On September 22, 1951, Marc Navarrete brought word to the Arizona State Museum of the discovery of two large projectile points in association with mammoth bones exposed in an arroyo eroded by Greenbush Creek one mile northwest of Naco, Arizona (Fig. 1). Marc Navarrete and his father, Fred, for some fifteen years have been watching the arroyo for fossils as erosion widened and deepened it.

A bone concentration, though known for some time, was freshly exposed by floods resulting from heavy summer rains in August, 1951. This encouraged Fred Navarrete to dig in an attempt to salvage what appeared to be a part of a skull with teeth and tusk of a large animal. In the course of this work he found near the skull a projectile point in what appeared to be undisturbed matrix. Additional excavations by Marc Navarrete soon revealed the left foreleg, scapula, humerus, and ulna and, near the superior margin of the scapula, again in the undisturbed clay, a second projectile point came to light.

Asiatic origins have, at one time or another, been suggested or at least considered for a number of traits connected with the manufacture and decoration of the earlier New World pottery. The well-known paper by McKern (1937) is among the most explicit statements on the subject. Griffin (1946; Sears and Griffin 1950a) has held similar views for some time. Like McKern, he has primarily in mind traits of the Woodland pattern of eastern North America, although he also mentions some non-Woodland traits among those which have counterparts in the Old World (1946, p. 45).

Since McKern's paper, the distribution in time of the traits involved has become a lot better established. With the help of the still suspiciously regarded radiocarbon dates, our perspective on ceramic history in the United States has been extended over a span which appears to be that of some four millennia. Among the more significant additions to the Asiatic half of the distributional picture first place must be given to recent Soviet work in eastern Siberia.

Pre-Russian Aleutian Culture was characterized by such typically Eskimo traits as open-sea hunting and the use of kayak like boats, gut clothing, stone knives, ivory needles with eyes, labrets (probably introduced from Northwest Coast cultures), circle-and-dot design, and others. There is evidence that in the eastern Aleutians the culture was most Eskimoid during the early phases and gradually a somewhat more differentiated Aleutian type developed under the influence of the environment. A number of traits, such as whale poisoning with aconite and the use of the semisubterranean, sod-covered house with entrance in the top, are recognized as probable direct Asiatic transfers (Heizer, 1943). The Aleut population numbered 16,000 or more persons prior to 1741 (Kroeber, 1947), and the villages, most of which were situated close to shore, occupied the majority of more than sixty islands comprising the archipelago. Abandoned sites often remain as imposing mounds whose archaeological deposits may be more than thirty feet thick.

Impressions of past climates on 1 soils and soil materials are not easily obliterated by time. Morphological and chemical features of the weathering record may be of considerable aid in reconstructing the past environments as well as in understanding the present ones. It should be possible not merely to recognize the qualitative aspects of the past climates, by the morphological-geochemical analysis, but also to attempt establishment of semi-quantitative time scales, of indices of the duration of this or that component of the climatic sequence. This analytical approach to the study of ancient soils, palaeopedology, is now at its beginning. The large but disorganized body of observations and data in this field is still lacking in perspectives and interpretations. The tentative conclusions developed herein are subject to revision and change, and it is our hope to verify and to enlarge this study in the near future, time and opportunity permitting.

Although many large mound groups, are found in northeastern Iowa, little information concerning the prehistory of this region has been published. Results of limited early investigations, presented by Cyrus Thomas in the 12th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, are indicative of a fertile field. Records of the pre-1900 Hill-Lewis survey, preserved in the files of the Minnesota Historical Society, include descriptive notes and maps locating many Iowa mounds which have since been destroyed. Field reports by the late Ellison Orr, assistant supervisor of a statewide archaeological survey, made in the 1930's by the Iowa State Historical Society, may be found in the collections of the Society at Iowa City. Articles by the late Charles R. Keyes (1934, 1951), field supervisor of this latter project, describe the wealth of the state's prehistoric resources. Nevertheless, the data concerning the contents of the mounds in northeastern Iowa is meager.

During the summer of 1936 the Montana Archaeological Survey, then under the direction of the late H. Melville Sayre, investigated a campsite on the ranch of John Trask about nine miles above the mouth of Ash Coulee, a partly subterranean tributary which enters the Yellowstone River about three miles above Terry, Montana. The excavation was under the immediate supervision of Raymond Thompson. Due to unexplained circumstances field notes of this investigation were not preserved. Description of the manner of excavation was obtained from Thompson who excavated the site in a thoroughly scientific manner and who is not responsible for lacks in documentation. The writer was not present during the investigation and has seen only the artifacts in the Survey's collections. Though documentation is meagre, the recovered material is significant enough to the problem of westward movements of prehistoric ceramic cultures into the northwestern Plains to warrant description.

Florence Hawley Ellis (1952) has brought some new ethnological evidence from the pueblo of Jemez to bear on the question of certain archaeological features found in a number of prehistoric southwestern kiva structures. Details are given of various acts of legerdemain for the magical production into the center of the kiva of small animals and shelled corn apparently out of nothing. These are ritual shows put on by the initiated to impress the lay spectators at the periodic kiva dedications that occur in Jemez. Ellis describes the use of secret pits in the kiva floor as well as other mechanical devices to produce these special effects. She correctly, in my view, expresses the opinion that her ethnological data lend substantiation to Reiter's speculation that underground passages and trenches such as he uncovered in connection with the Rinconada big kiva in Chaco Canyon were aids to magical effects so that, “Participants in kiva ceremonies could appear as if from the interior of the earth.” (Rieter, 1946, p. 189).

The Chibchas, whose habitat was in the high plains of the eastern Cordillera of the Andes in central Colombia, are usually classified with the Maya and Inca as representatives of the highest civilized peoples in native America. Unlike the Maya and Inca, who left abundant testimony of their greatness in the form of spectacular religious monuments, cities, public works, and an enormous array of material possessions, the reminders of the Chibcha are not only difficult to find, but once found, they are unimpressive. Chibcha greatness is attributed to their achievement of political states, each dominated by a ruler who controlled the destiny of those people within his domain.

Using cultures of high political and religious achievement as a basis for comparison, it may be inferred that the Chibcha should have had a respectable history as a requisite for advanced political organization and a complex material culture.

Recently Noel Morss published several recumbent figurines (American Antiquity, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1952) and pointed out the area of distribution of this type giving examples of Mexican as well as North American origin. His interpretation was that they represent children strapped to their cradles.

As early as 1949 I published, in the first volume of “Selected Papers of XXIX International Congress of Americanists” in New York, a paper on the same subject, which, apparently, Noel Morss had not seen. I had assembled several similar specimens originating from a vast area extending from Ecuador to the Valley of Mexico and to Colima. The new point which Morss (who has never heard of kindred subjects in South America) makes in his paper, is the inclusion of North America in the same complex. The Nashville specimen (Morss, 1952, Fig. 74) differs only in size (it is 9 inches long). All the other figurines quoted by both of us are less than half that length.

In American Antiquity (Vol. 17, No. 3), Heizer reports “Incised Slate Figurines from Kodiak Island, Alaska.“ This Comment was concerned With a number of unusual incised slate fragments portraying human faces. Doctor Heizer was of the opinion that they were quite late, having come from the upper levels of stratified sites or from known recent sites.

Comparing the features of these stylized portraits with Plate 17 “A Man of Kodiak” from Billings, London 1802 (reproduced here as Fig. 28 a with Heizer's Fig. 28, b), one cannot doubt that they are recent. The elements besides the stylized faces are easily recognized as beaded ear and chin ornaments, and the typical squared collar of the Koniag of 150 years ago.

S. V. R. Cammann's interesting analysis of the Chinese stone carving found by Gann in a Maya site in Quintana Roo has indeed thrown some explanatory light on this, and other pieces of the same general type. Zelia Nuttall (1910) mentioned a “soap-stone teapot“ from the island of Sacrificios, and says that “it gave rise to much speculation, especially as similar ones were found by respectable authorities at Tepaca (on the ancient high road to Puebla) and in the Huaxteca.“ Nuttall says further, “The well vouched for fact that the teapot was actually found on the island of Sacrificios can doubtless be explained by the employment of the island by the Spaniards, during centuries, as a lading place for merchandise from the Philippines and China, after it had been brought overland by mule-back from Acapulco to Vera Cruz, to be shipped from thence to Spain.“

The primary purpose of this paper is to report the finding of two Clovis Fluted points in southeastern Arizona and hence to further define the geographical range of the hunting complex represented by these points. The secondary purpose is to define the characteristics of the two points in question, for they closely resemble the eight points found at Naco, Arizona.

Haury and others (p. 1 ff.) report the finding of eight Clovis Fluted points in the near vicinity of Naco, in southeastern Arizona. This (American Antiquity, Vol. 18, No. 1, p. 91) was the first reported find of these fluted points in this area. The importance of the find was emphasized by the fact that the projectile points were found in direct association with the skeletal remains of Mammuthus (Parelephas) columbi (Haury, “The Naco Mammoth,” The Kiva, Vol. 18, Nos. 3-4, 1952, p. 17).