As an introduction to the problem of pre-pottery culture in Illinois, it seems best to review briefly discoveries made previous to the excavation at the Faulkner site. The first such manifestation was reported by Langford at the Fisher site. The burials in the gravel deposits, lower level, were noted by him to have been without pottery and of a physical type different than that in pottery-bearing sites. In 1931 it was mentioned that Kelly had unearthed fire basins of considerable geological antiquity at Plum Island. Simpson and Shoenbeck have excavated similar fire basins in a shell mound in Woodford County. Both finds are considered to be earlier than the use of pottery. The Folsom points found in Illinois are also thought to be of considerable age. In a surface survey of the Carbondale area, Moreau Maxwell located sites which produced large flint knives, bannerstones, straight-stemmed points, quantities of flint chips, but no pottery.

Archaeological investigation in the Northern Periphery, in its present status, has revealed and formulated many perplexing problems. Not the least of these is the problem of the ethnic prehistory of its Puebloid peoples.

Apparently, because of the striking resemblances between the Northern Periphery cultures -and the San Juan Puebloan cultures, Judd, in his expeditions of 1915-1920, tacitly assumed Northern Periphery peoples to be Puebloan in physical characteristics. The crania found by him in the southern part of this area exhibit both occipital deformation and normality. This phenomenon was interpreted by Judd as the most significant observation to be made. He felt that it indicated the use of the Puebloan cradleboard when the trait was either in an incipient form or in a period of decline.1 Equally plausible, of course, is the possibility of two distinct periods, a pre-cradleboard period and a period after the introduction of the cradleboard.

The natives of Yucatan employed successively three different chronological systems that had Maya nomenclature. These systems will be designated in the order of their appearance: the old Maya calendar, distinguished by a long count; the Mexicanized calendar, distinguished by a shift in the month coefficients; and the Europeanized calendar, distinguished by the fixation of 10 Chen on January 1 and of 1 Pop on July 16.

The old Maya calendar is a system with an ascending order of units based on twenty, except the tun where eighteen is used. The value of each order is expressed by a coefficient that may range from zero to nineteen, excepting the uinal where the range is from zero to seventeen.

In the past year through excavations of sites and examination of various collections, there have appeared elements in a late context that do not follow or conform to the archaeological traditions known for Florida up to this time. On the east coast the collections of material excavated by W. J. Winter gave us new data on the late period around St. Augustine and its cultural affiliations to the Georgia coast. This has been named the St. Augustine Period. In the excavation of a Spanish mission site3 in Jefferson County by the Archaeological Survey of the Florida Park Service there appeared elements sufficiently different in time and content to name a new period the Leon-Jefferson.

Here follows a discussion and summary of the characteristics of the two periods.

While much has been written concerning the aboriginal steatite (soapstone) bowl industry, it would seem that too little attention has been given to its cultural significance and the people who developed it. Whatever their traits, these stone bowl people, through initiative and persistent effort to raise their standard of living, became primitive industrialists of note. From soft steatite, which they quarried, they made stone bowls of various shapes and sizes, some of which were transported in trade to far-away regions devoid of steatite deposits.

That New England was the center from which quarry work methods spread to other localities, probably south, is the opinion held by some. However, it is not known whether the concept of utilizing the soft soapy stone for pots originated in New England. It may have started further north where steatite deposits occur with telltale pick scars of primitive workmen.

The historic and proto-historic archaeological sites of the Guatemala highland provide another approach to the problem of correlating the ancient Maya calendar with the European. For native annals of the highland tribes list the generations of Indian rulers from the time of the Spanish Conquest back into prehistoric phases, which one may expect the archaeologist will eventually link to remains that are associated elsewhere with dates in the Long Count.

If, for example, we can identify a certain trait complex as one brought to Guatemala by the Quiches and other tribes entering this country from the north, and if we can calculate the approximate date of their arrival by counting generations listed in the native annals, we can then assign this date to the same complex in an area where it is dated in the Maya Long Count.

In writing an article for scientific publication one preferably should have done some original research in that field, or if his disposition is such that he wishes to criticize the work of those who have spent decades in methodical observations in regions different from his own, he should have made a real effort to ascertain the facts before going into print. In the writer's opinion, Dr. Kelley's article on the Clear Fork culture in a recent issue of American Antiquity does not measure up to these criteria.

The writer has studied the Clear Fork culture for over twenty years. He published pictures of five Clear Fork gouges in Volume 1, 1929, of the Texas Archeological and Paleontological Society Bulletin In Volume 2, 1930, of the same Bulletin he illustrated artifacts from the McLean and the Gibson sites, both of which contain Clear Fork and other ancient types of artifacts.

American Archaeology lost one of its . most enthusiastic promoters and interpreters by the death, in New York City on August 25, of Doctor Clark Wissler. As one of the last of the passing generation of anthropologists with university training to enter the profession from another discipline—in this case Psychology—-he came to the American Museum of Natural History in 1902, at the age of 32. He served at first as Assistant in the Department of Ethnology under Curators F. W. Putnam and Franz Boas; but not long after, probably on Putnam's departure, was advanced to Assistant Curator of Ethnology and by 1905 is recorded as Acting Curator of Ethnology. Succeeding Boas, on the latter's complete transfer to Columbia University in 1906, he was named Curator of the Department of Ethnology and finally, in 1907, Curator of the Department of Anthropology, a rank which he held until retired to emeritus status in 1942, at the ripe age of 72.

During the spring of 1946, a deep stratigraphic trench was excavated at Copan, Honduras by the Carnegie Institution expedition. This trench, dug about 200 m. south of the Acropolis and just west of the old Copan River channel, revealed a complete sequence of the site's ceramic activity, this extending back well into the Archaic period. To make certain that no earlier deposits lay nearby, I made a survey of the old river bank in the general vicinity. The spot finally selected for investigation lay only a few yards south of the eastern end of the stratigraphic trench. Here the river had cut through a low mound and had exposed, underneath, a considerable depth of refuse deposit. The lower half of the river bank was obscured by a clay and dirt talus fallen from above, and so a vertical section, about 5 m. wide, was cut into the bank.

Archaeological reconnaissance and excavations in the Río Balsas drainage basin of Guerrero and Michoacán were undertaken by parties from the University of New Mexico during the summers of 1939 and 1941. As a result of the first summer's work, three publications have appeared. This paper will cover the archaeological remains in the Middle Rio Balsas Basin of Guerrero and Michoacân. It will include the results of both summers' work and be based on surface observations and collections, and on excavations conducted at three sites.

For the most part the reconnaissance was undertaken on foot or horseback, inasmuch as the few roads that existed in the area were made impassable for vehicles by the summer rains.

The objectives of this paper are three-fold: (1) to make available to interested anthropologists the archaeological material which will form the basis for the discussion, (2) to point out several problems of the archaeology of the area in which the site to be discussed is located, and (3) to present a brief account of the history of the site as it is known through extant documents.

The material on which the discussion will be based consists of pottery sherds which were collected, with few exceptions, from the surface of the site of Ciudad Real located on the east bank of the Paraná River, at the confluence of the Piquirý River, in the present-day Brazilian state of Paraná (Fig. 32). The site is located on the elevated bank of the river some five miles north of the present town of Guayra, Paraná,. Brazil, and approximately six miles above the Sete Quedas.

Conventional methods of making line drawings from photographs not suitable for reproduction consist, in general, of inking in desired features on a large print of the photograph, usually blue, and then bleaching out the photographic image. This procedure, which gives good results in skilled hands, produces a line image consisting only of the applied ink lines, which are usually somewhat degraded because the paper fibers are displaced (“exploded“) by the chemical action of the bleaching solution. This same chemical action makes difficult additional ink work after bleaching.

High-contrast films developed during the last decade make possible several simplifications of this procedure. When the ink work on a blueprint is satisfactory (as determined by viewing through a deep blue filter), the print, as is, may be sent to the engraver, with instructions to “drop out the blue,” which he does by using a high contrast “color blind” emulsion, such as Kodalith.

“La Correlaciόn de los Afios Azteca y Cristiano” by Alfonso Caso, Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropologicos, Vol. 3, pp. 11–45, Mexico, 1939, may be tested by means of some astronomical data. For this purpose, sources are supplied.

Paul Radin, “The Sources and Authenticity of the History of the Ancient Mexicans,” University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology, Vol. 17, No. 1, Berkeley, 1920 (Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Part 4, pp. 45–50):

P. 46, PI. 5, “In the year 12 rabbit (1426 A.D.) … there was an eclipse of the earth(?).“

This communication will (1) report on two projectile points from Oregon and (2) call attention to others from south central Oregon caves which vary from the types usually found there and throughout the Great Basin.

The two projectile points, illustrated in Plate XVI, A, were turned into the Museum of Natural History, University of Oregon, by Mr. H. L. Robe, Museum Attendant, about 1938. The cataloger called the Yuma point to my attention but not the other. He informed me that the Yuma point had been found in an old slough in the Willamette Valley and on the basis of that information nothing was worth reporting about it since stratigraphic or associational sequence seemed to be lacking. It was interesting but that was all.

Some ten years ago Dr. Herrlee Glessner Creel in his Studies in Early Chinese Culture discussed briefly the four Shang period burials (Nos. 18.2, 18.3, 18.4, 18.S) excavated at Anyang in 1929. The unusual position of the skeletons (lying fully extended on the face) intrigued the Chinese archaeologists of the National Research Institute, and they made inquiries about parallels elsewhere. All their queries drew blanks, and their conclusion therefore was that this burial posture was unique and had never been recorded in the literature prior to 1930. More recently Li Chi has treated these four burials in greatest detail, and of them he says, “As far as can be determined, these four instances [of prone burials] in China are unique in the world.“

In October, 1938 after reading Dr. Creel's Studies, I wrote to him and described the prone (or as we call them, ventrally extended) burials of the Early Central Cali-. fornia culture horizon and sent a photograph of one such interment. This information apparently was not communicated farther by Dr. Creel, judging from Li Chi's printed article of more recent date.

We are called upon to record the loss of one of the last of the “early greats” in American Archaeology, Edgar Lee Hewett, who took his eternal place on December 31, 1946 with his illustrious contemporaries in the science— Lewis H. Morgan, Frederic W. Putnam, J. Wesley Powell, William H. Holmes, J. Walter Fewkes, Adolf F. Bandelier, Alice C. Fletcher, and Charles F. Lummis. Philosopher, teacher, world traveler and explorer, Doctor Hewett leaves an enviable record which includes: the founding and direction for thirty-seven years of the Archaeological Institute's School of American Research; the establishment of departments of anthropology in two leading universities (University of New Mexico and University of Southern California); the building of two important museums (Museum of New Mexico and San Diego Museum); the development and training of several distinguished professional archaeologists; and the endowment of “The Humanities” with numerous essays, papers, and books comprising more than two hundred titles—archaeological, philosophical, sociological, historical, and pedagogical—readable yet scholarly.

In 1944 when I was at Port Harrison, I enquired if there were any Eskimo stone house ruins in the region, but the Eskimos knew of none except ”strong“ tent rings. Because of this, and from the reactions of our Eskimo crew to the houses and strong tent rings on the King. George and Marcopeet islands, I concluded1 that if there were any Thule type houses on the mainland they were too old to be easily recognized.

In 1946, I was again working for the Geodetic Service in that area. Through enquiries at Port Harrison, I heard of two groups of ruins, and at three out of our five stops on the Hudson Bay coast, I accidentally stumbled on other groups. Thus, not only are there house ruins on this coast, but they appear to be quite numerous.

Pre-Columbian copper in the ruins of the Southwest occurs chiefly in the form of bells, numerous examples of which have been illustrated in the literature. Generally these are of the “hawk's” or “sleigh” bell type, characterized by a spherical or pear-shaped resonator, free clapper, and an eyelet for suspension. In diameter they range from about 10 to 40 millimeters and, on the whole, are devoid of any ornamental features. Exceptions to this, of course, have been found,’ notably a few small bells with “wire work,” the effigy bell noted by Fewkes, and the large Delgar Ruin bell described by Hough. Since the larger examples are apt to display complicated technical and ornamental treatments, more can be done with these than with the small bells by way of pinning down their origins to centers where the metallurgist's art flourished.

A stone ax of West Indian type is included among the collections from north Florida in the Florida State Museum (cat. no. 3535). In view of the ever-interesting question of Antillean-Floridian relationships, this specimen seems worth considering in some detail.

Information in the Florida State Museum catalog indicates that the ax was received in 1914 from A. W. Sargent of Gainesville who found it on the surface near Newnan's Lake, Alachua County. This is about five miles east of Gainesville. It was accompanied by the base of a spearhead, an arrowhead, and a sherd of St. Johns Check Stamped pottery (cat. nos. 3536-3538).

The ax has a roughly rectangular blade; shallow, grooved neck; and broad butt, with a large ear-like projection on either side of the butt and a pair of smaller ones on top (Fig. 55). In cross section, one side is strongly convex and the other partially flattened, so that the artifact might more properly be called an “adze.” Its length is 15.8 cm. and its width 10.9 cm.

A textile specimen in the University of California Museum of Anthropology, perhaps to be identified as a sling pocket, adds a new item to the growing list of fabrications made of twisted dogbane fiber (Apocynum cannabinum).It is, moreover, constructed by a technique not to my knowledge previously reported. I am indebted to Professor Robert F. Heizer for calling my attention to this unique object and for the following paragraphs placing it in its relation to Nevada archeology.

“The piece comes from a dry cave site (Humboldt Cave) in west central Nevada about 10 miles southwest of Lovelock Cave. The cave was excavated in 1936 by the University of California Department of Anthropology, and the final report on the excavation is now nearly completed.