A small sample of Fremont skeletal material was examined for antemortem tooth loss. Females were found to have a statistically significant higher antemortem tooth loss than males. Although the exact reasons for this finding are unknown at this time, it is hypothesized that an unidentified cultural factor put additional strain on the female masticatory system resulting in an increased tooth loss during life.

In the October 1974, issue of American Antiquity (39:616–17) Dudley M. Varner contributes a note on “Two Ethnographic Functions of Bird-Form Pottery from Oaxaca, Mexico.” He notes, without citing evidence, the archaeological occurrence of similar forms from the southern half of North America. The example illustrated was purchased in Yalalag, Oaxaca, and he cites two Zapotec informants from the same village about the functions of this form among the neighboring Mixe who made it. One function is that the handle remains cool when the toe of the vessel is pushed into the coals of a fire. The second he cites is that three such vessels provide a support for the comal or ceramic cooking griddle and says that knobs or ridges on the toe-end of many Oaxaca shoe forms were specifically designed for this purpose.

The type-variety system of ceramic taxonomy is widely accepted, but some difficulties exist in the identification and interpretation of "wares" in the study of Maya pottery. Although the ware concept was formulated to incorporate technological data, such as paste composition, into the classificatory scheme, in practice ware definitions are frequently limited to variables of surface treatment. A redefinition of the ware concept and the creation of a new unit of paste composition analysis which crosscuts types is suggested. This will realign theory closer to what is current practice and will enhance the potential and actual contributions of the type-variety system to the anthropological study of pottery.

The traditional broad category of shoe-shaped pots (or bird-forms or patojos) is invalid for analytic purposes. It is a catch-all category for vessels which may have had different histories, uses, and meanings. One kind, the culinary shoe-pot, does form a distinctive class with a special use in cooking and was widely distributed in space and time. Previous researchers, including Varner, Beals, and Sisson most recently, have generated spurious problems and have been led to erroneous conclusions. The following recommendations are explained: (1) culinary shoe-pots should not be classified with bird or foot effigies, although they sometimes become effigies as visual puns; (2) they should not be grouped with other asymmetrical pots on the single criterion of horizontal body elongation without considering the other vessel attributes; (3) further ethnographic and linguistic field investigation should be done where culinary shoe-pots are still used; (4) primary and secondary uses of culinary shoe-pots should not be confused.

The case recently made by Madsen and Berry (1975) for human abandonment of the entire eastern Great Basin between approximately 3200 and 1500 B.P. is critically reviewed. The stratigraphic and radiocarbon data on which their argument is based are shown to be inadequate to support it.