The Izabal zone is a physiographic region located near the southeastern frontier of the southern Maya lowlands. Its environment is compared with that of northeast Peten, a second region of the same culture area. Prehistoric settlement patterns of the 2 regions are compared and differences in distribution of settlements, estimated population densities and types of settlements are noted. These differences are related to various environmental and cultural factors.

Manually operated post-hole diggers have proven to be useful tools for sampling archaeological deposits in an area where surface collection of artifactual material is impossible. Post-hole diggers were used to locate areas of dense occupation debris around residential platforms in the periphery of Tikal, Guatemala. The post-holing of extensive areas as a technique for locating hidden construction was also tested, with positive results.

The future of American archaeology continues to be threatened by the destruction of sites by pot-hunters. Furthermore, there is no clear indication that relief is in sight, either by way of a reduction of pot-hunting or a concerted attack on the problem by archaeologists. Since a fatalistic attitude toward pot-hunters appears to have been, up to now, a self-fulfilling prophecy, McGimsey"s recent comments on the necessity of influencing public opinion and working for appropriate legislation are seen as both timely and critical for the future of American archaeology.

The criticisms raised by Donn T. Bayard against a proposed statistical law of culture are examined, and an attempt is made to refute them.

The historic Maya habit of abandoning a hut after the occupant's death, and the tendency to move communal sites, may be responses to population decimation and foreign political domination following breakup of the Mayapan hegemony. If so, it is doubtful that they should be projected back to the Classic Maya.

Most studies of trade in the Maya area of Mesoamerica have been descriptive examinations of exchanged objects and have relied heavily on ethnohistoric sources. This paper, on the other hand, relies mainly on archaeological data and offers several hypotheses about the socio-political significance of intra- and inter-community exchange systems.

It is proposed that in the relatively uniform environment of the Maya Lowlands, subsistence arti-facts and goods were generally exchanged within communities while prestige artifacts were exchanged between communities. This hypothesized situation is contrasted with the environmentally differentiated Mexican Highlands where subsistence items were traded widely. Following the theoretical leads of M. Coe, Webb, and Fried, we offer the hypothesis that prior to the introduction of foreign influences, the lack of differential access to basic resources among the ranked social groups of the Maya Lowlands did not stimulate the development of the state in this area.

Current interest among anthropologists in population size as a major independent variable makes it likely that attempts will be made to estimate the size of populations resident at various prehistoric sites at particular points in time in Mesoamerica. Such estimates are likely to depend on some notion of the average number of people resident in a single house. The problem of arriving at such a statistic is illustrated for the Classic Maya site of Tikal, Guatemala. A consideration of demographic data from Tikal and modern Yucatán Maya communities, as well as information on household composition in sixteenth century Yucatán are reviewed which suggests that it is best to assume that each individual dwelling within a prehistoric household group at Tikal was inhabited by an average of 5 people. This requires some slight modification of previously published population estimates for Tikal and Mayapan, which relied on a base figure of 5.6 people per house.

Obsidian has proved to be a difficult substance to photograph and various methods have been devised to render it opaque so that this may be more easily accomplished. The method described is simple and requires very inexpensive equipment.

Haviland's assertion that cognatic kinship organization is typical of Late Classic Maya is examined and matrilineal and double descent alternatives suggested. Lineages are suggested as represented in small residential groups at Tikal rather than clans.

A sample of North Cameroon Fulani pottery for which median ages of types are known is used to show that the frequencies of types in the archaeological record are in part a function of their respective life spans. This is of some significance in interassemblage comparisons.