In 1956, as part of a larger archaeological salvage project for The Dalles Reservoir sponsored by the National Park Service and under the general direction of Douglas Osborne of the University of Washington, a complete record by prints was made of some 400 petroglyphs along a 15 mile stretch of the Columbia River. The original idea for the method and its application to petroglyph recording belongs to Sari Dienes, who has used it in her own art. With the assistance of the writer, Mrs. Dienes did the actual printing of the designs. The project was successfully completed with the aid of a supplementary grant from the Seattle Art Museum.

In the summer of 1955, Nuclear Science and Engineering Corporation, as a basis for determining the demand and desired specifications for radiocarbon dating, carried out a survey of people and institutions believed to have some interest or potential interest in such dating. Polled were archaeologists and geologists in universities, museums, and oil companies. A total of 223 questionnaires was sent to these scientists, requesting information about their interest in having available a commercial laboratory for radiocarbon dating and the specifications that they would require in the analysis of the samples that were available.

In the April, 1956, issue of American Antiquity (Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 420–1) Ronald L. Ives discusses the possible beginnings of the theory of the Asiatic origins of the American Indian. In this connection he cites the recent translation of the Description of the Province of Sonora by Father Ignaz Pfefferkorn, S. J., published originally in German in 1794–95.

At the present time there are nearly 1200 radiocarbon dates published from 11 different laboratories. These dates appear in a total of 6 books, monographs, mimeographed lists, and journals. While most of the dates appear in the publication Science, it is nonetheless difficult to sort through the various numbers of this journal in order to compile dates for any one time period, area, or topic. Realizing that the dates could not be utilized efficiently under these circumstances, J. B. Griffin of the University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, suggested that an expandable file system be devised for all published radiocarbon dates.

In the July number of this journal Albert C. Spaulding delivered himself of a most penetrating review of the first of the authors’ 2 Anthropologist papers on method and theory in American archaeology. This note is in no sense a reply to his review but it seems to us that additional information about our paper and its subsequent history might prevent misunderstanding. Shortly after its publication in December, 1953, we received a long letter from Spaulding in which this paper and its authors were subjected to similar but even stronger criticism than in the review under discussion.