In 1955-56 the Arizona State Museum excavated an elephant-kill site on the Lehner ranch in the San Pedro valley, near Hereford, Arizona, and found 13 projectiles, mainly Clovis fluted points, eight butchering tools, and charcoal from two fires among the remains of nine immature mammoths and elements of horse, bison, and tapir. Bones and artifacts occurred on and in gravels of a former perennial stream exposed in the modern arroyo bank. Most or all of the animals were probably killed over a comparatively short period by hunters identified with the Llano complex by the Clovis points. The Lehner site and the nearby Naco site represent the southwesternmost extent of the presently known range of the Llano complex. The post-kill sequence of alluviation and erosion supports a geological age of 13,000 or more years for both bones and artifacts. Arizona, Michigan, and Copenhagen radiocarbon measurements of hearth charcoal indicate a date of 11,000 to 12,000 B.P. Since these dates are substantially older than the oldest radiocarbon assays for the Sulphur Spring stage of the Cochise culture, it is probable that the transition from big-game hunting to collecting is reflected in the change from Llano complex to Cochise culture, and that this shift in economic emphasis took place before the complete extinction of the late Pleistocene megafauna.

The late Pliocene basal clay of the region and remnants of later deposits are cut by a perennial stream of pluvial age. Bones and artifacts, including Clovis- fluted points, occur in gravel and other channel deposits in a meander bow of this stream. The bone bed is overlain by a black swamp deposit indicating a subhumid climate and by calichified silts indicating arid conditions, both cut by an Altithermal channel. The hunt, stratigraphically pre- Altithermal, is dated by the equation of the relatively warm and dry 14-to-12 foot level in the San Augustin Plains profile with the Allerod of northern Europe (12,500-10,800 B.P.). This semi-arid period, called the Datil Interval or Datil Drought, is believed to have caused the extinction of the mammoth in both the Southwest and the High Plains by 11,500 B.P. The Sulphur Spring stage Cochise deposit at Double Adobe, which is overlain by a bed containing a mammoth skull, is dated at more than 12,500 B.P. The mammoth hunts of the Lehner and Naco sites are assigned an age of 13,000 or more years.

The Lehner site fauna includes at least nine individuals of Mammuthus columbi and one each of Equus, Bison, and Tapirus. Mammoth material consists chiefly of jaws and teeth and shows a great range of individual variation. The tapir is represented by one of the largest fossil tapir jaws described from North America. The accumulation is considered to represent several kills over a period of several months. Climate at the time of the Lehner hunts was probably more humid than at present, but not tropical. The radiocarbon date of about 11,000 B.P. is considered reasonable. New genera reported from other early man faunas are Neotoma from the Ventana complex and Bison from the Naco site.

In the upper Ohio Valley, Adena mounds and their burials are less complex than, but essentially similar to, those of the major Adena centers of Ohio and Kentucky. Chronologically, they belong in the middle and late Adena periods. Two Adena sites much farther east have been found on Chesapeake Bay; they are closer in trait inventories and in radiocarbon dates to upper Ohio Valley sites than to Adena sites farther west. A reappraisal of evidence from the Northeast, particularly the Middlesex focus of New York, strongly suggests the movement of Adena people as far as the St. Lawrence River, although the proportion of Adena traits diminishes as distance from the Ohio Valley increases. Still another Adena dispersal, probably contemporaneous with this one, has previously been postulated to account for the Copena complex of Tennessee and Alabama. The cause of these rapid and far-reaching movements was probably the arrival or growth of Hopewell people in Illinois and Indiana and soon after in Ohio.

A slit-sided, tubular “incense burner” with three holes in the top, three solid, curved and tapering cylinders called “chili-mashers,” and a flat, striated dish called a “griddle” or “comal” from sealed Cache B3 at San Jose, British Honduras are presented as separate units of a composite Lowland Maya variety of the three-pronged incense burner known from Highland Maya sites. Only the “comal” shows signs of burning. The cylinders are removable prongs which fit the holes in the top of the tubular “censer,” and the “comal” rests on the prongs as the cover on which the incense was burned. Thus, many so-called censers are probably stands or supports rather than receptacles for burning incense. A classification is offered for the several forms of the composite three-pronged censer which is distributed throughout the Maya Lowlands primarily during the Classic period. Since the San Jose “griddles” shown here to be censer covers are the only “comales” claimed for the Maya Lowlands, this identification establishes the pre-16th century absence of the comal and the tortilla in the lowland area. Doubt is also expressed that the comal forms of Highland Guatemala were used for making tortillas.

Doubts that the Peruvian Indians could smelt copper ores in pre-Columbian times are unjustified, although archaeological evidence for the very effective wind furnaces described by early chroniclers is scanty. Oxide and carbonate ores from shallow deposits are more simply smelted than the sulfide ores, which required roasting of the crushed ore prior to reduction at a higher temperature. New evidence for the smelting of sulfide ore comes from chemical analysis of an ingot from the Province of lea, and suggests the need for restudy of older analyses and a search for new prehistoric metallurgical evidence.

Additional excavation in 1955 confirmed the previously reported stratigraphic sequence at Midland, Texas. Within the gray sand, which had yielded a fragmentary human calvarium, there were found additional flint flakes, burned rocks, and animal bones. Besides several small mammals, a four-horned antelope (probably Capromeryx) was present in the gray sand; horse bones occurred in the gray sand and overlying red sand. These finds make the two radiocarbon dates published in the 1955 Midland report, giving an age of about 7000 years to the gray sand, even less acceptable than previously thought. Experimental dating by the uranium daughter products technique suggests an age of about 20,000 years for the gray sand, somewhat excessive in terms of cultural correlations although supported by a single radiocarbon date and not unreasonable for the faunal assemblage. Ten radiocarbon dates from the Midland, Blackwater Draw, Lubbock Lake, and Plainview sites are discussed in terms of three possible correlations of the geological, climatic, faunal, and cultural events in the Southern High Plains.

The long stratigraphic sequence of separate archaeological horizons at the mouth of the gorge of the Pee Dee River in North Carolina necessitates changing earlier reconstructions of Piedmont archaeology. The stratigraphically documented series of projectile points from this site makes it possible to separate in time the varied forms of points originally assigned to the Baden and Guilford foci. Moreover, this evidence contradicts the typological arrangements of points in terms of logical evolutionary development and suggests that Archaic sequences in other parts of the Appalachian region may have to be radically changed when stratigraphic data become available. Stratigraphy at the Duncan's Island site in Pennsylvania, though less precise than that at the Pee Dee site, indicates that the local typological reconstructions for parts of Pennsylvania are in need of revision. Basal levels at Duncan's Island produce quartzite tools of types scattered throughout central Pennsylvania and often considered to represent an extremely early Archaic industry. The concentration of quartzite tools at the DeTurk site, though not dated stratigraphically, provides typological justification for the idea that the quartzite industry may be a survival of an earlier forest-based proto-Archaic tradition.

A notched and elaborately decorated human femur purchased at Culhuacan is identified as an omichicahuaztli, the bone rattle or musical rasp which provided musical accompaniment in Aztec funeral ceremonies for dead warriors. The incised designs consist of symbols of war, sacrifice, blood, and death, arranged in a single composition which is analyzed in terms of seven major parts: solar disc and starry sky, shield beneath the sky, eagle warrior, figure clad in slain victim's skin, earth monster, blood streams, and darts. A detailed comparison with Aztec codices and stone monuments shows that the decoration on the Culhuacan rattle is a typical expression of the religious symbolism relating to the death of warriors in late Aztec times, just preceding the Spanish conquest.

Approximately 2400 stone and 77 bone and antler artifacts were obtained by extensive trenching of the Kayuk site, a large area on the banks of Kayuk Creek in Anaktuvuk Pass, Brooks Range, northern Alaska, where several Nunamiut Eskimo families now camp. No stratigraphy was noted and no structural features were encountered, but four fire areas were excavated. The most diagnostic artifact is the Kayuk point, a lanceolate form with finely executed parallel oblique flaking, which resembles most closely the Angostura point of the Great Plains. Other stone artifacts, some of which also exhibit the parallel oblique flaking, include blades, scrapers, angle burins, microblades, drills, and adz blades. Implements of bone and antler, mostly caribou, include harpoons, leister and fish spear prongs and barbs, and other forms common in recent and prehistoric Arctic sites. The Kayuk site is believed to have been a hunting camp used during caribou migrations through Anaktuvuk Pass by a prehistoric Eskimo group which probably wintered on the northern coast as do the modern Nunamiut. The Kayuk complex probably belongs somewhere in time between the Denbigh Flint complex and Ipiutak.

The small embossed ornaments of sheet copper found in Southeastern sites have usually been identified as “pendants” or “symbol badges,” and have been considered part of the ritual equipment of the Southern Cult. Four graves of the Wilbanks period at Etowah contained such objects. They had apparently been mounted with feathers and slender wooden rods to form elaborate headdresses. Observers from the 16th century onwards describe “crowns” worn by the Coosa, Creek, and Natchez nobility that would have been very similar.

A bison-kill site in Wyoming with a radiocarbon age of about 8000 years has yielded numerous points of a type formerly termed “Oblique Yuman.” It is proposed that they now be named Allen points, after this site.

Measurements of bison metapodials give promise of a basis for species identification, but more data will be needed for fully satisfactory results. Bones from the Allen site in Wyoming are probably either Bison occidentalis or Bison antiquus.

Chemical and microscopic examination of the material from successive floors of Mound A, Las Flores, Tampico, indicates that each building unit consisted of a lime-aggregate forming a monolithic mass, with subsequent plastering, essentially as at Comalcalco, Tabasco.

Several sherds from western Kansas, probably associated with Upper Republican or Woodland material, are from vessels made by coiling, in contrast to the “noncoiled” or “lump-modeled” technique usually considered characteristic of Plains pottery.

The claims of antiquity and authenticity made for the Manuscrito pictorico de la Cultura Maya sobre piel de mamifero are false. It contains many elements and scenes copied from a variety of sources, Mixtec, Aztec, Teotihuacan, as well as Maya. Numerals are used in meaningless fashion; many copied items are obviously misunderstood.

A layer of shells covered by a mixed aeolian and alluvial deposit was exposed by a road cut in a tributary of the Columbia River. Three occupation levels contained few stone tools, including burins and large knives in the lowest level. A contracting-stem point in the middle level places the site in the Frenchman Springs III phase, 4th to 11th centuries A.D. The latest level reflects increasing aridity; the streams became intermittent and the population moved to the main river.

The demands of salvage archaeology in the Missouri Basin have directed attention to those culture complexes concentrated along streams. Two previously undescribed and unusual vessels from North Dakota suggest the presence there of Woodland cultures not recognized in the riverine regions.