Interpretations of man's relationship to his environment are basic to the understanding of archaeological data. Such interpretations are made by almost all archaeologists in the course of presenting their findings, and there is a growing trend toward more precise delineation of human ecology in prehistoric times. Yet much archaeological writing of this sort tends to be sketchy and fragmentary, and techniques of value are often overlooked or ignored. More or less standardized procedures for interpreting prehistoric ecology are still in the process of being worked out, and even the physical techniques of collecting and sorting samples are experimental at present.

Three major factors have influenced the classification of stone artifacts in Australia. The first is the presence in the country of a contemporary stone-using people, the Australian aborigines. Early, relatively complete, and ethnologically valid studies of their life (Spencer and Gillen 1899), have given Australian artifact studies a functional flavor; so much so, that descriptive classifications have been proposed, whose major categories were in completely functional terms (Kenyon and Stirling 1900). Quite properly, Australian workers have sought functional comparisons between implements in current use and those whose function could not be discovered by ethnological enquiry, either because their makers had become culturally disintegrated, as in southeast Australia, or because their function was unknown to the living aborigines in the area concerned (see, for instance, the discussion of the mounted elouera in Setzler and McCarthy 1950).

During the past 20 years, the number of named pottery types in the Southwest has increased at such a rate that it is now virtually impossible for an archaeologist to know and be familiar with more than a small percentage of them. Some of these types are totally new, but a surprisingly large number represent refinements in terminology or segregations from more inclusive categories, resulting from further study and increasingly complex technological analyses. This proliferation of named types has alarmed many archaeologists. There can, however, be no legitimate doubt that if the intricate ceramic history of the Southwest and other areas of the New World is to be understood, research analysts must be free to break down their material to as fine a point as necessary in order to localize in time and space the infinitesimal variants of pottery which constitute, with other aspects of material culture, the documents of regional prehistory.

Recently I published a paper, together with Warren Caldwell and Robert Crabtree, disagreeing with an old theory that the development of most of Northwest Coast culture was due to movement of inland groups down the rivers to the seacoast where they proliferated physically and culturally (Osborne, Caldwell, and Crabtree 1956). We indicated (p. 117) that we did not propose to discard an old concept but suggested, rather, further evaluation and examination of alternate hypotheses, for we felt the reconstruction of Northwest Coast prehistory was only in the hypothesis stage.

Two magnificent works of art, in the form of carved human bones, have recently been discovered in archaeological excavations in southernmost Mexico. The sculptures are noteworthy for several reasons.

First, they are in themselves masterful works of craftsmanship. Few bone carvings approaching these in composition or technique have ever been found in Middle America. Second, works of art of such quality have not until now been reported from this region of central Chiapas in southern Mexico, an area just beginning to be known archaeologically.

A consideration of the Siberian data by anyone acquainted, albeit summarily, with the major themes of North American prehistory, cannot fail to lead to the formulation of a number of specific problems relating to prehistoric contacts between the Old World and the New and their effect on culture development on both continents. The limitations of available data, time, space, and competence alike set limits to the degree to which they may be fruitfully explored here. Yet it seems worthwhile at least to list the more obvious ones and to comment on them briefly, thereby suggesting directions for future investigation.