Kings and commoners at Copan: Isotopic evidence for origins and movement in the Classic Maya period

Eight human interments were excavated in the 1990s beneath the Acropolis at the Classic Maya site of Copan in Honduras, which was the capital of a Maya kingdom from ca. AD 400 to 800. These human remains come from both royal tombs and less elaborate burials dating to the early part of this period and lie deep in the accumulated architectural layers of the Acropolis. We present a brief summary of the context, contents, and external links represented by these interments. Several lines of evidence point to connections between early Copan and Teotihuacan in the Central Highlands of Mexico, and Tikal in the central Maya lowlands of the Petén in Guatemala.     

Interpreting abundance indices: some zooarchaeological implications of Martu foraging

Indices of taxonomic abundance are commonly used by zooarchaeologists to examine resource intensification, overexploitation and gender-divisions in foraging labor. The original formulation of abundance indices developed a clear interpretive framework by linking the measure with foraging models from behavioral ecology. However, using the same basic tenets of behavioral ecology, archaeologists disagree about how to interpret variability in abundance index values: some suggest that high proportions of large prey remains represent higher overall foraging efficiency, while others argue the opposite. To help solve this problem, we use quantitative observational data with Martu hunters in Australia’s Western Desert to examine how foraging decisions and outcomes best predict variation in the abundance index values that result. We show that variation in the proportional remains of large to small game is best predicted by hunting bout success with larger prey and the time spent foraging for smaller prey. A declining abundance index results from decreasing hunting success with larger prey, increasing time invested in hunting smaller prey, or both; any of which result in a lower overall return rate than if large prey were acquired reliably. We also demonstrate that where large prey acquisition is stochastic, high index values are correlated positively with men’s proportional caloric contribution of large unreliable game, while low index values are correlated with women’s proportional foraging time for small reliable game. We discuss these results with reference to evidence of resource intensification and gender-specific foraging.     

Evaluating consistency in typology and classification

Typological systems are essential for communication between anthropologists as well as for interpretive purposes. For both communication and interpretation, it is important to know that different individuals using the same typology classify artifacts in similar ways, but the consistency with which typologies are used is rarely evaluated or explicitly tested. There are theoretical, practical, and cultural reasons for this failure. Disagreements among archaeologists using the same typology may originate in the typology itself (i.e., imprecise type definitions, confusing structure) or in the classification process, because of observer errors, differences in perception and interpretation, and biases. We review previous attempts to evaluate consistency in typology and classification, and use consensus analysis to examine one well-established typology. Both consensus and disparity are apparent among the typologists in our case study, and this allows us to explore the kinds of forces that shape agreement and diversity in the use of all typological systems. We argue that issues of typological consistency are theoretically and methodologically important. Typological consistency can be explicitly tested, and must be if we hope to use typologies confidently.     

TOWARD A POST-POSITIVIST POLICY ANALYSIS

Book reviewed in this article
Paul Diesing, Science and Ideology in the Policy Sciences
Daniel Callahan and Bruce Jennings, Ethics, The Social Sciences, and Policy Analysis
Frank Fischer, Polities, Values, and Public Policy: The Problem of Methodology