating climatic change.

This paper critically assesses Cottrell's model of prehistoric exchange of jasper said to have been transported through the Mojave Desert to the Tomato Springs site in coastal southern California. We point out numerous conceptual and analytical errors which cast doubt on Cottrell's interpretation of the Tomato Springs site as a control center for the importation, production, and trade of this supposedly nonlocal material. Cottrell has not demonstrated a desert origin for the jasper found at Tomato Springs, and thus has no grounds for testing any of Renfrew's distance-decay models. The presence of local natural sources of jasper better explains the occurrence of this mineral at Tomato Springs and nearby sites.

A recent article by Rogers (1986) hypothesized that spurred end scrapers were a temporally diagnostic artifact indicating Paleoindian occupation in Kansas. Examination of the distribution of this artifact in northeastern Colorado indicates that, besides being a part of Paleoindian assemblages, it also occurs in Middle Archaic (McKean complex) and Dismal River contexts.

Two prehispanic South American animal domesticates, the cavy Cavia porcellus and muscovy duck Cairina moschata, are identified from the later prehistoric occupations of Salango, Manabi province, Ecuador. Possible implications, raised by their presence in an area that is known to have participated in an ancient and widespread trade network, are briefly discussed.

In presenting a case for the viability of llamas on the desert coast of northern Peru in prehispanic times, Shimada and Shimada (1985) suggest that alpacas might also have been adapted to the coastal environment. Alpacas are primarily wool producers however, best adapted to the high altitude pasturelands of central and southern Peru. Wool yarn used in coastal textiles, it is argued, was imported from the highlands. While coastal llama herding is an aspect of regional self-sufficiency, alpaca wool yarn was important in the long distance exchange networks which, in later Andean prehistory, distributed rare materials and products for elite consumption.