This historically oriented description of the development of archaeological research and conceptualization in the area of Grand Canyon National Park begins with the contributions of the earliest Spanish explorers of the area and proceeds to research completed in 1964. Three periods of research are identified: discovery and exploration, 1540 to 1900; general investigation, 1900 to 1950; and concentrated analysis, 1951 to 1964. By the end of the first period the historic tribes and the presence of Pueblo ruins in the Grand Canyon area had been recognized. During the next 50 years many details were added to the understanding of the Pueblo material, including a sound temporal framework, the postulation of a second prehistoric group in the area, the Cohonina, and additional information on the ethnographic groups of the area accumulated. In the years between 1951 and 1964 there developed an increasingly complete description of the Cohonina branch, an analysis of Havasupai culture history, an examination of the Anasazi occupation within the depths of the Canyon, and the discovery of a Canyon occupancy some 2000 years earlier than had been known previously. Finally, a summary of the current conception of the area's culture history is presented, along with an indication of possible directions for future research.

Curved, single-piece shell fishhooks are found archaeologically in Oceania, Ecuador, southern Peru and northern Chile, and the Santa Barbara region of southern California. The hypothesis that fish were possible transpacific carriers of these shell fishhooks is examined in the light of recent tuna-tagging research. Tag release and recovery data show that three species of tuna are capable of undertaking long-range migrations. Skipjack tunas are known to migrate from Baja California to Hawaii. Some bluefin tunas have migrated from Baja California to Japan. Albacore, which is believed to consist of a single population in the northern Pacific Ocean, probably circumnavigates the Pacific. A migration model of the northern Pacific albacore population suggests at least one possible transportation route of shell fishhooks between Hawaii and the Santa Barbara region. Heyerdahl has postulated that the association at historic contact in the Santa Barbara region of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook, the frameless plank canoe, and the Polynesian-type cosmogony of the Chungichnish cult is evidence for pre-Columbian transpacific contact. Contrary to his theory, reasons are advanced here to suggest that these traits may instead be fortuitously associated rather than diffused as a complex.

Even a cursory examination of data-processing methods currently used in archaeology indicates that there is a great need for a low-cost system that allows the investigator to study large masses of data without abandoning the units of archaeological analysis with which he is familiar. The authors recommend the use of a new system, Termatrex, which is a simple semiautomatic system that involves perforated cards and a light source for information retrieval. Termatrex is an inverted data-recording and searching system, with a virtually unlimited memory, which can be used at a desk. At present, Termatrex is the only system that provides true random access, continuous feedback between the investigator and his data, and compatibility with the standard digital computers.

Seventeenth and eighteenth-century gravestones in Massachusetts are decorated with a traditional set of designs which have distinctive spatial and temporal limits. By treating them as archaeological phenomena, one can demonstrate and test methods of inferring diffusion, design evolution, and relationships between a folk-art tradition and the culture which produced it. Early popularity of death's-head designs reflects Puritan attitudes toward death, while the later cherub, willow tree, and urn motifs indicate the breakdown of these values. Although cherubs appear earliest among an innovating urban class in Cambridge, they remain a relatively minor type in this central area but are rapidly adopted in outlying districts further removed from the center of influence. Imperfect reproduction of certain designs gives rise to distinctive local styles of other areas. The distribution of these local styles in time and space provides further insights regarding religious change in the Colonial period, including a clear indication of how this change proceeded in different geographical areas at different times. Future analysis of this material promises to be quite productive in the areas of experimental archaeology, kinship analysis, demographic studies, style change, and religious change in Colonial America.

Organization of the great mass of data accumulated during the salvage archaeology program in the Missouri River Basin poses a number of problems. One of the most fundamental is the choice of a satisfactory taxonomic system. The version of the Midwestern taxonomic system which has been used so far in the area has a number of shortcomings. In order to avoid some of them, data from the Missouri Valley in the Dakotas are organized here in terms of the Willey and Phillips system of "archaeological unit concepts." The classification which has emerged seems to have considerable merit; the application of the system itself to a particular archaeological situation has also suggested some modification of the categories which Willey and Phillips proposed.

Two bone objects from the Tule Springs site, possibly tools, occurred in ancient sedimentary fill of a small spring outlet-channel remnant. The ancient spring was active more than 40,000 years ago and again 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. The fill and the bone contained therein could be of either age. Chemical and X-ray analysis on bone of the known ages and bone from the fill showed no significant or systematic differences in fluorine, uranium, nitrogen, or phosphate content. On geological grounds, it is concluded that the bone objects are 12,000 to 13,000 years old.

Excavations at the site of Pottery Mound, 40 mi. south and west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, give evidence that the first structure at the site was a large, flat-topped pyramid built in two terraces. Four Pueblo IV architectural levels are superimposed on top of this structure. Sixteen painted kivas in association with the Pueblo IV room tiers retained on their walls a number of multi-layered fresco paintings. These paintings show macaws, other varieties of parrots, jaguars, and possibly Mexican Indians. The flat-topped mound and the ceremonial implications of the frescoes seem Mexican-inspired. The mound may date in the late Pueblo III period. The superimposed architectural levels and the frescoes date in the early Pueblo IV period.

Classic Clovis, classic Folsom, and atypical fluted points from southern Saskatchewan are described. The variations in the atypical fluted points, which include three fluted Piano points, suggest that the parallel-flaked tradition was developed out of the fluted tradition in the centuries of rapid climatic shift following the retreat of the Valders ice. This development may have taken place in the region that included southern Saskatchewan.

Near Killarney, Canada, three raised beaches of former Great Lakes stages have cultural material in circumstances indicating contemporaneity with the construction of the beaches 7000 B.C. and A.D. 1. The physical conditions demonstrating this contemporaneity are set forth in detail, with illustrations of artifacts in situ in gravels. The several components of two sites are distinguished, and a workshop with most of the artifacts in unfinished condition is described and illustrated. The geology, which involves Postglacial uplift of the Lake Huron basin along with rising and lowering levels, is fully outlined.

In Ruin No. 2 of the Homolobi group near Winslow, Arizona, a square kiva was excavated in 1962. Paintings of two kachinas and a symbol were found on the west wall. White stripes were painted on the bench at one end of the room. The rest of the kiva exhibited characteristics typical of the region. Twenty bowls, two ladles, two ollas, and an arrow straightener were found inside the kiva. Some of the vessels were stacked with care in inverted positions, while others showed signs of blackening by fire after breakage. Most of the pottery is Jeddito Black-on-yellow of the Pueblo IV period.

In a recent publication Evans and Meggers have accused me of reinterpreting their work in an erroneous manner on two separate occasions (Evans and Meggers 1964). In one instance (Lathrap 1963a), I suggested that the Machalilla complex of Coastal Ecuador might be a member of the same ceramic tradition which also gave rise to Early Tutishcainyo and Late Tutishcainyo in the central Ucayali Basin in Peru. In the other case (Lathrap 1964), I offered what appeared to me to be a more reasonable seriation of the excavated levels of the Mabaruma phase of northwestern British Guiana and suggested that the age of the Mabaruma phase had been underestimated by a large factor.

A silver bracelet exhibiting designs stamped with a steel die, recovered from an unmarked grave near Sandy, Nevada, in 1908, was sent to the Nevada State Museum for identification. This bracelet was probably made by a Navajo silversmith sometime between 1870 and 1907.

Copper artifacts from Manitoba are compared with types established in Wisconsin. Wittry's typology is confirmed and further clues to chronology are derived from distributional studies of the types. The data on Minnesota copper artifacts are re-examined.

Cruciform artifacts made of stone have been reported from a large area in northwestern Mexico and adjoining parts of the United States. These are now being found in considerable numbers in the vicinity of El Paso, Texas. Recent finds near El Paso reveal that some cruciforms were made of bone and others of pottery. Available provenience data suggest that cruciforms were first used in the local preceramic period and continued in use until A.D. 1450.

Ethnographic data on bone defleshing tools were collected in 1964 from the Black River Band of Ojibwa who now live along the southeastern shore of Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. The information presented is especially pertinent to archaeological interpretation of these specialized tools.