Authors 
Aware that volcanoes played a part 
in Maya prehistory — and with vivid 
memories of climbing an erupting 
Guatemalan volcano in 1969 — Pay- 
son D. Sheets surveyed El Salvador 
for a Maya archeological site that 
would reveal the effects of volcanism. 
In 1978 his investigations led him to 
Ceren, a Pompeii-like site that had 
been partly exposed by bulldozing but 
whose potential value had not been 
appreciated. His initial excavations 
proved most rewarding, but the cur- 
rent civil war in El Salvador has inter- 
rupted the work. In the meantime, 
Sheets, an associate professor in the 
Department of Anthropology at the 
University of Colorado at Boulder, is 
conducting an experiment based on 
his archeological research. Having 
discovered that fractured obsidian 
edges are much sharper than surgical 
steel blades, he is collaborating with 
an eye surgeon to apply the ancient 
technology for making stone tools to 
the manufacture of scalpels. 
“I became totally enamored of avo- 
cets and stilts the first time I saw them 
in the spring of 1974,” reports Tex A. 
Sordahl, an assistant professor of biol- 
ogy at Luther College in Iowa. His in- 
terest grew as his familiarity with the 
birds’ behavior increased. “I even en- 
dured my friends ribbing me about be- 
ing a ‘legs man.’ ” Sordahl studied 
avocets and stilts intensively during 
1977, 1978, and part of 1979 at two 
sites in Utah: a private hunting area 
known as the Barrens ana the Bear 
River Migratory Bird Refuge. He 
hopes to observe the behavioral ecol- 
ogy of mountain plovers in Colorado 
as his next project and to continue his 
work on the antipredator behavior 
of shorebirds. 
tory of exploitation and the current 
status of the humpback whale in the 
western North Atlantic. His research 
on narwhals was supported by the 
Peoples' Trust for Endangered Spe- 
cies in England. 
Coauthor Edward Mitchell is a re- 
search biologist with the Canadian 
Department of Fisheries and Oceans 
and serves on the Scientific Commit- 
tee of the International Whaling 
Commission. Concerned with the 
ecology and population dynamics of 
North Atlantic whales, Mitchell has 
also published articles on fossil ma- 
rine mammals. 
Randall R. Reeves, a research asso- 
ciate with the Canadian government’s 
Arctic Biological Station in Quebec, 
spent several months observing the 
Eskimo narwhal hunt. Why nar- 
whals? “They live in remote areas, lit- 
tle is known about their lives, and the 
value of their tusks creates the poten- 
tial for serious conservation prob- 
lems.” A graduate of the University of 
Nebraska in Lincoln and of Princeton 
University, Reeves is studying the his- 
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