In many regions, fluctuations have occurred through time in the local 14C activity of seawater. Evaluating these shifts and their effects on 14C age estimates is difficult, and, as a result, archaeologists working in coastal settings tend to preferentially date charcoal samples over shell. Our research on 18 charcoal–shell pairs from Puget Sound and Gulf of Georgia archaeological sites helps elucidate the spatial and temporal dynamics associated with marine reservoir effects in the Pacific Northwest. This analysis suggests that between 0 and 500 B.P. the regional correction value (ΔR) is 400 years, which agrees with the modern value determined by Stuiver and others. Between 500 and 1200 B.P., however, ΔR dips close to zero, possibly reflecting a decrease in offshore upwelling. From 1200 to 3000 B.P., ΔR returns to 400 years. These data are presented as a Puget Sound/Gulf of Georgia regional correction curve for the late Holocene, which local researchers may use to calibrate dates of marine shell. In addition, we detail our methods for constructing calibration curves and present guidelines for archaeologists working in other coastal settings to develop calibration curves for their regions.

Boyd (2004) questions the cultural association that we (Dunham et al. 2003:113) draw between burial mounds in central Virginia and the colonial era Monacan Indian people. We respond to Boyd's points, agree that any such interpretation be open to further discussion, but defend our cultural and historical interpretation as the most logical and parsimonious given the available data.

The burial of a young adult woman with a drilled molar tooth was excavated in 1965 in northern Arizona (Museum of Northern Arizona NA9099.B5; Pueblo IV, A.D. 1300–1600). The drilling angle and location suggest that the therapeutic or palliative procedure was done while the woman was alive, and probably in pain because the drilled hole occurred at the bottom of a large necrotic cavity involving about one quarter of the occlusal surface. The drilled hole exited at the crown-root junction near a small alveolar buccal abscess. With painful and unhealthy dental caries on the rise as dependency on agriculture increased through time, it is suggested that this case and one other mark the beginning practice of primitive technical dentistry in prehistoric western North America.

Dunham et al. (2003) propose a connection between Late Woodland accretional burial mounds in central Virginia and the historic Monacan Indians. However, the authors’ association of these mounds with the Monacans is not supported by available archaeological or ethnohistoric data.

The utility of gourds as fishnet floats was recently supported by experimental evidence (Hart et al. 2004). Additional lines of evidence are provided by archaeological and ethnographic work in Peru.