The Sun River site (24CA74) near Great Falls, Montana, is significant because the six occupation levels span the millennia of notable climatic change from late Altithermal to Medithermal conditions. Informative paleoenvironmental data enhance the archaeological results. Sun River provides an important means for understanding prehistoric adaptations on the Northwestern Plains between 5200 and 3600 B.P.

A reply to Lewis Binford's criticism concerning my views on archaeological inference and the relationships of such inferences to various kinds of ethnoarchaeology, with special reference to the Australian data included in Binford's critique.

Few archaeologists would dispute the suggestion that the introduction of 14C dating into archaeological research has had a profound influence on the way in which prehistoric studies are conducted. Glyn Daniel, for example, has gone so far as to rank the development of the 14C method in the twentieth-century with the discovery of the antiquity of the human species in the nineteenth-century (Daniel 1967:266). Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the significant role played by the 14C method in contemporary archaeological investigations, no comprehensive, critical, historical review of the specific intellectual history and substantive characteristics of this impact, particularly in American archaeology, has been published.

Rapid shoreline regression and transgression along the western Gulf of Maine between 13,000 and 9000 years B.P. are inferred to have produced a nearshore marine environment low in biologic productivity. Paleo-Indians living near the coast of the Gulf were probably forced to rely on nonmarine resources landward of the late-glacial marine limit. Thus, Paleo-Indian sites of the time period in question may be restricted in the region between the marine limit and the postglacial low sea-level stand, or may be altogether absent.

The redating of the Laguna and Los Angeles Man skeletons by the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon method has shown that the Upper Pleistocene dates for these skeletons determined previously by the conventional radiocarbon method are probably incorrect. Using the revised ages for these skeletons to calibrate the aspartic acid racemization rate yields racemization ages for the Del Mar and Sunnyvale skeletons that are compatible with their AMS radiocarbon ages, a point that Taylor et al. (1985) fail to discuss.

A response is provided to Richard Gould's account of utilitarian variables in hunter-gatherer technology, especially his recent discussions of Binford's Nunamiut data.

A monarch who suffered many hours of discouragement, urged his courtiers to devise a motto short enough to be engraved on a ring, which should be suitable alike in prosperity and adversity. After many suggestions had been rejected, his daughter offered an emerald bearing in inscription in Arabic “This, too, will pass” [Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Little, Brown and Company 1937:509].

Behaviorism is but one part of the broader scope of ethnoarchaeological research and must be joined with historical approaches for proper understanding of the past.

In her review of Ethnography by Archaeologists edited by Elisabeth Tooker {American Antiquity 49:442-443), Patricia Gilman emphasized one aspect of ethnoarchaeology, behaviorism, and faulted many of the contributors for not presenting general explanations of human behavior. Gilman primarily stresses the synchronic study of modern behavior as an analog for past behavior. While this is certainly a worthwhile endeavor for ethnographers, to equate such research with all of ethnoarchaeology is, I think, unduly restricting the definition. Such research is simply ethnography, because it places the researcher as an observer and interviewer in modern communities, examining behavioral and physical relationships among modern data. Rarely do such studies place this research in any evolutionary or historical framework.

Dean's review (this issue) of my recent synthesis of Anasazi prehistory clearly identifies him as a member of the school of thought I sought to criticize.

Tainter and Lucas misunderstand my position toward site significance evaluation. The source of their confusion is discussed, and comments expanding upon their discussion of the significance concept and its use are presented.

Wiessner's analysis of stylistic variation in San arrows entails valuable ethnoarchaeological observation and insight. But her evidence contradicts the iconological theory she imposes upon it, whereby San artisans are thought to purposefully invest their products with ethnic symbolism in order to transmit social information to various target populations. However, an alternative view, according to which the arrows simply exhibit the ethnic style latent in all isochrestic behavior (see Sackett 1982), is consistent both with their formal variation and with the commonplace ethnic symbolism that the San themselves are reported to read into them. This view also provides a more reasonable explanation than does the iconological theory of why stylistic distinctions fail to emerge among San bands engaged in risk-sharing strategies. In any event, isochrestism is the basic source of ethnic style in material culture. Iconicism is a special case and ought not be invoked unless specific expectations are met by the evidence.

In 1954, nineteen years after the founding of the Society for American Archaeology and four years after President Harry S Truman signed its enabling legislation, the National Science Foundation (NSF) inaugurated a Program of support for ”Anthropology and Related Sciences,” which expended its entire research budget for that year on two awards. Dr. Gordon Willey of Harvard University received a one year grant of $11,500 to examine “Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Maya Area” and Dr. Robert Braidwood, University of Chicago, was provided with $23,500 to be expended over a three-year period to conduct “Human Population Studies in the Fertile Crescent.”

Isochrestic behavior as Sackett describes it is recognized to be one of the important sources of variation in material culture. The behavioral bases for isochrestic variation and for what I describe as stylistic variation are contrasted and some of their implications for variation in material culture are discussed. Kalahari San projectile points are then reexamined within the framework of isochrestic and stylistic behavior using both historical and contextual data. It is concluded that variation in San projectile points better fits the expectations of stylistic than isochrestic behavior, at least with our current understanding of isochrestic behavior.

Archaeologists, as explorers and discoverers, have maintained the myth of objective research far longer than have researchers in other social science disciplines. Focused on action, the “cowboys of science” (Alaskan bumper sticker 1981) have dabbled little in self-reflective criticism.

Now at 50, however, the discipline is becoming aware that our notions of the past, our epistemologies, our research emphases, the methods we employ in our research, and the interpretations we bring to and distill from our investigations, are far from value-neutral.

Anthropology, along with chemistry, geology, physics, medicine, and mathematics, consists of scientific modes of inquiry and techniques that have application for the public good beyond the boundaries of the respective disciplines. Within the past few decades the application of these sciences has emerged as a major force in scientific police investigations. The methods and techniques of archaeology are increasingly being applied by physical anthropologists and police investigators to the excavation of bodies buried during the course of criminal activity. It is argued that the potential for substantive and methodological contributions to archaeology, as well as to the criminal justice system, warrants increased participation and support of forensic research by forensically trained professional archaeologists.

The calculation of populations supported by relic raised fields in Mexico and the role of intensive agriculture by the Classic lowland Maya are clarified.

To aid in the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for American Archaeology and its journal, American Antiquity, I was invited to address myself to “Unsolved Problems in New World Culture History.” I have agreed to do this, but, with the editor's indulgence, I would like to rephrase the title as I have, for I think that the word “continuing” more accurately captures the sense of the situation and where our interests lie. As all of us are aware, there are many unsolved problems in Precolumbian culture history—“more holes than cheese,” as the saying goes—but I think I should take a look at some of those with which we are most familiar.