It has become almost an archaeological maxim that each new culture should be followed up with some dispersal studies. Most of these take the form of tabulations of typical cultural items that may be recognized out of context. If these are sufficiently distinctive, dispersion of the particular traits or characteristics may be traced with fair facility. Inherent in this supposition are some outstanding difficulties, nowhere better illustrated than in the case of the Folsom point. After the discovery of the Folsom site at Folsom, New Mexico, and the relatively quick realization that the Folsom point was distinctive and had a characteristic outline and peculiarities of chipping which could be recognized out of context, a fervent search was initiated to discover the dispersal of this element.

Several exceptions have been taken recently to the use of “guess dates,“ assumptions, hypothetical sequences, the theory of cultural continuity, and other concepts in eastern and middlewestern archaeology.1 These criticisms lay bare a division of opinion on several fundamental issues of method and theory, and it is the purpose of this communication to shed some light on the conflicting views. We may at the outset indulge in some labelling, not for purposes of name-calling, but to provide handles for verbal manipulation. It is the opinion of the writer that two trends in method and theory can be distinguished: one we may call “empiricist,” the other, “experimental.” Reasons for the choice of these rather mouth-filling terms will subsequently become clearer. Also note we do not use the word “school” this term implies a company of individuals, all subscribing to a special dogma, whereas the contemporary trends actually crosscut several “schools” in archaeological thought. In many cases, individual archaeologists exemplify both of these trends in their own work.

The North Benton Mound is a Hopewell site located in Mahoning County, northeastern Ohio. This mound is on the farm of Mr. John Malmsberry, near the village of North Benton. Mr. Roy Saltsman and the writer participated in the excavation of the site. The photographs and other records were made by the writer.

The recent history of the mound is interesting. The grave of Judge William Smith, original owner of the mound, was placed some seven or eight feet north of the crest. It is shown in the cross section (Fig. 4). When Smith died in 1837 with the strange request that he be buried in the mound, the top was apparently cut off to make a burial platform; the removed dirt which was thrown down upon the south shoulder is represented on the projected cross section by broken hatching. The mound, situated on a high knoll, later became an even more conspicuous landmark when conifers were planted on it and grew to great size.

During the past several years, a steatite quarry in Westfield, Massachusetts, was excavated by the Connecticut Valley Chapter of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society under the writer's direction. This quarry is one of two known steatite deposits in this part of the Connecticut Valley worked by the aborigines, the other one being located at North Wilbraham. The Westfield steatite is finely grained with a high percentage of talc, a firm but soft stone, easily shaped into eating utensils and other articles. Only a small part of the original quarry has escaped damage from recent serpentine-marble quarrying. Enough has been left to provide factual evidence of the kind of steatite products and quarry tools that were made at this site.

Excavations carried on in 1931 under the University of Illinois archaeological program were directed by A. R. Kelly. One of the small mounds explored during the spring of that year was excavated by W. V. Kinietz. It was called the Box Elder Mound and was located near the town of Science, in Starved Rock State Park near Utica, La Salle County, Illinois.

During the summer of 1935 I was permitted by the late F. C. Baker, then Curator of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Illinois, to study and describe this material. The vessels to be described below are a part of the collections of the University of Illinois.

In 1940, at Great Neck, Long Island, Mr. Calmer Forsander found a waterworn glacial cobble with a crudely executed face on one side in an old stone wall bordering his property. Mr. Forsander knew that I had excavated the Baker Hill site, located about three hundred yards west of his house, and brought the find to my attention. The specimen is roughly egg-shaped and is composed of a crystalline material which appears to be indurated sandstone (Fig. 24). It measures approximately IS inches in length, 11 inches in width, and 10 inches in thickness. On one of the broader sides is a face, pecked and ground into the surface. The workmanship is crude and resembles that found on the pitted hammer stones common in the region.

The only inhabited native village,Ba-li, in the Treasury group is on Mono Island. Although only six months old, it consists of thirty-one dwellings, two open-air churches, and 165 people who make up the native population of Treasury. Formerly, the chief village was situated among the coconut groves on the protected southern shore of Mono Island, acrciss the channel from Sterling Island, a coral atoll. Here the villagers enjoyed the excellent fishing and gathered and traded coconuts. When the Japanese landed there the natives fled to the caves in the cliffs bordering the open sea. There they lived a miserable existence until the Allied forces landed and exterminated the Japanese. Released from their cave hideouts, they decided the most undisturbed location for them, in view of the feverish military activity along the coasts, would be in the interior. Therefore they selected, for their site a ridge a mile and a half inland from the eastern beach of Mono.

The recent revival of interest in the Kolomoki site, little known except to southeastern archaeologists, has suggested that a short description would be of value. The mound group was described by C. C. Jones in 1873 as Messier Plantation Mound. Some random digging has been done from time to time, and several large collections of flint points have been removed. Dr. A. R. Kelly, Jesse D. Jennings, Robert Wauchope, and the writer have made surface collections which are now at Ocmulgee National Monument, Macon, Georgia. Through the interest of Dr. C. C. Harrold of Macon, Georgia, the group has become a state park under the jurisdiction of the State of Georgia. Dr. Robert Wauchope and the writer excavated a series of test pits along the site of a proposed road and found evidence of scattered house sites. Jones reports burials adjacent to the large mound. During 1940 and 1941 the writer investigated two small mounds which were to be flooded by a proposed recreational development. These mounds did not yield much material, and the bulk of the information comes from the surface collections.

The Present paper is partially devoted to a consideration of the concept of “horizon styles” in Peruvian archaeology: how the concept has been used in archaeological reconstruction, and how new styles are in the process of formulation. It includes also an analysis of several ceramic periods which may be grouped into such a horizon style, the White-on-red. Differing from the horizon style is another historical phenomenon which I have called the “pottery tradition.” An attempt is made here to show the relationship of these two concepts— horizon styles and pottery traditions—as they are exemplified in Peruvian archaeology.

At the present time a considerable number of types of projectile points, recognized as having respectable antiquity, are well known to the archaeologist. Among these are the Folsom, Sandia, Yuma, Gypsum Cave, Silver Lake, Pinto Basin, Lake Mohave, the Texas types, and others. Only relative ages can be given for most of these. What dates are possible are possible only in round numbers, as geological rather than dendrochronological evidence must be relied upon.

The ideal archaeological site would be one where all the above-mentioned types, together with all later types, serially down to the most recent one of modern times, were found stratigraphically laid down in their normal relations to each other, awaiting only the trowel of the archaeologist to relate them properly. It is safe to say that a site of this kind does not exist.

Archaeological material obtained from Eskimos on the east side of Hudson Bay has been described by Mathiassen, Quimby, and Jenness, but no systematic excavations have been made in the area. Mathiassen was told by Mr. S. Berthfi of Reveillon Frdres that there were house ruins of turf and stone on the east coast of Hudson Bay at Kovik Bay, Mosquito Bay, and Cape Dufferin, and also on the Ottawa Islands; and by Mr. Perdy of the Hudson's Bay Company that there were house ruins at Cape Wolstenholme and many around Port Harrison. Obviously, Mathiassen concluded that these were regular houses of the Thule type. Quimby6 found only oval and rectangular tent rings on the Belcher Islands, and assumed that the semisubterranean houses characteristic of the Thule culture were lacking.

During two years of duty at the Naval Operating Base, Trinidad, British West Indies, the author had the good fortune to gain the friendship of a local geologist and savant in the field of archaeology. He is Mr. J. A. Bullbrook, Honorable Secretary, Archaeological Section, Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago. Mr. Bullbrook resides in the southern portion of the island of Trinidad near Erin, in an area which at one time was well populated by aboriginal migrants from the mainland of South America.

Rather recently the author received a letter from Mr. Bullbrook describing the accidental discovery of an effigy vessel by a native workman in his neighborhood. The paragraphs which follow are excerpts from Mr. Bullbrook's letter.

James B. Griffin, in his recent paper, “The De Luna Expedition and the Buzzard Cult in the Southeast,“ advances the hypothesis that the ceremonial material characteristic of such mound sites as Etowah, Georgia; Moundville, Alabama; and Spiro, Oklahoma, is the result of proselytizing efforts of escaped Mexican Indian servants ’ imported with the De Luna Expedition (1559–1561). He states that “the De Luna Expedition might well have furnished the impetus that resulted in the adoption in the Southeast of various Mexican art styles and concepts.“

This question is of course a basic one in Southeastern archaeology. These Mexicanoid elements are graphic focalizations of a cult which swept over the Southeast from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and from the Plains to the Atlantic. Taken at face value, this hypothesis of Griffin's is a simple tool for explaining the otherwise puzzling stylistic resemblances between Southeastern ceremonial art and the Mixteca-Pueblo “culture” of Mexico.

Recent studies of trait distributions by Collins, de Laguna, and Heizer, have, in my opinion, demonstrated a cultural connection between southern Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, and Kurile Islands. These circum- North Pacific cultural connections seem to have been established after settlement of all the areas mentioned and therefore are not properly a part of the problem of man's first entry into America.

Southern Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, Kamchatka, and the Kurile Islands form a zone or rim around the North Pacific shores of Asia and America. Along this rim of the North Pacific there seems to have been a drifting of traits and trait complexes, both from America to Asia and from Asia to America. And for the most part, the cultural connections of the circum-North Pacific zone seem to have been rather independent of the diffusions and cultural development of the Bering Strait region.

Our collection, gathered over a period of years from surface sites in the upper Red River basin of northern Texas, represents only the historic and late prehistoric cultures of this region.

The occurrence of pecked and polished celts in the upper Red River area is of interest since they probably represent prehistoric trade objects carried westward up the Red River from somewhere in the eastern forest area, possibly western Arkansas or extreme eastern Oklahoma. Nine of the celts described here were found along a fifteen-mile stretch of the Red River between the mouths of the Pease River and China Creek, which enter it from the south. Several camp sites are located along the south bank of the Red River between these points and two more lie at the mouth of China Creek.

Numerous finds of human skeletons and artifacts in Argentina, all buried in soft deposits, have led to a large literature and to controversies over the antiquity of man. Investigations of these finds by Hrdlicta and the geologic work of his companion, Bailey Willis, proved: (1) that all the skeletons are those of Homo sapiens; (2) that many occur close to the surface in material subject to recent slumping and wind action; (3) that the stratigraphy of the Pampean series is not so distinctive that horizons determined by vertebrate fossils may always be recognized at localities where the fossils are absent; (4) that none of the finds involve stone cultures sufficiently distinctive from those of the modern Indians to demand recognition as being ancient.