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The Upper and post-Pleistocene prehistory of man in Africa is highly complex, and a number of problems remain unsolved. The meaning of the Omo finds in relation to other late Middle or early Upper Pleistocene assemblages from southern Africa is uncertain, as is the significance of later fossil human remains which have been termed “Boskopoid.” The origin of the African Negro is another question, difficult to answer on the basis of evidence at hand. These problems are reviewed in the light of new dating and fresh study of key fossils.

IN THIS ESSAY, I will focus on inferences about the size of prehistoric populations based on estimates of the quantity of space utilized by those populations. I wish to recognize at the outset that there are many other data bases that have been employed by archaeologists in making inferences about prehistoric demography. While I do not intend to question the validity of alternative data bases for making paleo-demographic inferences, there are reasons why I believe that utilized space is potentially our most significant data base. Let us consider some of the alternatives. (1) Simulation models. Simulation models are powerful tools for gaining insight into the demography of prehistoric populations. Yet, if the implications of such models are to be tested, a means of making direct inferences about the population of prehistoric groups is needed. (2) Burial populations. Burial populations are likely to remain the data base from which the most comprehensive demographic inferences can be made. However, there are many areas of the world in which burial populations are so rare that one cannot count on using this data base. In addition, Cook (1972) and Baker and Sanders (1973) have identified a number of significant limitations on the utility of burial data. (3) Biomass, ecofacts. There is no reason to doubt that demographic inferences can be made utilizing the biomass of the area in which a site (or sites) is located. Nor is there any reason to doubt the utility of ecofactual data, controlling for differential preservation. But, so many of the questions that archaeologists are asking and so many of the explanatory models we are employing include statements relating demographic variables and variables that measure biomass or subsistence, that utilizing these data as a base for inferences about population places severe restrictions on the kinds of explanatory propositions that one can entertain. For, if biomass has been used in making inferences about the size of prehistoric populations, any discussion of the relationship between population and biomass becomes hopelessly circular. (4) Artifacts. The use of the number of artifacts found at a site or in a region to make inferences about population has similar limitations. Changes in the number of artifacts are indeed related to the number of people who occupied a site or area, but to specialization and the organization of work in a society as well. Thus, the many anthropological theories that relate demographic change and change in the organization of work become inaccessible as a result of circularity when this data base is employed. Site counts, room counts, the quantity of roofed space and other measures of utilized space are likely to remain the most common empirical base for demographic inferences. Appropriate data are available in any archaeological situation. The existence of relationships between utilized space and the number of individuals utilizing it has been established (for example, by Cook and Heizer 1965; Naroll 1962; Stewart and Warntz 1967). And, the use of this data base involves us in no circularities.

Editor's note: Throughout the 1960's Jeffrey Radley was engaged in research on the Mesolithic sites of the southern Pennine area. A report on his excavations at Deepcar was published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society for 1964 (Radley and Mellars 1964) and accounts of further fieldwork undertaken in collaboration with F. Hepworth and G. Marshall appeared in various issues of theYorkshire Archaeological Journaland theDerbyshire Archaeological Journal(Radley and Marshall 1963, 1965; Radley 1967, 1968). Shortly before his death in 1970 he was preparing a general article summarizing the present state of knowledge concerning the ‘Narrow Blade’ microlithic industries of the Pennines, and incorporating reports on the excavation of three previously unrecorded sites which fall clearly into this Narrow Blade group. One of the chief aims of this article was to draw attention to the typological diversity which can be observed within the later Mesolithic industries of northern Britain, and to contrast these assemblages with the ‘Broad Blade’ industries as represented at the sites of Deepcar and elsewhere.

This report discusses the various kinds of data that are recoverable from the analysis of human coprolites and demonstrates how these techniques are applied to the specific analysis of prehistoric human coprolites recovered from site 41 VV 162 in southwest Texas. The data from these 43 coprolite samples are used to: (1) reconstruct aboriginal diet patterns in southwest Texas between 800 B.C. and A.D. 500; (2) predict specific periods of seasonal site occupancy; (3) distinguish between pollen resulting from the eating of certain plant foods and background pollen resulting from the normal pollen rain; and (4) make limited generalizations concerning the regional paleoenvironment between 800 B.C. and A.D. 500.

Fred T. Plog. The Study of Prehistoric Culture Change. New York: Academic Press, 1974. xii + 199 pp. Figures, tables, appendices, references, and index. $11.50.

Summary The author spent some years investigating the Iron Age of southern Zambia, while employed as Keeper of Prehistory at the Livingstone Museum. He has recently been appointed Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northern Illinois University. The Early Iron Age village site at Kabondo Kumbo represents a subsistence settlement of the late first millennium A.D. In addition to a relatively rich material culture and ceramic inventory, excavation uncovered a series of hut sites, one of which retained sufficient of the wall posts to allow description of a sub-rectangular poler-and-daga structure, two metres square. Abundant evidence of iron-smelting was discovered and there may have been an open bowl bloomery furnace. Kabondo Kumbo fits well into the sequence of Early Iron Age villages known from the Victoria Falls region and it is possible to reconstruct a fairly complete picture of the related culture-history for this part of Zambia. A material culture based upon a simple technology in mixed-agricultura...

Forty-six prehistoric human fecal samples (coprolites) were submitted to the Texas A&M University Anthropological Research Laboratories for pollen analysis. Fourteen types of non-economic or background pollen were recognized, as were 12 types of economic or ceremonial pollen. Based on pollen percentages and ethnographic analogies, determinations of probable dietary habits and seasonality of fecal deposition were attempted on 39 coprolite samples, with the majority of samples apparently representing the spring/summer season.

THERE IS A LONG HISTORY of interest in the study of extinct populations, sometimes called "prehistoric demography" or "archaeological demography." Most studies have focused on regional population size and trends through time and their explanation. Analyses of a single population at one community are rare. This paper discusses one effort at assessing the dynamics of population at one prehistoric community, the Grasshopper Pueblo, located in east-central Arizona. A long range program of archaeological research is being conducted at the site by the University of Arizona through the Archaeological Field School. This program is sponsored jointly by the Department of Anthropology and the Arizona State Museum and has been supported by the National Science Foundation since 1965. The Grasshopper Ruin, a fourteenth century pueblo, is an example of what some have called "Late Mogollon" or "Prehistoric Western Pueblo" culture. It consists of several main room clusters separated by a presently intermittent stream and surrounded by smaller groupings of rooms. There are approximately 500 rooms at the site. Space does not permit a discussion of the range of problems that we are attempting to solve in our research nor the sampling design. But one aspect of our work, the "Cornering-Growth Project," has provided us with the relative construction sequences for all the rooms at the community. These data provide a basis for a study of population dynamics. We may now describe the Grasshopper Ruin as a masonry pueblo of about 500 rooms distributed among 12 room blocks and 21 smaller groupings of rooms and construction units. The main part of the site consists of three large room blocks located on either side of the original channel of the intermittent stream. On the east side is Room Block 1 with 93 rooms; the west unit consists of 2 room blocks, Room Block 2 on the west bank of the stream with 92 rooms and the Great Kiva, and Room Block 3 with 99 rooms. Together, these room blocks bound the larger Plaza I and the smaller Plaza II. Access from the exterior was through two corridors, one to the south of Plaza I, and another to the east of Plaza II. Additional room blocks and smaller units of rooms are located adjacent to the 3 largest room blocks and on the surrounding low hills. The initial construction at the site took place in the last quarter of the 13th century. This we call the establishment period, A.D. 1275-1300. Following this, massive construction was carried out at the site. This period we label the expansion period and it appears to date from A.D. 1300 to A.D. 1330. Well more than half of the tree-ring dates from Grasshopper cluster during this period, and many of the central three-room blocks on either side of the stream were built by A.D. 1330. For example, the corridor south of the Plaza I was roofed in 1320, indicating that the construction had proceeded in the southern parts of Room Blocks 1 and 2 to that point. Dating of the building sequence after A.D. 1330 is less secure, but many of the outliers seem to have been built after this time. We have been fairly successful in controlling the time of construction and the relative time of abandonment for the 70 rooms we have excavated to date.

The historic bows and arrows of the San Bushmen of southern Africa are described. The arrows include bone pointed examples and others in which the head consists of two microliths set in mastic at an angle and back to back against a wooden foreshaft so that the tips at the distal end are juxtaposed and the cords of the lunates combine to form a broad, sharp cutting edge. Archaeological finds from sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt strongly suggest these historic reed and sometimes wooden shafted arrow forms are surviving variants of traditional patterns that may be 15,000 years old. Ethnographic and historical data when used in context have more than a general relevance for interpreting prehistoric technology and related behaviour., Flèches et arcs des San Bushmen de l'Afrique du Sud à l'époque historique sont décrits ici. Les têtes de flèches sont de deux types : à pointes en os ou à microlithes. Les microlithes sont insérés et maintenus par du bitume dos à dos dans une hampe en bois ; leurs extrémités distales sont juxtaposées ; leurs bords rectilignes assemblés pour former un tranchant large et acéré. Les découvertes archéologiques faites en Afrique subsaharienne et en Egypte suggèrent fortement que les flèches de l'époque historique à hampe en roseau ou plus rarement en bois sont des survivances de types traditionnels qui peuvent remonter à 15.000 ans. Les données ethnographiques et historiques replacées dans leur contexte peuvent être d'une grande utilité pour la compréhension de la technologie préhistorique et des comportements qui lui sont associés., Desmond Clark J. Interpretations of Prehistoric Technology from Ancient Egyptian and other Sources. Part II : Prehistoric arrow forms in Africa as shown by surviving examples of the traditional arrows of the San Bushmen. In: Paléorient, 1975, vol. 3. pp. 127-150.

A series of hypotheses concerning the subsistence role of prehistoric sunken field agriculture are developed and evaluated in light of distributional studies of sunken fields along the entire Peruvian coast and excavations at one sunken field locality in the Chilca Valley. Our data suggest that (1) sunken fields occupy distinctive natural topographic lows; (2) sunken field agriculture developed late in the prehispanic sequence; (3) sunken field cultivation was a minor field system which, except at Chilca, was never extended to anywhere near the limits of its small potential; and (4) the factors which stimulated the initial construction of sunken fields at Chilca remain poorly understood. SUNKEN FIELDS are old agricultural plots found at several localities on the Peruvian desert coast (Fig. 1). They have been formed by excavating a planting surface to a depth close enough to the watertable so that moisture is available to seeds and plants without the necessity for irrigation canals. Documentary sources indicate that such fields were being cultivated in the Chilca Valley and in the Pampa de Villacuri (Pisco-Ica Valley) during the mid-sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (Rowe 1969; Armillas 1961; Cieza de Leon 1959; Vasquez de Espinosa 1948). Published reports in more recent times have described similar abandoned fields at the mouth of the Viru Valley (Willey 1953) and near the ancient urban center of Chan Chan at the mouth of the Moche Valley (Tello 1942). In Viru the proximity of sunken fields to prehispanic residential sites suggested a dating of their construction and use to near the end of the first millennium A.D. In the adjacent Moche Valley, the close proximity of sunken fields to the Chan Chan ruins suggested a similar age.

SummaryExcavation of a headland on the north coast of Cyprus has revealed a neolithic settlement with well-preserved stone buildings which belong to one stage of a multiphase site. Evidence was obtained for changes in architecture, definable growth patterns and, in Cypriot terms, deeply stratified deposits with painted pottery that clearly links the early Troulli and the Sotira styles. Eighteen structures, many re-built two or three times, two winding passages and open yards were located in such deep, artificial hollows that the settlement may be considered as partly subterranean. Groups of houses were arranged in sectors, in one case divided by an uninterrupted 4 m. wide ridge. A series of Carbon-14 determinations indicates the fourth millennium for this phase; its predecessor was defended by an impressive 4·5 m deep ditch. Faunal and floral analyses disclose a range of domesticated species suggestive of a lively agricultural, rather than fishing-based, mixed economy. As a result of associated surveys, many unexcavated sites may now be placed in the datedVrysiframework and a start made to the definition of neolithic settlement patterns on the north coast. The connections oVrysiwith excavated sites necessitates a reassessment of the prehistory of fifth-fourth millennia Cyprus which seems to be characterized by cultural continuity, regionalism and, the island's isolation.

The post‐nuptial residential practices of hunting and gathering peoples have recently been the subject of some controversy. While some have maintained that prehistoric hunters and gatherers were probably virilocal for the most part, other investigators believe that a more flexible approach to residence would have been adaptively favourable. Because of the contact period disruption of these societies, the answers to such questions will depend largely on the work of prehistorians. A variety of techniques developed by archaeologists and physical anthropologists for the study of residential patterns in prehistoric hunting and gathering societies are briefly reviewed, and an approach focusing on craniometric variability is described and illustrated.

The subject of this note is the chronology of the site of Khirokitia in Cyprus in the light of four recent radiocarbon determinations. Khirokitia has remained one of the most extensively uncovered prehistoric sites in the Levant since its initial excavation over thirty years ago (Dikaios 1953). The fourth millennium BC date then estimated for the site by Dikaios was revised markedly upwards to the mid-sixth millennium following the submission of samples for radiocarbon dating (Dikaios 1962). The fourth millennium estimate had assumed a stratigraphical continuity between the pre-dominantly aceramic occupation of the site and the appearance of well-made pottery in its upper-most levels. Since the radiocarbon samples were taken from aceramic contexts, Dikaios subsequently concluded that the pottery was the product of a re-occupation of the site in the fourth millennium bc, a date based on the ceramic parallels with and the radiocarbon dates from the site at Sotira (Dikaios 1962, 194).This conclusion is borne out by a re-examination of the published evidence and, less conclusively perhaps because of its limited nature, by the evidence of a small sounding at the site undertaken by the author in 1972 (Stanley Price and Christou 1973). The four main aims of this 2 m square sounding included further observation of the aceramic-ceramic stratigraphy and the collection of additional radiocarbon samples in an attempt to determine the duration of the aceramic occupation.

The study of prehistoric cities has often been marked by research strategies that focus completely on urban centers and thus preclude the delineation of entire settlement systems by ignoring the interrelationships between cities and their rural sustaining communities. A major focus of recent research in the Moche Valley on the Peruvian North Coast has been on elucidating the nature of urbanrural relations between the prehistoric Chimu city of Chan Chan and contemporaneous sites located in its hinterland. Excavation at the village of Cerro la Virgen together with additional evidence obtained from other sites in Chan Chan's rural sustaining area has provided insights into Chimu lifeways in nonmetropolitan areas, as well as evidence suggesting a multifaceted plan for organizing lands outside the civic center of Chan Chan. The archaeological data indicate that an important aspect of the organization of rural argicultural zones was the restriction of settlement to villages circumscribed by the Chimu state.

Quartzose temper sands included within fired clay bodies of certain prehistoric potsherds from Tonga and the Marquesas have mineralogical compositions wholly different from those of indigenous sands that occur as temper in other potsherds from the same sites but are indistinguishable from sands in potsherds collected from the Rewa Delta of Viti Levu in Fiji.

Ever since the publication of Gordon Childe's Danube in Prehistory, almost fifty years ago, the first neolithic colonisation of temperate Europe through the Balkans has been one of the cornerstones of European prehistory. There is still a consensus of opinion in most of the recent literature on the general character of this process: that it involved the transmission of farming techniques and probably the movement of groups of peoples—the first farmers. Farming was ‘carried into central Europe up the Danube … a stone-using agricultural peasantry was widely established in eastern Europe by 5000 B.C.’ (Piggott 1965, 46). However, it has been extremely difficult to proceed beyond this kind of general statement, because there is still an alarming shortage of detailed economic evidence from early neolithic sites in the Balkans. Plant remains and animal bones have been reported from neolithic sites scattered across the area (Murray 1970; Renfrew 1973), but in many cases the recovery of this kind of economic evidence was not the primary objective of excavation and, as a result, the methods employed to gather such evidence have rarely been sufficiently refined to meet the stringent requirements of modern faunal and plant analysis. Alexander (1972, 34) noted recently that, in the case of the First Neolithíc of Yugoslavia, ‘there is as yet no detailed analysis of the animmal bones from any site’ and adequate faunal and botanical reports from early neolithic excavations are still all too few in the Balkan area as a whole.

Pushkar, near Ajmer, Rajasthan, lies in the dry zone to the east of the Indian desert. In the vicinity there is evidence for three arid phases, during the latter part of the Pleistocene, each repre...

Assuming that aboriginal behavior was recorded on chipped-stone implements and debitage, and assuming that the analyst can train himself to recognize and interpret that record, then a classificatio...

Italy, like several other areas of prehistoric Europe, enjoyed a flourishing ‘Copper Age’— a period when objects of copper but not of bronze were in use, although not plentifully, and when various other changes in custom and material culture occurred, including transformations in the conventions of burial. These changes, like many in European prehistory, are often explained in terms of the ‘diffusion’ of ‘cultural influences’ from more advanced areas, notably the Aegean, or by the arrival of new groups of people from that region who would, it is sometimes thought, have set up ‘colonies’.

The Murray site (5 BL 65) “is a tundra game drive near the summit of Mount Albion, Boulder County, Colorado. Rock walls and lines of cairns at the site were used in driving large grazing animals fr...

Archaeological excavations at Santa Rosa Wash (northern Papago Indian Reservation) in Arizona disclosed the existence of at least one large prehistoric water reservoir constructed about A.D. 1000. The methods and inferences which support this identification are reviewed. Particular attention is given to a functional reconstruction of the reservoir. Attention is also directed to the possible existence of other such structures in the desert areas of southern Arizona.

SummaryThe morphology of a group of settlement sites in North West Wales is used to demonstrate an application of Numerical Taxonomy. Using average link cluster analysis 83 out of a total of 285 known sites are grouped into seven morphological classes which provide a basis for further analysis and interpretation.

Masca 1970 Bone from domestic and wild animals: crystallographic differences. Masca Newsletter 6(1):2. University of Pennsylvania. 1973 Technique for determining animal domestication based on study of thin sections of bone under polarized light. Masca Newsletter 9(2): 1. University of Pennsylvania. MacNeish, R. S., A. Nelken-Turner, and A. G. Cook 1970 Second annual report of the Ayacucho archaeological-botanical project. Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology, Andover. Pollard, Gordon C. 1970 The cultural ecology of ceramic stage settlement in the A tacama Desert. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Anthropology, Columbia University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. 1971 Cultural change and adaptation in the central Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Nawpa Pacha 9:41-64. 1972 Sedentism and desert adaptation in N. Chile. Paper presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Bal Harbor. 1975 Prehistory and desert adaptation in northern Chile: the ceramic stage of the middle Rio Loa region. Part I, Settlement and ecology. State University of New York Press, Albany. Pollard, Gordon C., and Edward P. Lanning n.d. Prehistory and Desert Adaptation in northern Chile: the ceramic stage of the middle Rio Loa region. Part II, Artifacts and Non-artifactual Analyses. In preparation. Reed, Charles A. 1963 Osteo-archaeology. In Science in archaeology, edited by D. Brothwell and E. Higgs, first edition, pp. 204-216. Basic Books, New York. Wing, Elizabeth S. 1971 Utilization of animal resources in the Peruvian Andes. Final report to the National Science Foundation. mimeographed.

Prehistoric shell middens from Estero Morua, near Puerto Penasco on the Gulf of California, are examined as a reflection of the ecology of the estero at approximately A.D. 1200. A measure o...

Fredrick Johnson, ed. Chronology and Irrigation. Volume Four of The Prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley. Richard S, MacNeish, series editor. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972. xi + 290 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, bibliography and index. $15.00.

E. S. Higgs, ed. Papers in Economic Prehistory. Studies by Members and Associates of the British Academy Major Research Project in the Early History of Agriculture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. x + 219 pp. Illustrations, figures, tables, bibliography and index. $15.50.

During the 1973 field season at the Grasshopper Ruin, a systematic sampling of wall faces was undertaken as the first step toward a site-wide analysis of wall composition. Our aim was to provide insights into the prehistoric behavioral patterns involved in the exploitation of building stones. In addition to the local outcrops of Naco and Supai Formations, all walls of rooms excavated during the 1973 season and some of the walls left exposed from the previous seasons were extensively sampled. A comparison of outcropping rocks and wall stones permitted tracing the overwhelming majority of masonry stones to four major outcrops, all located within one mile of the site.Some walls were found to be composed predominantly of one stone type while others exhibited a wide range of diversity. The behavioral implications of the statistical figures presented are discussed. A simple model incorporating distance and energy-time variables is presented in order to account for the observed pattern of lithological ut...

In the last decade the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic has undertaken a number of projects to develop the economy of the country. The most important of these has been the construction of a dam on the Euphrates at Tabqa (fig. 1), 40 km upstream from Raqqa. This project will bring great economic benefits to Syria but, as the valley behind the dam fills with water, many ancient sites will be drowned. Because very little was known about the archaeology of this stretch of the Euphrates the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums in Syria organised an international programme of surveys and excavations to recover as much information as possible about past human settlement in the valley before the dam was completed. This programme has yielded excellent results; important sites in almost every period from the prehistoric to the Islamic have been discovered and excavated. The work has been carried out by the Syrian authorities themselves and fifteen other teams. We were asked to excavate a prehistoric site as our contribution to the programme and so in 1971 we made a brief survey of the valley to look for a site.Pioneer surveys and excavations by de Contenson and others had established an outline of the later prehistory of Syria. Neolithic settlements (fig. 2) had been excavated at Ras Shamra (Schaeffer 1962, 153 ff.) and Tabbat el-Hammam (Braidwood 1940, 196 ff.) on the coast, Tell Ramad (de Contenson 1971, 279 ff.) and other smaller sites near Damascus, and Buqras (de Contenson and van Liere 1966, 182 ff.) in the Euphrates valley. From these excavations the later Neolithic of the sixth millennium bc and after was relatively well-known. This was the period when ‘dark-faced burnished ware’, the earliest pottery found in Syria, was first made. The archaeological sequence could be taken further back as seventh millennium aceramic Neolithic levels had been found at Ras Shamra, Ramad and Buqras. Then there was a gap in the sequence, representing the earlier seventh and the later eighth millennia bc. Only one earlier site was known; this was Mureybat which had been discovered when the first surveys of the Tabqa dam area were made (Rihaoui 1965, 106; van Loon 1967, 15). The first campaign of excavations here, directed by van Loon, had revealed tantalising remains of a settlement dating from 8000 bc (van Loon 1968, Table 1), the very beginning of the Neolithic in Syria.

The Scratching Deer site (5 BL 69) is a small, single-component Hog Back Phase campsite inthe upper subalpine forest, western Boulder County, Colorado. The site was occupied 1260 + 95radiocarbon ye...

Macaws (Ara sp.) are known from prehistoric sites throughout much of the Southwest. These birds have particular importance as indicators of trade routes between the Southwestern pueblos and the cultural centers to the south of the present Arizona border. The natural range of the macaws is some 200 miles south of the Arizona-Mexico border. An unusual occurrence of a macaw-child burial is reported as are 15 macaw skeletons that have been collected at the Grasshopper Ruin during the last 11 field seasons.

An astronomical interpretation of the British standing stone sites has been developed in great detail by A. Thom using methods and data which have hitherto rarely, if ever, been used by archaeologists. The unfamiliarity of these methods, and the revolutionary nature of the conclusions drawn from them, have no doubt contributed to the difficulties which the profession is evidently encountering in coming to terms with Thom’s ideas. However, the raw data on which the theories are based are, like all other archaeological data, susceptible to checking and testing in traditional archaeological ways - by fieldwork and excavation. If one is to do this, one must isolate the hard evidence on which the theories are built and these are the many long alinements - from standing stone to a mark on the horizon - which are claimed to have astronomical significance. The plausibility or otherwise of these alinements is something that all can assess by visiting the sites. Moreover, at several of these sites it is possible to devise tests by excavation for the astronomical interpretation, and the results of two such tests are described.

A re-examination of data from eastern Great Basin sites (in particular Hogup Cave) indicates that subsistence patterns did not, as suggested by Jennings (1957) and Aikens (1970), remain essentially unchanged throughout the period of Archaic occupation. The evidence points to a major adaptive shift from semi-permanent settlement on lake peripheries to primary dependence on upland resources during the mid-Holocene. This adaptive modification was related to increased effective moisture, concomitant lake level increases and flooding of lake periphery resources rather than the purported Altithermal dessication as suggested by Baumhoff and Heizer (1965). There was a lengthy hiatus between Archaic and Fremont occupations of ca. 2000 years at lake periphery sites and ca. 1000 years for the northeastern Great Basin in general. This fact militates against the commonly held assumption that the Fremont culture developed from an Archaic substratum in this area.

Continuous prehistoric occupation of northern Ohio from 9000 B.P. to 5000 B.P. has often been questioned. Its demonstration is difficult to support. Stratigraphically intact archaeological evidence for this Late PaleoIndian-Early Archaic period is not common in the eastern United States and is generally found in dry rockshelters or in alluvial bottomlands. In northern Ohio, rockshelters are rare and bottomlands have recently been subjected to deep-plowing. The controlled comparative germination of viable seeds in such recently disturbed strata yields an Index of Plowing which can determine the lower limits of such disturbance in the absence of other pedological or archaeological indications. The application of this Index to the Norman P site in Summit County, Ohio, reveals an intact PaleoIndian-Archaic Transitional occupation.

A brief survey of prehistoric occupation in the Azraq Basin in Eastern Jordan resulted in the recording of over fifty occurrences of prehistoric material. Within the limits of inference permitted by this preliminary coverage of the survey area, it seems that most periods from Lower Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic are represented & that significant differences in site tocation between periods can be observed. The density of prehistoric occupation revealed by the survey & the number of recent ecological studies of the area underline the potential for further geomorphological & archaeological research in the Azraq Basin. In concentrating upon settlement patterning & open site utilisation, further investigations can be expected to complement similar studies elsewhere in the Middle East, in analysing man's long-term adaptation to marginal habitats during the Pleistocene & Early Holocene., Une rapide prospection effectuée dans le bassin d'Azraq en Jordanie orientale a permis de repérer plus de 50 gisements préhistoriques. Bien que cette recherche reste préliminaire, il semble cependant que dans les zones prospectées presque toutes les périodes depuis le Paléolithique inférieur jusqu'au Chalcolithique soient représentées. Des différences significatives ont pu être observées dans la localisation des gisements. Cette prospection a montré la densité de l'occupation aux époques préhistoriques ; avec les études écologiques récentes, elle ouvre de nouvelles voies aux recherches géomorphologiques et archéologiques dans le bassin d'Azraq. Ces recherches futures centrées sur le scheme de distribution des gisements de plein air devraient apporter une information complémentaire aux études déjà entreprises ailleurs au Proche-Orient en permettant d'analyser la lente adaptation de l'homme à des habitats marginaux pendant le pléistocène et le début de l'holocène., Garrard Andrew N., Stanley Price Nicholas P., Copeland Lorraine. A Survey of Prehistoric sites in the Azraq Basin, Eastern Jordan. In: Paléorient, 1975, vol. 3. pp. 109-126.

Uranium series dates on bone from the Isimila Prehistoric Site, Tanzania, indicate that this East African Acheulian site may be older than originally estimated. They raise the possibility that the Middle Pleistocene sediments containing Acheulian occurrences span a longer range of time than had been supposed. This could add to the plausibility of a contention by Hansen and Keller that differences between artifacts in the uppermost Acheulian horizon and in lower-lying beds are primarily a reflection of change through time rather than a result of different human activities.A summary of the artifact content and associations of the several archeological stratigraphic units is given, and, although a sort of “developmental sequence” can be seen, the existence of discrepant occurrences suggests that an interpretation of directional change as a “function of time” does not, in fact, well accommodate the evidence.Quantitative changes in artifact class proportions in aggregates seem just as likely to be related to local exploitation potentials for early man which were produced during the process of basin in-filling, while observed qualitative differences in the lower-lying horizons may be due to samples biased because of limited exposures which are restricted to a single sedimentary environment.

1. For more than two thousand years research into the origins of the Greek lexicon had been understood and carried on in the spirit exemplified but also mocked in the Platonic Kratylos. The revolutionary change came in the early nineteenth century when after many inspired guesses Franz Bopp (1791–1867) finally and definitively proved in 1816 that Greek, in company with many European languages, derived, like Indian and Iranian, from one prehistoric ancestor, the whole family being dubbedIndo-Europeanby the well-known physician and physicist, Dr Thomas Young, in 1813, three years before the publication of Bopp's work. But the first true etymologist was August Friedrich Pott (1802–87) who with the two volumes of hisEtymologische Forschungen, published in 1833 and 1836 respectively, laid the foundations of Indo-European, and therewith also Greek, etymology.Throughout the nineteenth century, and even down to our own days, the main emphasis has been on the IE origins of the Greek vocabulary.

Until 1950 Henry O. Beyer (1947, 1948) was the only archaeologist active in the Philippines. By this time he had a general theory of Philippine prehistory based on his own excavations and surface collections from all over the Philippines and comparative studies of archaeological sites and relics from neighbouring countries. His chronological framework was classified into five ages: Palaeolithic, Methalithic, Neolithic, Iron and Porcelain Ages. While his works are valuable. as. a general introduction to Philippine prehistory, they can not be regarded as reliable until they are tested by extensive excavation, since Beyer's chronological frame work is based on pure guesswork.Archaeological research moving beyond Beyer began in 1950 when Wilhelm G. Solheim, Robert B. Fox and Alfred E. Evangelist initiated their Philippine field work. The work of these men produced new data and interpretations somewhat at variance with Beyer's conclusions.The most intensive and significant work ever done in the Philippines was carried out recently by Fox (1970). For the Tabon Caves on Palawan, Fox has established the first reliable chronology for any area of the Philippines. His chronology is supported by fourteen radiocarbon (C14) data. He has classified Philippine prehistory into four ages: Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Metal and Proto-Historic Ages. Other important articles are Solheim (1964, 1968), and Fox and Evangelista (1957, a, b); largely concerned with jar burial assemblages, they represent contributions to the analysis and description of Philippine pottery. Other relevant materials (Fox 1959, Locsin 1968) are of basic value for any study of Chinese ceramics. I think that recent archaeological work in the Philippine has revealed the following:1. Flake-tool Culture should be placed in the late Palaeolithic Age.2. Beyer's “Jar-Burial Cultures” should go back to the late Neolithic Age. Also, the fist Philippine potteries should be placed in the late Neolithic Age.3. The Iron Age Culture was transmitted tow or three groups of people.4. The first Chinese porcelain came to the Philippines around the 12th century

Some time ago now it was suggested that there were important structural differences between the bones of wild and domestic animals (Drew et al., 1971a). It was claimed that there were differences, firstly, in the orientation of the crystals of bone mineral, secondly, in the X-ray diffractometer patterns from bone slices and, thirdly, in the size of the lacunae and the thickness of the trabeculae. Apart from the inherent improbability of domestication causing fundamental changes in the organization of a tissue such as bone, there are a number of inadequacies of method and of fact which, it seems, need to be pointed out, since the paper has now become widely quoted in the archaeological literature (e.g. Bouchud, 1971; Clason, 1972; Bijkiinyi, 1973). Firstly, “wild” and “domestic” are very poor categories for a study of this kind. The limitations of these terms have been discussed at length elsewhere (Higgs & Jarman, 1969, 1972; Jarman & Wilkinson, 1972) and need not be repeated here. Even many present-day domestic animals live under conditions more like those underwhich their wild relatives live than like those under which other domestic individuals live. For example, the life of a Greek mountain goat is much more like that of a wild goat than like that of one kept tethered in a yard in a plains village. Again, what about feral animals? There must in fact be a continuum, with wild varieties at one extreme and highly-bred and stallkept stock at the other. In these circumstances it is absurd to expect an abrupt change in bone structure to coincide with the earliest stages of domestication, however they may be defined. Such a change would have to be genetic in origin and so need not occur at the same stage of domestication in different places. Secondly, the status of the material on which the work of Drew et al. was based is hypothetical, since it is archaeological material and not everyone would accept that the Suberde animals had to be wild (e.g. Clason, 1972). Thirdly, although Drew et al. made careful analyses of the soils from Suberde, Erbaba and Zawi Chemi Shanidar, they failed to consider the possibility that the observed differences in bone structure might nevertheless be the result of differential preservation, since the history of the bones before burial might have varied from site to site and there might also have been differences between the soils of Suberde and Erbaba in prehistoric times that no longer exist today. More serious are the errors in the interpretation of the observations themselves. I do not propose to comment on the X-ray diffraction work, of which certain criticisms have been made by McConnell & Foreman (1971) (see also Drew et al. 1971b), but will confine myself to the optical observations. Bone consists of three main constituents: (a) collagen, a protein accounting for most of the organic matter, (b) an organic ground-substance and (c) bone-mineral. It is in

It is hypothesized that irrigation and Mediterranean polyculture were introduced during the course of the later prehistoric sequence in southeast Spain. Both would increase and stabilize agricultural yields, improving the productive capacity of the groups who adopted them. At the same time, investment in these productive forces would exacerbate the insecurity which generally besets primitive societies. In the effort to increase the security of their production, communities in the southeast undertook intensification of their agricultural practices. Their effort to increase their material security would, however, have increased their social insecurity, the vulnerability of those communities to the attacks of their enemies and the importunities of their friends. The benefits of an intensified agriculture could only be enjoyed within a new framework of productive relations. It is the framework of productive relations. It is the reflected in the Almeria/Argar transition.

Salvage excavation of an early Pueblo III village ruin (site designation 5MTUMR 2346) in the Mancos Canyon, southwestern Colorado, has yielded a large number of human remains which exhibit indications of cannibalism. While reports of cannibalism are not unknown in Southwestern archaeological literature, they appear somewhat infrequently.The remains from the Mancos Canyon include 33 individuals, mostly young adults, whose completely fragmented bones show evidences which indicate that intentional and patterned human actions were responsible for dismembering the bodies prior to being interred. The burials were found in the rooms of the pueblo, all in multiple individual deposits representing from 2 to 11 persons. All the long bones are splintered, showing primarily a spiral type fracture caused by a twisting or prying apart of the bones with evidence that some of the shafts were prepared for fracture, presumably for extraction of the marrow. Butchering or cut-marks occur on several bone fragments, ne...

This paper examines occurrences and frequencies of procured animal species, as well as relationships between man and other living animals at the site. Prehistoric behavior patterns of domestic animals are suggested from distributional analysis of archaeologically recovered material. Preferred area utilization of prescribed confinement also is inferred for the domesticates. Non-domesticates are discussed as potential indicators of the abandonment patterns of specific human activity spaces.

The prehistoric archaeology of the Reese River Valley in the central Great Basin strongly indicates that a Shoshonean-like settlement pattern has existed for approximately 4500 years in this vicinity. A comparison of the prehistoric demography and ecology with similar patterns among modem primitive groups suggests that the post-marital residence pattern of the prehistoric Shoshoneans was most probably bilateral and rather flexible, as originally suggested by Julian Steward. If this interpretation is correct, then it contradicts Elman Service's 1962 hypothesis of patrilocal bands among the preconlact Shoshoneans. No attempt is made to confront the ideological models of the prehistoric Shoshoneans, for modern scientific archaeology can presently consider only etic phenomena. If archeologists and ethnologists are to overcome the limitations of their observational fields and contribute to the general field of anthropology, they must develop methods which will allow explanatory propositions regarding the operation of cultural systems to be tested by both archeological and ethnographic data. [L. R. Binford 1968a:269]

Analysis of a series of negative impressions in clay and bitumen recovered during the excavations at Jarmo indicate the prehistoric production of both cloth and basketry at that site. Two varieties of plain woven cloth, balanced plain weave —single warp and weft and balanced plain weave— double warp and weft, are represented as are two of the three major subclasses of basketry. The latter includes plaiting and coiling, each represented by a single type. The technical characteristics of these "perishables" are discussed and the assemblage is compared to others in the Old and New World., L'analyse d'une série d'impressions dans l'argile et le bitume recueillies au cours des fouilles effectuées à Jarmo prouve que le tissage et la vannerie étaient connus sur ce site. Deux variétés de tissage droit : armure toile : 1 pris 1 sauté et armure toile : 2 pris 2 sautés, sont représentées, ainsi que deux des trois grandes sous-catégories de vannerie dont l'une comprend la vannerie à brins tissés et la vannerie spiralée, chacune attestée par un seul type. Les caractéristiques techniques de ces produits "périssables" sont analysées. L'ensemble est comparé à des exemples pris dans l'Ancien et le Nouveau Monde., Adovasio James M. The Textile and Basketry Impressions from Jarmo. In: Paléorient, 1975, vol. 3. pp. 223-230.