For the past nine years the Museum of Archaeology of the Western State College of Colorado, at Gunnison, has been engaged in archaeological excavations in central and western Montrose County. This county adjoins the Utah line and lies in the northwest part of the southwest quarter of the state of Colorado.

Six sites have been excavated during the course of this work. The following is a brief summary of the excavations, presented as a background for discussion of a corn cache found in one of the sites during the summer of 1947.

An early eighth century pithouse was accidentally discovered in Mesa Verde National Park during the spring of 1939 when workmen were digging a trench for a new pipe line. Before the trench was dug the area was thoroughly examined so that the digging would not cut through any prehistoric structure. There were no surface indications of this pithouse. During the actual laying of the pipe line workmen discovered the floor levels of the pithouse visible on the sides of the trench. The Park Service authorities decided to excavate the structure to preserve anything of archaeological value.

The pithouse is located on Chapin Mesa, 108° 29′ 27˝ west, 37° 12′ 17˝ north, at an elevation of 7,200 feet. Today a thick forest of juniper and pinyon trees covers the entire area. The red topsoil is about 1.7 m. in depth and overlays a.layer of shale. The floor of the pithouse is 1.25 m. below present ground level and well within the limits of this topsoil layer.

The San Augustin Plains of south central New Mexico contain several pluvial lake basins, on the terraces of which are numerous blowout sites with remains of Early Man. The major portion of the Plains lies to the south of U.S. Highway 60, between Magdalena and Datil, New Mexico. This is the area of the basin of extinct Lake San Augustin. The small portion of the Plains to the north of the highway contains the basins of White Lake and North Lake. The Plains consist of a large basin some 60 miles long from northeast to southwest, varying in width from 20 miles at the northeast end to about 6 miles at the southwest. On three sides of the Plains are a series of mountain ranges, while on the west are the ranges that form the continental divide (Fig. 41).

Several problems arising from the very interesting ceramic wares of the Gallina area have already appeared in print. H. P. Mera has admirably described the various potteries of this region and made certain suggestions concerning their origin. The utility vessels of the Gallina have attracted special comment and have figured more than any other one feature in discussions of the cultural origin of the whole complex. Several additional seasons of field work in this area have, however, added a number of new items to the picture sufficient, perhaps, to color final conclusions.

The pottery of the Gallina quite naturally divides itself into two major varieties. These are the utility wares and the decorated wares. The dichotomy between the two transcends the ordinary division of usage. The decorated ware and the utility pottery of this complex seem to derive from two separate origins and traditions.

The following is a brief account of the partial excavation of a cave on the east side of Honey Lake Valley, near Wendel in Lassen County, California. Although the materials recovered are not extensive, these notes seem warranted by the fact that this is the only dry cave archaeology done south of Oregon on this extreme western periphery of the Great Basin. Ninety miles to the east, work has been done in Lovelock Cave and Humboldt Cave. Some 150 miles north of our area the University of Oregon, under the direction of L. S. Cressman, has devoted nearly seven years (1935–42) to excavating the dry caves of south-central Oregon.

Honey Lake is the remnant of the westernmost arm of extinct Lake Lahontan. Its surface is 3,950 feet above sea level at the present time. The lake is bounded on the northeastern corner by Hot Springs Peak, a mountain of Miocene volcanics. Tommy Tucker Cave, circa 200 feet above the valley floor, is a fissure on a fault line near the foot of this peak.

On the night of July 5, 1948, under circumstances which may never be explained, John Haynes Bailey “shuffled off this mortal coil.” Some two years previously he had undergone a major surgical operation from which, insofar as his family and his friends were aware, he had recovered, but the incubus of ill health offers the most probable solution to the enigma of his tragic death.

Born on May 22, 1909, in the western New York village of Dansville, as the only child of James Albert Bailey, an attorney, and Marie (Haynes) Bailey, he was early taken to Caledonia, also in the Genesee Country, where he received his pre-collegiate schooling. In 1933 he was graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in physics.

The death of Sylvanus Griswold Morley on September 2 brought to a close a brilliant career and probably also an important phase of Maya research. His achievements are outstanding in the fields of archaeological exploration and epigraphy; and he had a talent for imparting to others his intense concern for everything pertaining to the Maya people, whether ancient or modern. All was grist that came to his mill, if it had any bearing on this subject; and where there was an application to the hieroglyphs, he ground to exceeding fineness. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that he has done more to spread an intelligent interest in Maya civilization than anyone since Stephens, over a century ago.

He was a winning and sympathetic person and made friends in every quarter. He was open-handed to a fault, not only with his material possessions, but also with unpublished scientific data that he had acquired the hard way, even when he knew it would be used to question some cherished thesis of his own.

The University of California instituted on August 1, 1948, a statewide archaeological survey. Supporting funds are from the State Legislature and are part of the regular University budget. The financing is adequate, and assurance of the Survey being a permanent institution has been given. Work will be done by the Archaeologist, F. Fenenga, and Assistant Archaeologist, F. Riddell, and will entail site survey and mapping, excavation, and publication. Headquarters are in the University of California Museum of Anthropology, and the Survey activities will be integrated with those of the Museum. Close cooperation is envisaged with other institutions which include the University of California at Los Angeles, Santa Barbara College of the University of California, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Southwest Museum, the San Diego Museum of Man, Sacramento College, and the Archaeological Survey Association of Southern California.

In shell middens bones and shells are surviving indicators of the diet of the former inhabitants. Unless carbonized, the plants consumed leave no obvious trace.

A comparison of Californian and Fijian (Viti Levu Island) shellmounds reveals a striking similarity in the quantity of bone and an even more striking dissimilarity in the quantity of shell. In both areas bone constitutes less than onehalf of one per cent of the weight of the mound mass. In Fiji shell constitutes on the average 13 per cent by weight, whereas the average in California is 52 per cent—four times as great. The following speculations are based on these facts.

Since publication of the manuscript “Crania of the Warren Mounds and their Possible Significance to Northern Periphery Archaeology,” it has become necessary to call to the reader's attention important data overlooked in the original report by both Mr. Enger and myself.

As was stated in the general summary of the Warren crania, “The Warren crania have the following characteristics: cephalic index, brachycephalic; height-length index, chamaecephalic fo orthocephalic; height-breadth index, tapeinocephalic; facial index, mesene; high orbits; a fairly well-developed occipital region; and no occipital deformation.” It is this last descriptive statement which, in view of recent studies, is in need of elaboration.

In this journal (Vol. X, No. 14, pp. 348–52, April, 1945), William H. Goldsmith contributes an article entitled “Trepanation and the Catlin Mark,” in which he confuses these openings. The trephining operation of prehistoric people and the anomalous openings in the vault of the skull, such as the Catlin Mark, differ widely both in location and nature.

Hace quince años dió a conocer el Dr. Max Uhle un vaso proveniente de la hacienda “Cusin,” situada a las orillas del lago San Pablo, parraquia de San Pablo, Cantón de Otavalo, Provincia de Imbabura, República del Ecuador, que calificó de figura legftímamente Maya, pero la comparó, desgraciadamente, con objetos y relieves que si con él tienen alguna afinidad no eran, por cierto, los más adecuados para convencer a los americanistas de la verdad de lo que el afirmaba. La publicación hecha por el Dr. Uhle ha pasado, por lo que sabemos, inadvertida; así hemos creído oportuno hacer una nueva descripción del vaso de “Cusín,” que hemos podido reexaminar, prolijamente, gracias a la gentileza de la Sra. Dña.María Lasso de Eatsman Cox.

In his “Note on the Maya Eclipse Table of the Dresden Codex” (American Antiquity, Vol. XIV, p. 61, July, 1948) Dr. Satterthwaite “submits that we ought to have a demonstration” of the range of moon phase lengths, also of the three-day named tzolkin periods within which Robert H. Merrill locates on the one hand possible eclipses, and on the other the average three-day length of moon disappearance “if such a double function of the three-day groups is a possibility to be reckoned with.”

On page 39 of American Antiquity for July, 1946, my Moon Chart (Fig. 7) was drawn with sufficient accuracy to show each lunation to scale in tenths of a day, for the arbitrary sample period 1900–33. This covers a like time span to that of the codex lunar table. To show in detail the simple calculations and the graphical accuracy, a sample work sheet is here appended (Fig. 62).

In this short paper the aim is to eliminate from consideration what seems to me a misleading lack of precise statement—if not an actual and important error in astronomical fact—in the recent writing of Robert H. Merrill. It seems proper first to make clear my conviction that laymen in astronomy have a proper place in the study of ancient Maya astronomy, even if mistakes are sometimes made which must seem naive to a professional astronomer. Merrill is by profession a civil engineer, and I am a garden-variety archaeologist. As a matter of fact, laymen are probably responsible for more sound progress in this field than are the all-too-few professional astronomers who have become interested. The names of Förstemann, Morley, Guthe, Teeple, and Thompson come to mind at once.