This article represents a preliminary statement of the results of the archaeological survey of the Sierra de Tamaulipas, coastal Tamaulipas north of the Soto la Marina River and the adjacent portion of Texas, which was conducted from November, 1945 through June, 1946 under the auspices of the University of Chicago. Since a long interval of time will probably elapse between the analysis of the archaeological materials and the final publication, it seems advisable to put this summary into print.

Basic to the purpose of the survey and to the problems with which it was concerned was the assumption that there were cultural relations between the people of the Southeast and the more complex cultures of Mexico.

During the field season of 1941–42, joint excavations were undertaken in the Huasteca territory by the American Museum of Natural History and the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. The American Museum had appointed Dr. Gordon Ekholm to investigate this area as a part of the program sponsored by the Institute of Andean Research. The Instituto Nacional appointed Wilfrido Du Solier to collaborate with Ekholm because of his (Du Solier's) long interest in and knowledge of the area.

It was decided to undertake work in the following sites: Las Flores in Tampico; Tancol, a little to the north of Tampico; Panuco, on the river of the same name; and Buena Vista, Huaxcama, San Luis Potosi, to the northwest of the Huasteca territory. The explorations in Buena Vista and Las Flores were made by both Ekholm and Du Solier, while those of Panuco and Tancol, due to the illness of Du Solier, were made only by Ekholm.

Although the importance of the northwest Gulf coastal region in the problem of Mexican-Southeastern relationships frequently has been pointed out, the region has received comparatively little archaeological investigation. As a relatively uniform and unbroken territory, stretching from the Caddo area on the east to the Huastec area on the south, the region forms one of the most likely routes of land communication between the advanced cultures of Mexico and those of the Southeast. Inhabited at the time of the Conquest by numerous bands of nomadic hunters, fishermen, and food-gatherers who left nothing comparable with the spectacular remains of their neighbors to the east and south, the region generally has been neglected in favor of richer fields.

My Geological and archaeological studies in the Valley of Mexico, which I have carried out since the end of 1945 under the auspices and with the aid of the Viking Fund, Inc. of New York, were rewarded on February 22 of this year (1947) by an extraordinary find of human skeletal remains in the Upper Pleistocene Bercerra formation at Tepexpan, in the State of Mexico. So far the quest for genuine fossil human remains in North America has been a tantalizing venture because of the incomplete state of preservation and the uncertainty of dating. In this respect the Tepexpan find would seem to meet many of the requirements necessary for assigning it to a known geological formation dating back to the close of the Ice Age. Moreover, the formation in which the human fossil was excavated has yielded at several other localities artifacts which must be regarded as more or less contemporary.

This paper is frankly exploratory, designed to test the possibility of applying historical and archaeological evidence to the solution of certain problems in demography and human ecology for which it is impossible to secure data of more conventional character.

The Central Mexican region was selected because it contained for a very long time perhaps the densest population on the North American continent and because the annalistic as well as archaeological information concerning it is remarkably copious. Specifically the area is defined for present purposes as that included in the present states of Vera Cruz, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Mexico, Federal District, Morelos, Oaxaca, Michoacan, and Guerrero. This territory is not an ethnic or economic entity since it includes both coastal and highland cultures together with numerous independent linguistic stocks. On the other hand it corresponds to the most intensive area of archaeological investigation outside of Yucatan and is more or less coterminous with the so-called “Aztec Empire” as the latter existed in 1520.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To permit the entire six Dresden codex pages 24, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 to be seen within the purview of a single page, the Gates restoration is here photographed together with a partial translation (Fig. 7). This facilitates following the procedure detailed on pages 94–8 of “Maya Astronomy“ by Dr. John E. Teeple1 and on pages 209–13 of “Astronomical Tables of the Maya” by Dr. Maud W. Makemsen, for predicting the four Venus phase limits; and is intended to supplement the writer's discussion on pages 35–8 of American Antiquity (Vol. XII, July, 1946).

The English rendering of Maya day names and month names may assist the student unfamiliar with these particular hieroglyphs in the original manuscript.

In an issue of El Palacio, Mr. Edwin N. Ferdon presents an interesting discussion of a group of pottery figurines from the province of Esmeraldas on the coast of Ecuador. Most of these figurines were made entirely, or partially, with the use of the mold, and they are quite representative of the region. In attempting the assign approximate dates to the figurines Ferdon states (p. 225):

“Mould-made figurines made their appearance in the Valley of Mexico in Teotihuacan 3 times and in the Peten region of the Mayas in the Tepeu phase of Uaxactun Late 3 period, or about 900 A.D. Assuming that the mould-making technique spread southward from the Maya area, its arrival on the Ecuadorean coast must have been after 900 A.D. and possibly around 1000 or 1100 A.D. With the advent of the mould in Esmeraldas, new figurine types appeared, or else the earlier hand-modeled counterparts have not yet been found.“