A little-known territory is the Four Corners area, where the states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado join. There are few roads in this area, and it is inhabited chiefly by Navaho Indians, still living in primitive conditions. It was while I was living in this region — maintaining a small school, a very active clinic, a chapel, and a sort of hostel for travelers passing through on horse or in wagon from trading posts or going from one hogan to another — that certain artifacts came to light.

The first points submitted for classification to H. Marie Wormington, of the Denver Museum, included Yuma, Silver Lake, and Pinto Basin types, among others. During the 1951-53 period, a large number of points were sent to Dr. Wormington. Many were points I picked up, but a good percentage came as the result of training Navaho shepherds and certain of my pupils to recognize the Pinto Basin types.

Pollen grains have recently been found in quantities sufficient for statistical analysis in the sediments of Ramanote Cave, Santa Cruz County, Arizona (Arizona: DD:12:1 Amerind Survey System). At the suggestion of Terah L. Smiley of the University of Arizona the samples were collected by Charles C. DiPeso of the Amerind Foundation, Inc., in the summer of 1953. The author is indebted to Edwin B. Kurtz, Jr., and to the Botany Department, College of Agriculture, University of Arizona, for the use of laboratory facilities. Because many cultural materials have been found in cave deposits and many cave explorations are now in progress, this preliminary report is intended to point out the necessity of collecting samples for pollen analysis during the progress of archaeological investigations.

Peat bogs have long been known as ideal deposits for pollen studies due to high pollen frequencies and excellent conditions for preservation.

In the October, 1954, issue of American Antiquity (Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 174-5), A. McL. Howard called attention to a type of cruciform artifact which occurs sporadically through northwestern Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The writer would like to make note of a similar find from a site in west-central Sonora.

This cross (Fig. 135) was found on an extensive village midden in the vicinity of the pueblo of San Jose de Guaymas, approximately 3.7 km. northeast from the Guaymas airport. The site has temporarily been designated 53:F-71. The object was but one of many obsidian and basalt artifacts found scattered over the site area. It is possible that this cultural occupation represents the predecessors of the surviving Guaymefias Indians whom Father Kino encountered in 1687.

The artifact is of polished obsidian, with fine secondary chipping along the arms. It measures 39 and 41 mm. tip to tip, and 8 mm. in thickness. This cross supports the highland-coastal relationship already suggested by Ekholm's finds at Guasave and Topolobampo, Sinaloa.

Nearly all the artifacts used by prehistoric peoples of the Southwest have been carefully considered, their use determined, in many cases reproduced, and the duplicates found serviceable for the purpose indicated. Replicas of stone axes, textiles, and pottery have been made by ancient methods. There is one exception, however. The tools of the bow and arrow maker have been taken more or less for granted, and after being named by somebody, simply left that way. The projectile point is the only such artifact that has been copied and used.

Having had long experience in the making and shooting of bows and arrows. I am naturally interested in all archaeological finds of that nature. More than that, these finds have been more or less of a challenge. Just how would a workman used to modern tools and machines proceed with only stone and bone as adjuncts to arrow making? The careful observations of Doctor Saxton Pope (1923) from his association with the Yahi Indian, Ishi, were of some help, as were my own rather scanty mental notes on Pima, Apache, and Papago workmen of modern times.

Occasionally it is desirable to remove archaeological material, such as burials, so that the relationship of the elements, one to another, will be maintained. For about 50 years paleontologists have been employing a technic of enclosing specimens in plaster jackets which, under some circumstances, should prove useful to archaeologists. This method has been fully described in a few publications but, in general, it has been passed along from one academic generation to the next by demonstration and instruction, and new modifications have been presented informally.

It is hoped that the present discussion will prove a satisfactory description of the technic and useful in most of the situations which archaeologists will encounter. Since most of the objects which the archaeologists will want to take out by the technic of casting will occur in unconsolidated material, the procedure discussed here is one most applicable to that type of matrix.

Materials. There are a number of materials, not normally carried by archaeologists, which are necessary for this method.

Several Southwestern archaeologists who have seen the mat pictured in Figure 136 consider it unusual enough to merit description in print, despite a scarcity of information about its provenience and associations.

The mat has catalog number 943/7 in the collections of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at Canyon, Texas. It was donated to the Museum by Henry Crain of Canyon in 1942. Mr. Crain informs me that he found the mat in a multiroomed cave about 1/2 mile above the mouth of Mule Creek, a tributary of the San Francisco River in the Mogollon Range of southwestern New Mexico, not far from Clifton, Arizona. He and several hunting companions removed the mat and other archaeological materials from the cave in 1899, when he was ranching in the Mogollon region. Other items included 2 small brown pottery bowls, 2 wooden bows 4 or 5 feet long, and a number of obsidian-tipped arrows.

The Statewide Archeological Survey of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah was recently informed of a site 12 miles east of Ferron, Utah, which has yielded at least one fluted point. Homer Behunin, the local collector who reported the site, found the point (Fig. 137 a) protruding from the wall of Silverhorn Wash about 15 feet below the surface.

The Silverhorn Site (42EM8) proved, upon examination, to be a shallow rock shelter in a protected bend of the wash. The shelter contains at least 12 occupation levels separated by sterile alluvial deposits. The upper-most occupation level is covered by about 10 feet of hard, compact alluvium which reaches to within about a foot of the shelter roof. The occupation levels are easily detected through the presence of small pieces of charcoal which have been somewhat disturbed by the inundations which brought in the alluvial materials.

Shell gorgets in the shape of a human face are well-known artifacts of the North American archaeological complex often termed the “Southern Cult.” These gorgets were usually made of a pear-shaped section of the outer whorl of the shell of the whelk (Busycon perversum). Though the whelk is found only on the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of the United States, gorgets of this material have been found as far north as Manitoba and Saskatchewan (Montgomery 1908).

Recently the writer, in reading ethnographic accounts of the Kansa, was surprised to find descriptions, together with one native drawing, of what are very likely Southern Cult gorgets, used in Kansa war-bundle ceremonies as late as 1883. Since no one, so far as is known, has pointed out the persistence of th's archaeological trait in historic Kansa culture, a few notes are perhaps appropriate.

The earlier of the 2 accounts, and one which is liable to be overlooked by most anthropologists, is J. Owen Dorsey's “Mourning and War Customs of the Kansas” (1885).

The Woodruff ossuary (14PH4), a prehistoric communal burial site situated just south of the Nebraska line in Phillips County, Kansas, was excavated for the Smithsonian River Basin Surveys in the late summer and fall of 1946. In the report on this work (Kivett 1953) the findings were correlated with earlier observations in Nebraska and the site was assigned to a recurring complex called the Keith focus. The Keith focus is but one of several variants — and perhaps an early one — of the widespread Woodland culture of the Central Plains. It is distinguished chiefly by the following: calcite-tempered pottery designated as Harlan Cord-Roughened; small to large stemmed and barbed projectile points, often serrated; small chipped celts; triangular and crescentic shell pendants as grave offerings, along with great numbers of shell disc beads and bead blanks; perforated canine teeth and unperforated rodent teeth; incised tubular bone beads; and secondary burial of disarticulated bodies in communal pits.

During the analysis of the cremated remains from 4 Ohio Hopewellian sites, burial associations, including utilitarian tools and ornaments, were recorded with 52 of 128 burials. Approximately half of the artifacts were burned with the deceased, while the remainder were placed with the calcined remains at the time of interment (Baby 1954:3).

The cremated remains from a “shell-grave” burial (No. 13) on the floor of Mound Seven of the Mound City group, Ross County, Ohio, excavated by William C. Mills in 1921 (Mills 1922: 491), contained, in addition to other objects, fragments of an artifact fashioned from a human skull.

All the archaeological specimens from the Dodd (39ST30) and Phillips Ranch (39ST14) sites, Oahe Reservoir, South Dakota, were transferred recently by the River Basin Surveys, Bureau of American Ethnology, to the United States National Museum for accessioning into the permanent study collection of the Division of Archeology. During the processing of the material it was necessary to handle each object, to check its field number with the catalogs, the feature sheets, and the published reports, and to prepare brief descriptions, measurements, and observations for the permanent catalog of the United States National Museum. While handling the specimens certain discrepancies between the artifacts actually present and those described in the published report (Lehmer 1954 [see review in this issue]) were discovered. These mistakes included the omission of individual objects as well as of several groups of distinctive artifacts, and erroneous descriptions and identifications.

This is a plea for caution in using recent and important radiocarbon results as controls in correlating the Classic Maya Long Count with our own chronology. A final choice among alternative day-for-day hypotheses must condition one's view of the meaning of the calendar and of astronomy in Mesoamerican cultures generally. More is at stake than the firm dating of archaeological periods, important as that is, and in our desire for a decision there is danger of oversimplifying the problem. Already there has been a press report that the Spinden 12.9.0.0.0 correlation has been established, though equal support in the new evidence can be claimed for an alternative 12.9.0.0.0 hypothesis of Makemson. Nonspecialists wishing to form opinions as to specific correlations must still study the evidence as a whole. Three excellent summaries, well-spaced in time, have been published by Thompson (1935, 1950) and Andrews (1940).