The Ghosts of “round” pit houses in Alaska were dispelled by Henry B. Collins 2 decades ago (Collins 1937: 282–6). They had emanated from the casual remarks of early explorers and the later hasty glances at house depressions. Up to now, 300 or more of the floors of old pit houses in Alaska have been exposed, and they overwhelmingly show that the winter house of the western American Arctic is some variation of a square plan. Even so, exceptions have just turned up — perhaps not merely to prove the rule. They are large oval pits on Choris Peninsula, the remains of early dwellings apparently without corners or entrance passages, or even the means of side entry.

Evidence of human occupation has been found in Pleistocene river terrace strata near Lewisville, Texas, over the past 7 years. Noteworthy finds include a Clovis projectile point in place in the site, an extensive faunal collection, and charcoal which has produced 2 radiocarbon age determinations in excess of 37,000 years B.P. The following article is a condensation of a detailed account appearing in the Texas Archeological Society Bulletin for 1957.

The use of lime mortar in the New World appears to be confined to the area of Mesoamerica. It is, in fact, one of the most important of the several traits charatceristic of this area which have given rise to the concept of Mesoamerica as a distinct cultural unit. The extensive use of lime mortar within Mesoamerica probably played a significant role in the development of more advanced forms of architecture within this area than in other parts of the New World, especially since it was employed ornamentally as well as functionally.

The Mountainous belt of east-central Arizona has produced little evidence bearing on the problem of human history prior to the introduction of pottery and agriculture and the development of village life. In terms of the Christian calendar the events since about A.D. 1 are understood with varying degrees of clarity and reliability, but before the beginning of the Christian era the record for this region is still largely a void. The nature of the terrain, composed mainly of mountains with narrow, steeply pitching, and deeply entrenched valleys, has been unfavorable for the formation of the kind of alluvial deposits in which early human remains are often found. But there is no reason to suppose that the ecology of a mountainous region was less attractive to people of a primitive subsistence economy than were the plains or the broad low-lying intermountain valleys.

The correlation of culture sequences provides the basic framework of archaeology, the essential understructure of any interpretations which may follow. In the New World, prehistoric sequence correlations seldom are projected for territories of greater size than the conventional culture area. The southwestern United States, Peru, or, at the largest, eastern North America are classic examples. The reason for such a restriction seems to be that native American cultures but rarely outrun the boundaries of their natural environmental settings, and it is difficult to effect alignments of culture phases or units on an interareal basis.

Fluted projectile points of chipped flint have been found occasionally in Michigan and Wisconsin. Most, if not all of these, closely resemble the Clovis style of fluted point found in the west. There is some evidence indicating that the western Clovis points belong to a period older than 8000 B.C. A number of archaeologists, myself included, have assumed that the eastern varieties of fluted points are of approximately the same order of antiquity as the western points.

Although the site of Palenque, Chiapas, has long been one of the most famous of Maya ruins, its pottery has until recently remained virtually unknown. Aided by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and with the cooperation of the Institute of Andean Research, the writers conducted ceramic excavations at Palenque in the summer of 1951. With the assistance of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the senior author in 1956 made additional stratigraphic excavations at Palenque, as well as conducting a brief ceramic survey at nearby sites in Chiapas and Tabasco.

In 1932 Verne F. Ray reported ethnographic data on the use of unfired pottery among the Sanpoil of the Plateau and discussed archaeological and ethnographic occurrences of both unfired and fired pottery in and adjacent to that area. He was disposed to look upon Sarci pottery as the most likely source for the Sanpoil trait.

During May, June, July, and August of 1956 I was engaged in archaeological field work near the city of Pucallpa on the Ucayali River in eastern Peru. The project was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History as a part of its long term program of anthropological work in the Peruvian Montana. The Museum grants permission to present this preliminary statement, and it will publish the final report on this work.

The Ikat technique, that of producing designs in a fabric by means of a resistdyeing process in which the yarns of the warp, of the weft, or of both the warp and the weft, are pattern-dyed prior to weaving, was believed, until recently, to have been unknown in pre-Columbian Peru (Crawford 1916: 154; Dixon 1928: 201–9; Means 1931: 490). To date only a few examples of archaeological Peruvian textiles patterned by this method have been reported. Dressen (1930: 67) and Bird (1947: 73–4; 1952: 359; Bennett and Bird 1949: 285) mention some of these and Kroeber has spoken of ikats from Supe being present in the University of California Museum of Anthropology (personal communication, September, 1949).

Tambo Colorado is the name given to a group of buildings standing on the north bank of the Pisco River in southern Peru, 45 km. east of the Panamerican Highway. These buildings are definitely Incaic, but were built on an earlier site, and are no more than a very small portion of a large occupied area extending to the west, north, and east of the buildings.

Both banks of the Pisco River were densely populated during Precolumbian times, and establishments much larger than Tambo Colorado can be observed in the area.

A sound cultural chronology is the primary step in discovering the prehistory of any region. The chronology of the northwest coast of Florida and the adjacent Mobile Bay region of Alabama was first outlined by Willey (1949), utilizing his own surface and excavated collections, as well as the extensive but unsystematic work of Clarence B. Moore. Later Ford (1952) incorporated a portion of Willey's data into a chronological comparison of the Gulf Coast region and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Recently Sears (1956), in a most thorough report on the excavations at the Kolomoki site in southern Georgia, has called certain details of the ceramic chronology developed by Willey into question; notably the time position of the abundant check-stamped ware.

The archaeology of the San Luis Rey Basin is characterized by a series of sites which for the most part conform to the San Luis Rey complexes described by Meighan (1954). San Luis Rey I is characterized by dark, sooty midden deposits containing small pressure flaked projectile points, manos, portable metates, spire-lopped and disc beads of Olivella, drilled stone ornaments, and portable and bedrock mortars with unshaped cobble pestles. San Luis Rey II contains all of the above elements plus pottery, pictographs, and historical artifacts on the terminal sites. The physical locations for San Luis Rey sites seldom deviate from streamside locations in close proximity to boulder outcroppings suitable for bedrock mortars and shelter.

Several excavations have recently been completed in the Maravilla system, a small abandoned irrigation system in the Valley of Teotihuacan, discovered by Armillas on an aerial photograph in 1954 and reported on by Armillas, Palerm, and Wolf (1956). For a recent summary of irrigation studies in Mesoamerica, see Wittfogel (1957: 19–20). For an earlier summary of climatic conditions in the Valley, see Millon (1954). The present paper is a preliminary report on two of these excavations with additional data on other abandoned and existing systems of irrigation in the Valley.

The Grand Canyon in northwestern Arizona has long been a favorite area of study for geologists from all parts of the world, but until recently little intensive archaeological work has been done within the canyon itself. In 1953 the senior author began to investigate Cataract Creek Canyon, the only major drainage leading from the Coconino Plateau on the south to the Colorado River. Also in this year Walter W. Taylor (1954) made a quick survey of the lower reaches of the Grand Canyon by boat, but due to high and fast water he was unable to locate many sites. The present project was the first major excavation to be carried on in the main canyon area and it revealed material that should stimulate further work in the region.