Hurt (1953, p. 211-2) quotes me as believing that the triple channel-flake pattern of the Enterline Fluted point is prototypic to the flaking from a basal nipple as noted on the Folsom Fluted, thus placing Enterline in a place typologically between Clovis Fluted and Folsom Fluted. This probably is what I should have said, and Hurt's interpretation is probably caused by my hedging on this question in correspondence, but it is not what I meant. I have made some statements on this problem elsewhere, probably with too great reservations (Witthoft, 1952, pp. 481-3, 492-4). Therefore I propose to make a more precise statement here, even though I am dealing in very conjectural matters. I have tried out these suggestions on a number of my colleagues in conversation and correspondence, and have found few of them willing to follow me far into the dimly-lighted areas of typological conjecture which follow.

Early in 1953, the author and Richard Schaedel, while traveling the Carretera Panamericana, undertook an archaeological examination of the coastal regions of Peru from Chala to the Arica area of Chile. The survey was remarkably unproductive. Publications concerning this region are also remarkably scarce. Uhle (1919) published a monograph on the archaeology of the Tacna-Arica area; and Kroeber (1944) discussed briefly the northern part of the region. Other than this, the scientific literature seems to be a blank, although the chronicles state that Inca domination, at least, was an accomplished fact.

The reason for the paucity of sites is seen, in part, in the nature of the country, a description of which may be in order at this point. From Chala south to Atico, a distance of 89 kilometers, the road passes for the most part along a narrow coastal plain which in this area is merely a rocky beach, never more than 3 kilometers wide. Back of this beach the coastal range of the Andes rises very abruptly.

A typescript of Witthoft's article (see p. 271) was sent to me in March, 1953, with a request for criticisms. These were freely offered, and, although quite strong in some respects, accepted by him with good humor. Witthoft had himself suggested (and I agreed) that his article might be premature and should not be published until other studies of fluted points, comparable to his excellent technological study of the Shoop artifacts (see Witthoft, 1952, in Bibliography above) had been made for related complexes. He eventually decided, however, not to change his article, but to publish it with my main comments following. He believed that our disagreements would prove more stimulating to further research than no article at all.

The wording of some of Witthoft's passages is quite puzzling, and perhaps I have misunderstood his meaning. It appears to the writer that he is advancing three principal exploratory generalizations on the meaning of Shoop site fluted points and associated artifacts: (1) that the Enterline Chert industry (which includes the fluted points) is a “blade industry without microliths,“ and as such is unique for early man in the New World, but may have important connections with the Old World; (2) that Shoop points resemble the Clovis fluted type in some ways but constitute a new type; (3) that the Shoop points may represent the oldest fluted points in America.

Was the round stone tower in Newport, Rhode Island, built by the Colonists in the seventeenth century, or by the Norsemen in an earlier century? If the tower is of Colonial origin it is of interest only to local historians. If built as the beginning of a fortified Norse church before the time of Columbus, the tower is a priceless heritage of importance to all Americans.

An architectural feature of the tower which impresses the beholder is that it stands on eight columns. These mortared columns are a trifle over 3 feet in diameter. Each column rests upon a large circular stone about 3 feet 8 inches in diameter and about 8 inches thick ( 1 ). The architectural term for such a base stone is plinth. The bottom of a plinth is normally at the floor level. Since the Newport tower had no groundlevel pavement, it seems fair to assume that the builders intended that the bottoms of the plinths would appear to rest upon the surface of the ground, as they appear to do today. Actually, the plinths rest upon column foundations going down to more than 4 feet below the surface (2, 3, 4).

” North of the watershed between the Ohio River and the St. Lawrence drainages, Ohio is a fiat plain. It is an old lake bed, rising in shallow steps from the present shore of Lake Erie. The north edge of each “step” is marked by a “Lake Ridge,” a fossil beach marking a stage in the recession of the post-glacial lake. In a few places wave, action has cut a slight terrace where the old shore line met steeper than average terrain, but along most of the extent the “ridges” mark barrier beaches between the lake and a lagoon. Here they are as distinct as a railroad embankment would be.

There are three main ridges continuous across the state; these mark the longest pauses in the recession. In prehistoric times these were the main east and west trails, and today are followed along much of their length by the main east and west highways.

During a long period of the time when archaeological research was in progress in other areas of North America, the Columbia Plateau and western Washington lay relatively untouched and unknown. Only recently have systematic studies been undertaken by the University of Washington.

The archaeological survey of cave sites in Washington, during the summer of 1952, is a part of those studies. The plan was to locate as many caves as possible, to determine if they had been occupied aboriginally, and to evaluate them with an eye to future excavation.

Prior to the field work, reports had been received of caves in various parts of Washington, but the total was small, and we had little expectation of swelling the known number. Many of these had been learned of through newspaper clippings and letters, and from amateur activities. The problem, then, was not simply to examine a few choice caves for testing and excavation, but of surveying a large area in order to initiate an immediate program of excavation to save what remained. In addition to the survey of the caves, the University provided money for the examination of private collections.

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).

As we read the archaeological reports of recent years, many of us are becoming slightly appalled at the vast store of information that is coming to us each month ffpm the laboratories processing radiocarbon specimens. This material is rapidly being absorbed into the archaeological literature where, in its present form, it presents a slightly confusing picture. Most of us learned our archaeological chronologies in the old Gregorian calendrical system and to have, for example, a date of 8431 ± 475 B.P. suddenly thrown at us gives our delicate nervous systems quite a shock. Undoubtedly many archaeologists will confess that they must mentally subtract 1950 years from such a radiocarbon date to be able to fit it into their long-established chronological systems.

A more serious criticism is this: the literature is rapidly becoming flooded with radiocarbon dates, dating back at present from the years between 1948 and 1953. The physicists seem to feel that time stopped somewhere around the year 1950, and thus all historical dating in the future can be made from that date.

This is a report of four burials recovered from the Coeur d'Alene area, Kootenai County, north Idaho, in minor salvage operations.

lOKtl (b-1). During the fall of 1949 construction workers on the North Idaho Junior College campus in Coeur d'Alene unearthed one burial. Workmen turned over the skull and longbones and a large iron blade into a box, to the Junior College. There was some green patination on the back of the skull, as if it had been in contact with copper. The blade or point measured 13.6 in. by 2.9 in., and was slightly under 0.3 in. in thickness. It is reported to be a type common in the trade material in the Plateau. Position and orientation are not known.

Roselake Burial. In the spring of 1950 a retired resident of Roselake, Idaho, discovered a skull and some longbones weathered or scraped out of the bank of thfe Coeur d'Alene River, at Roselake.

The criticisms from Pohl imply that he has refuted certain contentions which I have made concerning the Newport Tower. I have refrained from anything beyond comment on his various statements.

1. Only three of the columns (N, NE, E) rest on circular stones. The stone on which the SE column rests is only partially circular, the missing portion being chinked out with smaller stones. The other four columns rest on “plinths” (see point 3 below) which are composed of many small stones (Means, 1942, and personal observation).

2. The stones, and the column bases, are very close to 4’ in diameter, and probably were 4’ in diameter when the mortar coating which originally covered them was in place.

3. Pohl's discussion of plinths is completely immaterial. The columns did not stand on plinths, but on drums 18” high, which are now buried in the soil with the exception of their top stones. We were able to identify the original floor level in 1949, and to determine that the original floor surface was gravel (Godfrey, 1950b, 1951). The drums were mortared and plastered (or whitewashed) down to this floor.

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.

First let me say that I am thoroughly sympathetic to all efforts toward development of more accurate methodology. But the application of statistics and other techniques to our problems, without regard for basic culture theory, cannot be regarded as an advance in technique.

For years there have been arguments as to whether cultural types — pottery types to be specific — were pre-existing units in culture history that could be discovered by a good archaeologist and missed by an incompetent one. I have been on the negative side in these debates — which arise, it seems to me, because people are talking about two different things.

It is well known that any given culture is a classificatory device which offers its bearers patterned ways of meeting the problems of existence.

On June 7, 1952, the writers were shown the artifact, seen in Figure 70, by Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Johnson of La Conner, Washington. According to the informants, the artifact was dredged from the mouth of the Northwest distributary of the Skagit River near its confluence with the Straits of Georgia (about forty-five miles north of Seattle).

The artifact is about forty centimeters long and approximately eleven centimeters in maximal height. It is carved from wood of an unknown origin. The raised grain and deep checks suggest long continued immersion subsequent to the execution of the carving.

Tabular stones, either with parallel sides or sides that taper to a blunt point at one end and bearing a wide notch on the other end, have been found in situ in or resting on floors of structures over a considerable area of the Southwest. Sites which have yielded these stones and data pertaining to them are listed in the accompanying figure. Sources for these data are contained in the bibliography.

In 1932, Haury suggested and demonstrated that the notched stones at Roosevelt 9:6 in the Tonto Basin, Arizona, held logs which supported an elevated floor. Since that date these stones periodically have been recovered from sites distributed over a wide area in association with structures dating from before 500 A.D. to 1100 A.D. and possibly later. However, in no case have they been found in such quantities on or in house floors as at Roosevelt 9:6. When the circumstances of these finds are considered it seems quite likely that the notched slabs of all other sites excavated since 1932 were put to a different use.