Kroeber's classic study of the “Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America” has been invaluable to eth' nologists and archaeologists working with cultural phenomena more recent than the beginning of the Christian era. However, it has become increasingly evident that the cultural and natural areas of the neo-Indian (the term used by Griffin, 1946, p. 38) were not necessarily those of the paleo-Indian (the term used by Roberts, 1940, pp. 51-116). It is therefore my intent here to outline briefly, and without much detail, the cultural and natural areas of the paleo-Indian.

I have focused my attention upon glaciation, because the presence of a continental glacier seems to have been a major factor of North American paleogeography in the periods here considered. Climate, which possibly is more the result of, than the cause of, glaciation, I have interpreted in terms of pollen levels, and any other phenomena that I could understand.

The archaeology of Panama, like that of most of lower Central America and the north Andes, has but recently emerged from a purely descriptive stage. The formulation of cultural-geographical divisions in ceramic and sculptural styles — “Cultures” as these are sometimes called — has been the most important attempt at synthesis. Lothrop (1948) envisaged four such “culture areas”: (1) Darien (Panama below the Canal Zone); (2) Coclé (the Pacific watershed in Coclé, Herrera, and Las Tablas Provinces); (3) Veraguas (Pacific highland Panama in the Province of the same name); and (4) Chiriqui (the upland country of Chiriqui Province and adjacent Costa Rica). To these Stirling and Rands (personal communication) have recently added what is probably a fifth, the Atlantic coastal strip above the Canal Zone. The internal coherence or unity of these “culture areas” is of a most general sort.

The Bull Brook Site, near Ipswich, Mass., was discovered in the spring of 1951 by William C. Eldridge, of East Lynn, and Joseph Vaccaro, of Beverly, Massachusetts. Both are members of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. A brief notice of the site appeared over their names (Eldridge and Vaccaro, 1952). The site was worked by them, with the assistance of Nicola, Frank, and Tony Vaccaro, Alfred Thibodeau, Tony Orsini, E. E. Tizzer, Howard A. Jones, and Douglas Jordan. The last named is preparing a more extensive account of the site and analysis of the collections obtained from it.

The site lay on the south side of Bull Brook, and was situated on a kame terrace jutting into a salt marsh (Fig. 90, c). Its surface was approximately 40 feet above sea level. This deposit has been worked for sand and gravel, and the site is to all intents and purposes destroyed.

Although the Republic of Colombia occupies a large area in northwestern South America arid its geographical position makes it an important link between the basic components of nuclear America, our knowledge of Colombia's prehistoric cultures is still very scanty and sporadic. Practically no serious attempts have been made toward correlating its many different cultural manifestations in terms of temporal development or spatial distribution. This has been due mainly to the lack of organized scientific archaeology and to the romantic orientation most research had taken in Colombia, where archaeologists have concentrated upon the more spectacular ceremonial sites while ignoring almost completely the problems of chronology and cultural interrelations.

The considerable advance made during the last decade in the field of Venezuelan and Antillean archaeology, together with the many unsolved problems posed by Meso-American and South American relationships, has pressed the need for the establishment of an adequate chronological framework for the archaeological cultures of the north Colombian lowlands.

Prinsesse Ingeborg Halvø is a low peninsula, situated on lat. 81°35'N., long. 16°35'W. in northernmost east-Greenland. From the west it wedges into the large local icecap Flade Isblink, which forms the easternmost corner of Greenland. The peninsula lies 70 miles southeast of the northernmost region in Greenland, Pearyland, separated from it by a bay, the joint mouth of two big fjords: Danmarks Fjord and Independence Fjord. The latter cuts its way westward from the Greenland Sea as the southern border of Pearyland (Fig. 101).

At three places on Prinsesse Ingeborg Halvo (Fig. 102, A, B, C) paleo-Eskimo flint implements were spotted by the author of this article during the summer of 1952. The localities were all situated at a height of 40-50 feet above sea level and at a distance of 370-810 yards from the present coastline. Thus, from a geological point of view they belonged to the same horizon in the system of old raised beach terraces of the peninsula.

Early in 1953, the author and Richard Schaedel, while traveling the Carretera Panamericana, undertook an archaeological examination of the coastal regions of Peru from Chala to the Arica area of Chile. The survey was remarkably unproductive. Publications concerning this region are also remarkably scarce. Uhle (1919) published a monograph on the archaeology of the Tacna-Arica area; and Kroeber (1944) discussed briefly the northern part of the region. Other than this, the scientific literature seems to be a blank, although the chronicles state that Inca domination, at least, was an accomplished fact.

The reason for the paucity of sites is seen, in part, in the nature of the country, a description of which may be in order at this point. From Chala south to Atico, a distance of 89 kilometers, the road passes for the most part along a narrow coastal plain which in this area is merely a rocky beach, never more than 3 kilometers wide. Back of this beach the coastal range of the Andes rises very abruptly.

During a long period of the time when archaeological research was in progress in other areas of North America, the Columbia Plateau and western Washington lay relatively untouched and unknown. Only recently have systematic studies been undertaken by the University of Washington.

The archaeological survey of cave sites in Washington, during the summer of 1952, is a part of those studies. The plan was to locate as many caves as possible, to determine if they had been occupied aboriginally, and to evaluate them with an eye to future excavation.

Prior to the field work, reports had been received of caves in various parts of Washington, but the total was small, and we had little expectation of swelling the known number. Many of these had been learned of through newspaper clippings and letters, and from amateur activities. The problem, then, was not simply to examine a few choice caves for testing and excavation, but of surveying a large area in order to initiate an immediate program of excavation to save what remained. In addition to the survey of the caves, the University provided money for the examination of private collections.

This is a report of four burials recovered from the Coeur d'Alene area, Kootenai County, north Idaho, in minor salvage operations.

lOKtl (b-1). During the fall of 1949 construction workers on the North Idaho Junior College campus in Coeur d'Alene unearthed one burial. Workmen turned over the skull and longbones and a large iron blade into a box, to the Junior College. There was some green patination on the back of the skull, as if it had been in contact with copper. The blade or point measured 13.6 in. by 2.9 in., and was slightly under 0.3 in. in thickness. It is reported to be a type common in the trade material in the Plateau. Position and orientation are not known.

Roselake Burial. In the spring of 1950 a retired resident of Roselake, Idaho, discovered a skull and some longbones weathered or scraped out of the bank of thfe Coeur d'Alene River, at Roselake.

First let me say that I am thoroughly sympathetic to all efforts toward development of more accurate methodology. But the application of statistics and other techniques to our problems, without regard for basic culture theory, cannot be regarded as an advance in technique.

For years there have been arguments as to whether cultural types — pottery types to be specific — were pre-existing units in culture history that could be discovered by a good archaeologist and missed by an incompetent one. I have been on the negative side in these debates — which arise, it seems to me, because people are talking about two different things.

It is well known that any given culture is a classificatory device which offers its bearers patterned ways of meeting the problems of existence.

Located in deep, narrow limestone canyons draining into the Little Colorado River in the vicinity of Wupatki Basin in northern Arizona are numerous small masonrywalled cliff ruins. While these were apparently occupied at the same time as the large pueblos now included within the boundaries of Wupatki National Monument, they are little known and have not previously been reported upon except in the archaeological surveys of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

One of these sites, N.A.3940, situated with a southern exposure some fifty feet above the floor of Antelope Canyon, is of interest in that the masonry courses are laid in beds of grass rather than with the usual adobe mortar. The ruin itself is located in a shallow overhang in the Kaibab limestone cliff and contains but three small rooms. In no place do the walls remain standing over three feet, and along the front they have almost completely deteriorated. On the surface of the fill inside the rooms only a few corn cobs and four sherds were found.

Deep-basined metates are frequently found in early sites on the southern California coast, but the faces of the accompanying manos usually are only moderately convex. Mano faces examined by the writer never have been sufficiently excurvate to make contact with the grinding surfaces of the deeply ground metates. This presents an interesting problem: how were the manos manipulated on the metates?

An examination of specimens from Oak Grove sites 7, 21, and 79 (Rogers, 1929) and the Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys’ sites 4SBa477 and 4SBa485 in Santa Barbara County, California, reveals the following associations and characteristics. Slab, shallow-basined, and deep-basined metates are found in association. The first two types exhibit an unbroken grinding area, but specimens of the latter almost invariably have a slight shoulder running at least a part of the way around the basin, the transition between a slightly concave ground area and the deeply ground cavity.

Archaeologists usually recognize four culture patterns in the Southwest: the Hohokam, Mogollon, Anasazi, and Patayan. Two of these groups, the Cohonina Branch, usually regarded as Patayan, and the Kayenta Branch of the Anasazi, were in contact along the southern side of the Grand Canyon. While the Cohonina specifically, and the Patayan culture pattern generally, are not yet clearly defined, certain differences between them and the neighboring Kayenta Branch Anasazi are apparent. The Cohonina finished their pottery by use of the paddle and anvil, instead of scraping and polishing it as the Anasazi did; both groups, however, used a reducing atmosphere for firing, which produced a gray ware. In architecture, the Anasazi were generally more advanced. Cohonina sites usually consist of scattered surface houses, often with ramadas nearby. The Anasazi lived mostly in permanent villages of pithouses and later surface structures of true masonry, and in distinction to their western neighbors, they built ceremonial rooms. In the making of stone and bone tools, as in architecture, the Anasazi were more advanced and produced a greater variety of tool types.

In the late summer of 1952, as the author was breaking camp at conclusion of the Smithsonian-Princeton field investigations at the Horner site, near Cody, Wyoming, a large earthenware vessel was brought to him for examination. According to its owner, Mr. Don Marquess, the vessel had recently been found “ … under an overhanging rock near Goff Creek Lodge, which is located 43 miles from Cody, Wyoming, on the North Fork of the Shoshoni River, 10 miles from the East gate to Yellowstone National Park. The ledge of rock under which it was found is on the bank of Goff Creek, a mountain stream which runs through the camp and empties into the Shoshoni River. The bottom [of the pot] was protruding slightly from the surface of the ground. The rocks under which it was buried are of a flat nature of various sizes …” (Marquess to Wedel, letter of October 31, 1952).

New evidence concerning the origin of maize — a question which has puzzled botanists for more than a century — has made it possible to reach several rather definite conclusions:

1. (1) Maize is undoubtedly an American plant.

2. (2) Maize undoubtedly had at least one center of origin in Middle America.

3. (3) The ancestor of maize is maize.

4. (4) The ancestor of maize is a form of pod corn, hut perhaps not the extreme type of pod corn known today. The ancestor was certainly a popcorn.

5. (5) Sometime in its history maize hybridized with Tripsacum or teosinte or both to produce radically new types which comprise the majority of modern maize varieties of North America.

The evidence on which these rather sweeping conclusions rest comes from three fields —botany, archaeology, and genetics.

Substantially conclusive evidence of the American origin of maize was obtained from fossil pollen grains discovered at a depth of more than 200 feet below Mexico City.