The correlation of culture sequences provides the basic framework of archaeology, the essential understructure of any interpretations which may follow. In the New World, prehistoric sequence correlations seldom are projected for territories of greater size than the conventional culture area. The southwestern United States, Peru, or, at the largest, eastern North America are classic examples. The reason for such a restriction seems to be that native American cultures but rarely outrun the boundaries of their natural environmental settings, and it is difficult to effect alignments of culture phases or units on an interareal basis.

During May, June, July, and August of 1956 I was engaged in archaeological field work near the city of Pucallpa on the Ucayali River in eastern Peru. The project was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History as a part of its long term program of anthropological work in the Peruvian Montana. The Museum grants permission to present this preliminary statement, and it will publish the final report on this work.

A sound cultural chronology is the primary step in discovering the prehistory of any region. The chronology of the northwest coast of Florida and the adjacent Mobile Bay region of Alabama was first outlined by Willey (1949), utilizing his own surface and excavated collections, as well as the extensive but unsystematic work of Clarence B. Moore. Later Ford (1952) incorporated a portion of Willey's data into a chronological comparison of the Gulf Coast region and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Recently Sears (1956), in a most thorough report on the excavations at the Kolomoki site in southern Georgia, has called certain details of the ceramic chronology developed by Willey into question; notably the time position of the abundant check-stamped ware.

In an earlier study (Tolstoy 1953b), we attempted to outline the Old World distributions of a limited number of ceramic elements and to make a case for their introduction into North America some 3000 to 4000 years ago. Russian reports that have appeared or become available to us since then (Okladnikov 1945, 1946, 1950b, 1955a, 1955b), as well as recent work this side of Bering Strait, prompt now a review of the sequence in the Lena Basin as a whole with North America parallels in mind. The main emphasis here is on the Neolithic of the Lena drainage and Archaic to Early Woodland developments in eastern North America.

In the last decade the middle Rio Grande area of New Mexico has produced considerable cultural evidence which indicates the presence here of the paleo-Indian and related cultures. Finds of the classic hunting varieties are rare in the Rio Grande valley itself, although a scattering of Sandia, Clovis Fluted, and Folsom points has appeared. Far more common are sites of Cochiselike character, usually evidenced by deeply buried fire hearths, milling stones, manos, and occasional projectile points. Several groups of these sites have been studied in recent years and some of the fire hearths have been dated by the radiocarbon method. A burial possibly connected with these early sites has also appeared.

It has been 15 years since Phillips (1940) first segregated certain late exotic elements from the Southeastern United States and attempted an analysis of them with respect to their cultural position and origin. Waring and Holder (1945) studied these materials a few years later with the result that the entire assemblage was defined in terms of a ceremonial complex. Both of these papers and a subsequent one by Krieger (1945) treated the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex in terms of the whole of this area. Since then there have been few attempts to discuss the Cult with respect to its localized manifestations and in terms of the localized relationships to the broader ceremonial assemblage. An exception to this statement is to be found in a paper by Goggin (1947: 275–6).

In July, 1956, I was requested by Harry B. Robinson, Chief Park Naturalist of Glacier National Park, to investigate 3 archaeological features reported to have been discovered in road construction through Marias Pass, along the southern boundary of Glacier Park. Boyd B. Gordon, Resident Engineer of the Bureau of Public Roads, in charge of the project, took me to the features in northwestern Montana, approximately 12 airline miles west of the Continental Divide, on Marias Pass between the Lewis Front Range and the Flathead Range. The site is situated on 2 flat benches high above the deep gorge of Crystal Creek and the floor of the Flathead River valley, about VA mile east of the juncture of the creek with the Middle Fork of the Flathead; its elevation is approximately 3600 feet, but it is surrounded by higher peaks such as Nyack Mountain, 4 miles southwest, which reaches 7760 feet.

The Manakaway site, situated at the tip of Greenwich Point in Greenwich, Connecticut, is a shell midden about 40 by 120 feet in extent, with a depth of about 20 inches. It was excavated by the author during a 3-month period in the summer of 1956 (Suggs 1956a, 1956b).

An open file report of the U.S. Geological Survey, “Glacial Features and Surficial Deposits of the Malaspina District, Alaska,” by George Plafker and Don J. Miller, 1957, not only indicates some of the periods when the Icy Bay-Yakutat Bay area was open to habitation, but seems to confirm native traditions of great antiquity. I am indebted to Don Miller for bringing this report to my attention.

In the October, 1956, issue of American Antiquity (Vol. 22, No. 2) a report was made on preliminary excavations made in 1955 at Cerro Mangote, a preceramic site in Panama. During the 1956 season 6 additional weeks were spent at this site with financial assistance from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Briefly, the results of this more extensive work were as follows:

Approximately 300 cu. m. of material were excavated, an estimated one-third of the total content of the site. A few sherds were recovered on or immediately below the surface in the same general area as those found the previous year.

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.