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.

Gunnerson's postulated reconstruction of Plateau Shoshonean prehistory, based on linguistic data and geographic correlations of prehistoric and historic groups, is questioned on the basis of archaeological evidence, which indicates that a complete replacement of the prehistoric culture pattern took place in the 1100's in the Virgin River area of Nevada.

A dead trunk, seasoned hard, is extremely resistant to the blows of a stone axe and fairly unyielding to a keen axe of steel. A high percentage of wood specimens from ruins in the Southwestern United States which furnish outer ring dates before A.D. 600, are parts of trees that were dead before they were felled; they are often weathered, and sometimes show signs of having been attacked by secondary insect pests.

Recent excavations in the Gulf of Georgia region have added microblades and microcores to assemblages of the Locarno Beach and Marpole culture types. The production of microblades is now seen as a regional tradition lasting from at least 1200 B.C. until around A.D. 400. Persistence of this technology may indicate more continuity of culture growth than has until now been ascribed to the Gulf of Georgia sequence.

The Universal Transverse Mercator Grid is a rectangular grid system now used on all standard military maps. Archaeologists could use this system for site location, which would prove especially beneficial in areas where townships and range grids have not been drawn. The use of the series of numbers in the system would help eliminate duplication in state or regional site files.

Artifacts from 24 chipping stations and a lithic scatter from the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada were analyzed by refitting conjoinable flakes to original cores. Artifacts represented debitage from the initial reduction of locally-available low-quality chalcedony nodules for the eventual production of flake tools. The refitting analysis allowed the debitage to be divided into four patterns that roughly correlate with variation in the quality of the raw material. All result from the same strategy of reduction aimed at producing as many usable flakes as possible from low-quality material. Such relatively unproductive sites are rarely studied in detail because they require intensive analysis, but were probably an important part of prehistoric resource systems.

The Izabal zone is a physiographic region located near the southeastern frontier of the southern Maya lowlands. Its environment is compared with that of northeast Peten, a second region of the same culture area. Prehistoric settlement patterns of the 2 regions are compared and differences in distribution of settlements, estimated population densities and types of settlements are noted. These differences are related to various environmental and cultural factors.

Analysis of phosphorus content of three “hearth” samples and two control samples does not support the claim that the Texas Street “hearths” are the result of man's activity. In fact, the absence of high phosphorus content of the “hearths” is considered to be strong evidence that the site was not occupied by man.

Detailed drawings done by Ezra Stiles in 1761 show that Western Niantic domed wigwams were very like modern Kickapoo and other Northeastern North American aboriginal houses. Adena and Hopewell post molds are consistent with the same type of house.

In the exceedingly important symposium, “Man in Northeastern North America,” edited by Frederick Johnson, Frederica de Laguna has published a very interesting and elucidative paper, “The Importance of the Eskimo in Northeastern Archeology,” dealing chiefly with the relations between the Dorset Eskimo and the prehistoric Indians of the Northeast. The subject is fascinating, indeed, partly because the Dorset culture has a rather peculiar position within the prehistoric Eskimo cultures, and partly because even the Indian cultures of the Northeast coast in many respects have cultural traits alien to other prehistoric Indian cultures. In fact, the dissimilarity between Dorset and the neighboring Thule culture is so striking that the Eskimo origin of the Dorset culture has been seriously doubted by Therkel Mathiassen and Henry B. Collins. Collins, however, later agreed in the opinion, originally expressed by Diamond Jenness, that Dorset, in spite of the Indian-like features, may be an Eskimo culture.

Counts of mosaic facade elements, doors, steps, and colonnettes of the East, West, and North Buildings of the Nunnery Quadrangle at the Maya site of Uxmal suggest that these features, taken together, preserve knowledge of eight facts about the sun, moon, and Venus: the moon's synodic period is 29.53 + days; the lunar sidereal period lasts nearly 27.33 days; the Venus synodic mean is almost 584 days; the observed Venus synodic can vary between 581 and 587 days; any five consecutive Venus synodics equal or come to within one day of eight vague years of 365 days each; one sun-moon correlation has five short years and three long ones together equal to eight vague years or eight true solar years or 99 lunations; the Venus sidereal period is nearly 224 days long; and, finally, 13 Venus sidereals virtually equal five Venus synodics. Cheek glyphs, flanking birdserpents, and plumed-snake headbands all suggest that most of the masks on the East Building, West Building, and Governor's Palace represent not Chac but Kukulcan-Venus. It is therefore suggested that at least some Pure Florescent facades contain astronomical, calendrical, and ritual information, not just attractively arranged mosaic stones, and that other features, such as doors, steps, and colonnettes, should also be considered as potentially informative.

To the archaeologist whose primary field of endeavor is California, the grooved stone ax is a relatively unfamiliar object, since it occurs but rarely either in the course of excavation or in the perusal of the literature. That the grooved ax occurs at all in this region is significant, chiefly for the reason that in western North America it is a form highly characteristic of, and, with few exceptions, restricted to the Southwestern culture province proper. Since southern California is generally considered a western peripheral extension of the Southwestern culture area, it is not surprising occasionally to encounter the grooved ax here. It is interesting to note that this implement also occurs far to the northward in central and northeastern California, a region commonly thought to be beyond the zone of direct influence by or immediate contact with the Southwest proper. Presumably the grooved ax in central and northern California represents an extreme northwesterly extension from its native locale, which we assume to be the Southwest.

From the time early in the nineteenth century when the ruins now known as Gran Quivira National Monument were rediscovered, speculation as to the source of the water supply has been rife. Many are the theories to account for the presence of this pueblo ruin in the midst of an expansive waterless region. These theories range from an assumption of the former existence of springs, now long dried up, to tales of marvelous aqueducts which brought water from a spring in the Gallinas Mountains to the east, a distance of fifteen miles. Recently, researches have brought to light new data in explanation of this apparent condition. It is, therefore, the purpose of this paper to assemble all of the available evidence, to evaluate and present it.

It is the purpose of this paper to bring together all of the known examples of those archaeological objects from Mexico which it seems best to refer to as wheeled toys. All but one of these have previously been described and illustrated, but I have thought it worthwhile to repeat to a certain extent in order to put all the evidence into readily available form. I shall also discuss briefly certain of the historical and general anthropological implications of the presence of wheeled toys in ancient America.

Complementary archaeological and paleoenvironmental datasets from North Creek Shelter (Colorado Plateau, Utah, USA) are analyzed using the diet breadth model, revealing human dietary patterns during the early and middle Holocene. Abundance indices are derived from botanical and faunal datasets and, along with stone tools, are used to test the prediction that increasing aridity caused the decline of high-return resources. This prediction appears valid with respect to botanical resources, given that high-ranked plants drop out of the diet after 9800 cal BP and are replaced with low-ranked, small seeds. The prediction is not met, however, with respect to faunal resources: high-ranked artiodactyls are consistently abundant in the diet. The effects of climate change on dietary choices are also examined. Findings show that increased aridity coincides with greater use of small seeds and ground stone tools but not with increases in low-ranked fauna, such as leporids. The patterns observed from the North Creek Shelter botanical and faunal datasets may reflect different foraging strategies between men and women. This would explain why low-ranked plant resources became increasingly abundant in the diet without a corresponding decrease in abundance of high-ranked artiodactyls. If so, then archaeological records with similar datasets should be reexamined with this perspective.

Burlington and Jefferson City cherts often dominate Ozarks lithic assemblages, and this record contains ample evidence for the heat treatment of both. In this paper, we use a technological investment model to understand why prehistoric knappers may have invested in heat treatment at the Big Eddy Site in southwest Missouri. Tech investment models offer one way to evaluate the cost-benefit relationships of various technologies and, consequently, the conditions under which a manufacturing strategy might be adopted. We conduct a heat treatment experiment to measure the untreated utilities of the two materials, the approximate time needed to heat each, and the resultant gains in utility a knapper acquires by spending the time to do so. In the Big Eddy case, the tech investment model suggests that the two toolstones were heat-treated differentially in response to differences in utility gains and availability on the landscape.

Although considerable archaeological excavation has been conducted throughout eastern Oklahoma during the past fifteen years, it is only recently that attempts have been made to present a chronological framework for the area (Orr, 1946; Krieger, 1946, 1947; Newell and Krieger, 1949; Bell and Baerreis, 1951). Within this framework of prehistory, the latter portions such as those represented by the Gibson and Fulton aspects are probably the best understood. "With a single exception (Baerreis, 1951), the earlier cultures remain relatively incognito. One of these early cultures is commonly referred to as Fourche Maline. Unfortunately, however, the Fourche Maline materials remain to be clearly described and identified.

In the collection from Lovelock cave, gathered by Loud in 1912, there recently came to light a piece of finger-woven textile which, at first glance, appeared similar to the Apocynum fabric from Humboldt cave described by O'Neale (1947). Loud did not describe or mention the textile, though he illustrates it (Loud and Harrington, 1929, Pl. 53a), and one suspects that, being reluctant to disturb the bead strands to which it was affixed, he did not recognize the specimen for what it was.

The sling (Fig. 67, a), made probably of Apocynum, was wrapped with a compound necklace of Olivella shell bead strands and was found about the neck of a partially mummified child about 6 years old. The description of the necklace, the burial, and a photograph of the necklace itself with the sling clearly apparent, occur in Loud and Harrington's report on Lovelock cave (1929, p. 105, Pls. 10, 53a).

Early aggregated communities are the result of individuals and families from geographically dispersed social networks coming together at a single geographic locale. In the process of this transition, individuals and families must find new ways to relate to one another and are constantly negotiating their positions in new, and highly dynamic, social orders. To facilitate this negotiation, villages, and families within villages, experiment with existing and new social mechanisms. The result can be considerable differences in the organization of villages within the same region and even houses within a village. This study examines this variability at two Tsegi-phase villages (Segazlin Mesa and Pottery Pueblo) in the Kay enta region of the American Southwest to better understand these processes.