Reviews the history of neutron activation analysis (NAA) as an archaeological tool in the United States and Canada and assesses its current potential. It includes a summary and status report on research reactor laboratories in North America involved in nuclear archaeology. Archaeological applications of NAA include the provenance of raw materials in artifacts. The key issues of ceramic provenance research are: natural raw material heterogeneity, effects of paste preparation, and effects of weathering. NAA of pottery is problematic as a method for sourcing because raw materials are extremely widespread, but NAA offers high-precision, fully instrumental data collection, multiple element determination, minimal sample preparation, and independence from matrix effects. Interlaboratory NAA comparability offers the potential to expand the scope of current projects with no additional analytical effort. The authors stress the importance of the compilation, organization, and storage of descriptive data pertaining to the analytical specimens and note that consideration must be paid to long-term storage and accessibility of analytical and descriptive data. Authors comment on the findings of other contributors to this issue and envision future Internet access by researchers to large databases of NAA data.