  A sequential dynamical system, or SDS, consists of an undirected graph Y, a
vertex-indexed list of local functions F_Y, and a permutation pi of the vertex
set (or more generally, a word w over the vertex set) that describes the order
in which these local functions are to be applied. In this article we
investigate the special case where Y is a circular graph with n vertices and
all of the local functions are identical. The 256 possible local functions are
known as Wolfram rules and the resulting sequential dynamical systems are
called finite asynchronous elementary cellular automata, or ACAs, since they
resemble classical elementary cellular automata, but with the important
distinction that the vertex functions are applied sequentially rather than in
parallel. An ACA is said to be pi-independent if the set of periodic states
does not depend on the choice of pi, and our main result is that for all n>3
exactly 104 of the 256 Wolfram rules give rise to a pi-independent ACA. In 2005
Hansson, Mortveit and Reidys classified the 11 symmetric Wolfram rules with
this property. In addition to reproving and extending this earlier result, our
proofs of pi-independence also provide significant insight into the dynamics of
these systems.
