Although Brazil occupies almost half the continent of South America, its archeology attracted little interest until recently from either nationals or foreigners. This is attributable to the characteristics of the remains. There are no buildings of stone, tools and ornaments of metal, or elaborate artifacts of cloth, wood, and bone. Except along the Amazon, pottery is not noted for its aesthetic qualities; even there, complete vessels with well preserved decoration are scarce. Shell middens along the southern coast are spectacular in size but deficient in cultural content. Other sites are predominantly shallow middens containing fragments of pottery, or flakes and minimally shaped tools of stone.

Acknowledgment is made of Healan's corrections of our previously published paper. Clarification of some of the differences noted is also presented.

Tainter and Lucas (1983) have given us a cogent and useful critique of the “significance concept” that is a fundamental part of historic preservation and “conservation archeology” as practiced in the United States. I have no real disagreement with their arguments or with their conclusions, although I am not sure they can be operationalized.

Paul Kirchhoff defined the whole region
(Its trait was a bloody religion)
Then came Caso, Bernal
MacNeish, Willey et al.
And of E. Willys Andrews, a legion.
The Chilam Balam of Chapultepec

By the early thirties Mesoamerican archaeology was already indelibly marked. Ricketson, at Uaxactun from the late twenties, and Caso, at Monte Alban, had the general sequences for the culture area as early as that.

The invitation to review a half century of archaeological procedures, events, and accomplishments in the American Southwest gave me an initial start—not because of the magnitude of the task—but because it brought home the reluctantly admitted fact that I have been around that long as a witness. In younger days the thought of being part of the process of looking into the past for five or six decades was as unfathomable as were some of the ages we were assigning to the remains under study. Even to an archaeologist, the concept of time operates on two levels: the first relates to the past societies of unknown name but of ages measured in centuries or millennia; and the second, intimately personal, infinitely shorter and far more real, is the span of one's own life.

Digging in the earth, uncovering long-buried objects, and musing about past societies have long entranced humankind. As anthropology—including archaeology—became an established scientifichumanistic discipline, universities began offering specialized training and advanced degrees in archaeology. Tracing the beginnings of awarding university credit for digging in the dirt has been a nostalgic excursion, and it has uncovered tales of puzzling prehistoric clues, deep attachments to the essence of a place, camp esprit, and logistical travails made bearable only by the passage of time.

Our editor has asked me to prepare a personal account of the most important processes and events that affected the archaeology of the northeastern United States during the last 50 years. This is no small undertaking, considering that the larger part of our knowledge of the prehistory of this area has accumulated during that time. Moreover, because the inception of my service in unraveling the prehistoric events in the Northeast precedes the period by a decade, it may be difficult to confine my summary to post-1935. As a further complication, my recollections, especially of the precise ordering of the theoretical deliberations, may not be wholly consonant with those of some of my colleagues. Nevertheless, I offer the following necessarily very concise summation.