The ossuary described in this paper is believed to be at or near the site of Piscataway Fort. Piscataway Fort is of historic interest for it was there, in 1634, that Calvert obtained permission from the “Emperor of the Piscataways” to begin the actual settlement of Maryland.

It is thought that until 1623 the principal town of the Piscataways was at Moyaone on the Potomac just below the mouth of Piscataway Creek. In 1623 Governor Wyatt of Virginia burned Moyaone and the principal site of the tribe was probably moved to Piscataway on the south bank of Piscataway Creek two or three miles east of Moyaone. We know that Piscataway Fort was an important place in 1634 and it continued to be the headquarters of the Piscataways, the most important Indians on the Maryland side of the Potomac, until 1680.

Native civilization in western Oregon disintegrated so rapidly under white influence and white men's diseases that only a few traces of it are left. By 1850 most of the native materials had been given up by surviving Indians and replaced by trade implements brought by the whites. It was, therefore, with considerable interest that Mr. Leatherman began excavations in December, 1938, at a small Indian village site at the mouth of Coquille River, Coos County, Oregon.

I present herewith four-cell coefficients calculated from data given in two recent midwestern archaeological reports by Webb and Griffin. The purpose is not controversial, since in a simple situation involving a small number of culturally related sites a competent archaeologist saturated in his material can draw all important classificatory inferences and it would be vain to hope that any statistical device would add anything fundamental. What calculations can do in such a case is this: (1) Check errors and oversights of “intuitive” or inspectional interpretation. This of course holds both ways: if there is serious disagreement, a coraputatory error may be at fault. (2) Present results with added clarity and incisiveness, especially after numerical coefficients have been translated into diagrams. (3) Indicate minor revisions of classification. (4) Sometimes suggest the factor at work if a classification comes out conflicting or dubious at certain points.

During the summer and fall of 1938 the writer made several trips into Arizona and while there visited various museums in the central and northern part of the state. In each of these he encountered numerous artifacts made of a red shale material which varies in color from a light pink to a dull red. This is often referred to locally as pipestone. On more than one occasion the writer was asked if these rock samples were catlinite and was astonished to find that he could not answer this query, nor, indeed could he define or properly describe catlinite. It was quite apparent, moreover, that much confusion prevailed concerning many of the red-stone artifacts incorporated in the museum collections and that some few people were drawing far-reaching conclusions as to the extent of commerce and trade indulged in by our North American predecessors. Regrettable as this tendency is, it is not entirely unexpected since research with pipestone has been neglected.

Harlan Ingersoll Smith, former Chief Archaeologist of the National Museum of Canada, died on January 28, 1940. He was born in East Saginaw, Michigan, February 17, 1872. As a boy he became interested in the many evidences of the former Indian inhabitants scattered over the fields near his home and he formed a small collection of archaeological material. The first opportunity to do actual field work came in 1891, when the late Professor Putnam, Chief of the Anthropological Department of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, employed him to assist Dr. Charles Metz in the exploration of the well-known Madisonville Village Site in Ohio. This was followed in 1892 by field trips to other sites in Ohio; in 1893 to mounds near Madison Wisconsin, and in 1894, as explorer for the Archaeological Institute of America, to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to investigate the so-called “gardenbeds” near that place.

“Salt pans” commonly occur throughout the Mississippi drainage area, especially in Southern Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee where they often are associated with salt springs. Most frequently referable to numerous foci of the Middle Phase, Mississippi Pattern they are typical especially of the Gordon-Fewkes Aspect. Recent work under the sponsorship of various governmental agencies (Work Projects Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, National Park Service) has somewhat extended the known range of this ware to include almost all of the region west of the Appalachians and East of Central Arkansas.

For several years I have been using a composite material for the restoration of museum specimens of many kinds. It has proven useful in the repair of a wide variety of substances, including pottery, stone, oxidized metals, bone, and ivory. It may be used wherever a strong substance is needed to fill in missing parts and to make a bond with the original pieces. It is easily prepared and used, and has many advantages over the usual repair materials. The chief of these is that it is very strong, though light; and when dry, very hard, yet completely reconvertible without damage to the specimen. Moreover, it does not shrink in drying.

I refer to this composite material, for want of a better name, as plastic clay. It has two ingredients: polymerised vinyl acetate (a synthetic resin which is described in detail at the end of this article), and powdered clay or muddy sand of 200 mesh fineness.

Polished stone artifacts, found in many parts of the world, are widely cited as evidence of the patience and manual dexterity of primitive man. Investigation of the polishing scratches on the surfaces of a number of stone hammers strongly suggests that the polish is of natural origin, a conclusion supported by the difference between this polish and that in the hafting grooves, known to be man-made. (Fig. 7)

Several valuable classifications of flint points have been formulated but few of these have attempted to distinguish between those points having diagnostic value, and the numerous forms which are found rather indiscriminately over a large series of cultures and which may or may not have value as cultural determinants. Points which have been used by archaeologists as diagnostic determinants seem to be inseparably connected with distribution studies of complexes and traits. An illustration of this is the small finely chipped isosceles projectile point so diagnostic of the Middle Mississippi phase. This identical point is found in the Southwest where unfortunately it is found among several different cultures and in several different time horizons so that it does not have diagnostic value in this general area. Or again we might consider the highly diagnostic laurel leaf blade so typical of many components of the Red Ochre phase.

During excavations in Catlow valley, southeastern Oregon, by the Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, in the summers of 1937 and 1938, there were found

seven peculiar wooden tubes, each with a shallow groove around one or both ends. The specimens, shown in Fig. 10, range in size from No. 7 which is 5.3 cm. long by .5 cm. in diameter, to No. 3 which is 10.0 cm. long and .7 cm. in diameter. The largest from the standpoint of bulk is No. 5 which is 8.8 cm. long and 1.2 cm. in diameter. This specimen is the only one made from mature wood and not from short sections cut from small annual shoots. In each case the pith has been removed, leaving a clean bore the length of the section. No. 6, one of the most poorly made, apparently was never finished because the pith was never cleaned out, though it is evident that several small sticks were broken off during the attempt.