Most large-scale excavation projects are computerized, more-or-less, now in their methods of data recording. Here is described one which is computerized with more conviction and on a larger scale than most, with reflections on what that can and should amount to.

Archaeologists from two major research projects in central Arizona, the Grasshopper Project and the Chavez Pass Project, have investigated the processes of growth and abandonment of large masonry pueblos dating to the late periods of prehistory (ca. 1270 to 1425 A.C.). Results of this research have produced conflicting interpretations of prehistoric political development, in spite of the fact that many similar cultural processes have been identified. This paper summarizes the results of this research and compares data and analyses used to explain the processes of agricultural intensification, differentiation in mortuary treatment, and regional exchange. The present analysis is intended to show that differences in the interpretation of prehistoric political complexity are a result of differences in the scale and complexity of the systems under investigation, errors in analysis, and the use of divergent theoretical models.

Berry, Michael S. Time, Space, and Transition in Anasazi Prehistory. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1982. xi + 147 pp. including figures, tables, bibliography, index, appendix. $20.00 cloth.

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Our recent efforts in preparing syntheses of Puebloan prehistory suggest that most of the standard, normative generalizations are empirically false and that the conceptual framework traditionally employed to organize the archaeological data is inadequate and inappropriate. We show that the patterned variability manifest in the archaeological record is obscured by normative treatment. An approach to southwestern prehistory that is at once more faithful to the data and to processual, evolutionary anthropology is provided by describing the variable strategies that prehistoric groups used to cope with the continually changing natural and social environments in which they lived. We argue that some aspects of demographic, productive, and social organizational strategies are appropriate for treatment in syntheses of broad scope. We trace these strategies as they seem to have occurred in the northern Southwest from about A.D. 1 to the protohistoric period. In so doing, we find that successful strategies were those that facilitated the articulation of diversity. At some times productive specialization, organized redistributive exchange, and status differentiation were among the more important strategies.

In two earlier papers, I discussed basic problems in anthropological approaches to change (Plog, 1974, 1977). I will briefly summarize these and then illustrate potential solutions or at least routes to solutions.

This chapter describes some of the decisions that arise and the problems that must be overcome in doing a survey. The most basic decision that any archaeologist makes in undertaking a survey is where that survey is to be conducted. Ideally, such a choice is based on the theoretical, methodological, and empirical issues underlying the research topic on which the survey is to focus. In reality, the location of a particular survey project is being determined with increasing frequency by a variety of political and economic considerations ranging from the military sensitivity of areas in foreign countries to the need for cultural resources assessments of localities and regions in the United States. However, it is not justifiable to undertake surveys in areas where the choice of survey locale has been forced unless meaningful research issues have been identified there. At the same time, it is important to recognize that some such projects prove to be more problematical in this regard than others. The primary issue underlying such problems is the boundary of the survey universe. Basically, three kinds of boundaries can be identified—arbitrary, cultural, and natural.