"...offers a much-needed window on some of the most innovative work now being done in the lowland American tropics." Neil Lancelot Whitehead, American Anthropologist

• List of figures; List of tables; List of contributors; Introduction Peter W. Stahl; 1. Archaeological survey and site discovery in the forested neotropics James A. Zeidler; 2. The archaeology of community organization in the tropical lowlands: a case study from Puerto Rico Peter E. Siegel; 3. Archaeological methods for the study of ancient landscapes of the Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon Clark L. Erickson; 4. Searching for environmental stress: climatic and anthropogenic influences on the landscape of Colombia Warwick Bray; 5. 'Doing' paleoethnobotany in the tropical lowlands: adaptation and innovation in methodology Deborah M. Pearsall; 6. Plant microfossils and their application in the New World tropics Dolores R. Piperno; 7. Differential preservation histories affecting the mammalian zooarchaeological record from the forested neotropical lowlands Peter W. Stahl; 8. Biological research with archaeologically recovered human remains from Ecuador: methodological issues Douglas H. Ubelaker; 9. Interpreting dietary maize from bone stable isotopes in the American tropics: the state of the art Lynette Norr; 10. From potsherds to pots: a first step in constructing cultural context from tropical forest archaeology J. Scott Raymond; 11. Returning to Pueblo Viejo: history and archaeology of the Chachi (Ecuador) Warren R. Deboer; References; Index.