A Review of the Americanist Literature for 1982

The volume of Americanist literature continues to grow at a rapid pace with the publication of new works and the addition of new journals. A brief guide to the organization of the Americanist descriptive literature, which cannot be systematically covered in this kind of review, is provided. The contributions in 1982 to cultural resource management, field techniques, lithic studies, trace element analyses and ecological and evolutionary studies are reviewed in detail. In addition, another field which has attracted renewed attention-seriation and classification-is introduced, and a brief history is provided to place the developments of 1982 in context. Finally, note is taken of important work in the areas of symbolic/structural approaches and philosophy of science, although these fields are not presented in detail. Apart from a breakdown of the distinction between American and British approaches, no new trends are evident in the Americanist literature for 1982. The relation between the conduct and structure of cultural resource management and the needs of the discipline, and the lack of any general theoretical integration of the field continue to be the most pressing problems. There are no major breakthroughs in either area, but the discipline as a whole continues to have an increasing sophistication in data analysis that is offsetting an earlier tendency to over-interpret archaeological materials.