This paper is intended as an aid for those conscientious amateur archaeologists who are interested in preserving their specimens and the data which goes with them. In answer to many questions, and in the hope that this paper may be of some help to those desiring to systematize their field methods, there are here set down some of the practices that have been applied to shell heap excavation with fair success.

The accompanying map (Plate 10), prepared by Mr. Ignacio Marquina, Chief of the Direction of Prehispanic Monuments, Ministry of Public Education, Mexico, gives a graphic idea of the coordinated research carried on by government and foreign agencies in Mexico. Formal excavation and reconnaissance are being combined to study the origin, development, and diffusion of Mexican cultures, and the burden of the work is being borne by the government archaeologists.

In a recent article in american antiquity, Dr. Vladimir J. Fewkes described some Woodland pottery from the valley of the lower Red River, north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Similar sherds from the region of Mille Lacs, Minnesota, are illustrated by Winchell. As pointed out by McKern and Fewkes, pottery resembling the Woodland ware was collected from sites in Kamchatka, Siberia, by Jochelson. There is some possibility that these northern Kamchatka sites date after the tenth or eleventh centuries A.D.

It is a well known fact that the surface color of pottery made by the ancient inhabitants of the Southwest occurs (1) in shades of white and gray and also (2) in shades of red, yellow, and brown. That the differences in color between the white and gray pottery and the others are due to a difference in firing technique is not so widely known.

A little more than a decade ago, the term “Folsom points” made its first appearance in the literature. It signifies a stone implement characterized by a wide, shallow groove, usually found on both sides (Figure 25:1, 2, 6, 7). Previously these implements, known from surface finds only, had aroused no particular attention. Their true significance was established by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, when these artifacts were discovered in direct association with a number of extinct bison (B. antiquus taylori) and other animals. The undoubted association of fauna and artifacts was confirmed by Barnum Brown, A. V. Kidder, and F. H. H. Roberts, Jr. All finds of this particular grooved blade were henceforth called “Folsom” points, after the nearby town of Folsom, New Mexico.

The theory has been advanced that the pierced-tablet type of “gorget” may have served the prehistoric Indian as an arm guard to protect against the lash of the bowstring, in contradistinction to the ornamental pendant type. Most frequently surface finds, these artifacts are at times reported from burials, where their position in relation to the body may give some inkling as to their use. In only two such instances can we find records of their being in such association with the arm bones as to lend support to the arm-guard theory. Moorehead, in : Stone Ornaments of the American Indian (1), describes the skeleton of an adult in the Storey Mound, Ohio, with slate gorgets on each wrist. Lemley (2) found a double-perforated stone tablet beside the arm of a skeleton in a Ouachita River mound near Malvern, Arkansas. It may therefore be of interest to record our finding of a bone gorget (Plate 12, Figure 1) attached to the arm bones of an adult male in a mound burial, apparently Caddoan.

Chalk Bluff Rock Shelter is located on the southern end of Chalk Bluff in Section 2, Township 10 South, Range 3 West, nine miles southwest of Murphysboro, Jackson County, Illinois. The bluff in which the shelter is located is an unbroken sandstone escarpment nearly one mile long and having an almost uniform height of 250 feet. This escarpment, lying in a north-south direction and paralleling the Mississippi flood-plain, has a westerly exposure. Here, where the shelter is located, is a conspicuous overhanging cliff offering the shelter ideal protection from the elements. The shelter itself is about sixty feet long and about forty feet wide. This rock shelter is situated about thirty feet above the flood plain. At no time during our work was there any evidence found of stratification suggesting water deposit in the dirt fill. This would substantiate the idea that the shelter was above highwater at all times.