Curren (1977) presents an interesting and provocative hypothesis regarding the “potential” function of “stone gorgets.” Nevertheless, there are some serious problems with his thesis that require comment.

Initially, there is a danger in the rather simplistic association drawn between form and function. To claim a functional similarity because there is a morphological similarity between stone gorgets and contemporary ceramic tools called “ribs” is a risky procedure. One does not need to go very far to demonstrate analogous examples. For instance, if I were to show a surveyor a stone “plummet,” I would most likely elicit the response, “ a surveyor’s plummet in stone?” If I were to present an unsuspecting archaeologist with a surveyor’s plummet, I might hear, “plummets (net sinkers or bolas] in brass?” In contrast to the paper under disucssion, Ahler’s (1971) important study is a sophisticated treatment of the problems involved in equating form with function.

A temporal framework for the Kansas City Hopewell complex has been created by seriating rim sherds from four sites, within a 20-mile radius, in the Missouri River Valley to the north of Kansas City. Data used in the sedation are formal and decorative attributes of the rims. The k-means clustering technique, and an option which allows sherd locations in n-dimensional space to be plotted two-dimensionally, was used to generate the seriation. Tests of the seriation, as an essentially temporal ordering, are by means of stratigraphy, radiocarbon dates, and comparison with the ceramic sequence of the Illinois River Valley.

In 1974, a sweathouse was discovered in the Postclassic site of Los Cimientos-Chustum, department of El Quiché, Guatemala. It is rectangular, provided with an interior hearth, a drainage canal, and a large water reservoir. It is, thus, quite different from the El Paraiso sweathouse, the only Precolumbian structure of this type known today in the Highlands of Guatemala. The Los Cimientos arrangement is similar, although on a more modest scale, to the Lowlands sweathouses, especially those of Piedras Negras.

With one exception, which has been described as a suspended “kiva bell,” long stone rods have been interpreted throughout the archaeological literature of North America as whetstones or pestles. Two particularly long rods in a collection of prehistoric artifacts from New England raise questions as to the real use of some of these objects. The prevailing interpretations of the two artifacts may be incorrect, or at least incomplete, because the rods lack the kinds of wear that are found on most whetstones or pestles. They also have different acoustical properties from true pestles, which are usually shorter, and are identical in materials, acoustics, and form to probable prehistoric lithophones from the Old World, which can be played on the lap. The identification of the pair of rods as good candidates for being the first known cylindrical, two-toned prehistoric lithophones from New England introduces a new avenue for the study of fossil sounds and rituals in both the region and continent because it is likely that similar artifacts will be examined for characteristic wear, tested acoustically, and recognized as the objects of prestige and ceremony that they may have been in their role as un-suspended musical instruments.

Archaeology in the central and northern Great Plains stands today on the threshold of what may be its outstanding opportunity for sustained achievement. The intensive field investigations so auspiciously launched in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Dakotas in the decade before the war, have been at a virtual standstill since 1940; and with the rapid expansion of the nation's armed forces and defense industries, the number of students and laboratory workers available for study of the accumulated data and collections, dwindled nearly or quite to the vanishing point. Here and there, a few individuals found it possible, intermittently and subsidiary to war-connected activities, to carry on limited researches.

Mainly through force of habit and lack of factual data, the general tendency has been to view Southwestern agriculture as arising from a Basketmaker-Puebloan center. Recently G. F. Carter has clearly demonstrated that, in addition to the above, there was a second center of equal importance and antiquity, mainly in the area occupied by the ancient Hohokam and their successors, the Pima-Papago. It is with the latter center that the present paper is concerned.

This paper presents data for the reconstruction of a culture sequence in the section of western peninsular Florida that has bf en referred to as the Manatee region (Goggin, 1947, p. 118). These data have been drawn from the analyses of a group of archaeological sites excavated under the direction of the Bureau of American Ethnology during the peri od of 1923 to 1936.1 A full presentation of this material is planned for a forthcoming report (Willey, N.D. a). For the present, this preliminary summary is offered as a companion resume to previously published reviews of archaeological chronology in northwest Florida (see Willey and Woodbury, 1942, and Willey, 1945).

Very Little has been written about the archaeology of central and southern Bolivia, the attention of students having been concentrated on the Tiahuanaco area. I began exploring this great unknown region in 1940-44 and am now continuing the project in my present capacity as Director of the Archaeological Museum of the University of Cochabamba. The present report is a summary of the results of this work to date. The best described Bolivian culture outside of the Tiahuanaco area is the one called Mizque-Tiahuanaco by Nordenskiöld and Bennett which I am calling Yampará. I have found tombs in an earlier variety of this style without any Tiahuanaco influence. A characteristic of Yampará pottery is the presence of tripod bowls which resemble Mexican ones; this trait is entirely un-Tiahuanacoid.

The Yampará style extends to the whole of the Department of Chuquisaca, except for Cinti and the southern part of Azero, and it occurs also in the Province of Cornelio Saavedra in Potosí.

A little more than a decade ago, the term “Folsom points” made its first appearance in the literature. It signifies a stone implement characterized by a wide, shallow groove, usually found on both sides (Figure 25:1, 2, 6, 7). Previously these implements, known from surface finds only, had aroused no particular attention. Their true significance was established by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, when these artifacts were discovered in direct association with a number of extinct bison (B. antiquus taylori) and other animals. The undoubted association of fauna and artifacts was confirmed by Barnum Brown, A. V. Kidder, and F. H. H. Roberts, Jr. All finds of this particular grooved blade were henceforth called “Folsom” points, after the nearby town of Folsom, New Mexico.

Eighteen analyses are presented for 12 different Moche copper pedestal cups. Eight of the cups were made from naturally-occurring copper metal ore; the remaining 4 from copper obtained by smelting of complex oxidized ores. The use of both ore types suggests either a matter of convenience or technology in transition. In general, these people possessed a more advanced level of metallurgical technology than their utilization of primitive naturally-occurring copper metal implies.

Sandia Cave is located in an escarpment of Pennsylvania limestone in Ellis Canyon, thirty miles northeast of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It presents an interesting problem in regard to the time when man existed in North America contemporaneously with the horse (equus?), the ground sloth (nothrotherium), and other extinct Pleistocene forms. In the United States, discoveries of artifacts with extinct mammals do not show necessarily that man existed in the Pleistocene or ice age, but may indicate that the mammals have survived that period and become extinct in more recent times. The best criteria for dating would be collections made in the glaciated areas and associated with glacial deposits. However, this is not always possible, and other means must be sought. Dating can be done to some degree of accuracy by the interpretation of climatic conditions that existed at the time the deposits were laid down.

Two burial mounds on the east bluff overlooking the left bank of the Sheyenne River, east-central North Dakota, were excavated between June 25 and August 1, 1948, by a field party of the University of North Dakota, working in cooperation with the North Dakota State Historical Society. The archaeological resources of the area of the Baldhill Reservoir had been appraised in 1947 by a party of four, headed by M. F. Kivett, for the Missouri Valley Project of the River Basin Surveys. This survey resulted in the mapping of ten sites, three of them mounds or moundgroups, and the partial excavation of one mound to salvage skeletal material already partly exposed.

Construction of Baldhill Dam, about 9 miles north of Valley City, was already far advanced in 1948, and several occupational sites in the Sheyenne River bottomland were in danger of flooding within a few years (see Fig. 81, a and b).

Salt production has been proffered recently as an alternative explanation to irrigation agriculture for the existence of canals and terraces at the Hierve el Agua site in Oaxaca, Mexico. This argument is based in part on new interpretations of the functions of two types of water-control features. Hewitt et al. (1987) consider the so-called "pocitos" to be natural, and the "registros" to be water tanks or collecting basins. Evidence that contradicts these interpretations is presented here. Pocitos, it is argued, were constructed intentionally in order to facilitate manual irrigation, and registros are drop structures built to regulate the flow of water after the arrival of the Spaniards. Salt making might have been carried out to some extent at the site, but only in late prehistoric and historic times. Hierve el Agua was principally an agricultural site throughout most of its occupation.

In 1955 an archaeological field party from the State Historical Society of North Dakota recovered 2 perforated elk teeth from a village site, 32SI4, on the Missouri River in North Dakota. The excavations at this site were directed by Alan R. Woolworth and the writer. In an attempt to determine the significance of these specimens the writer searched the literature for data on their distribution in archaeological and ethnographic contexts and hints as to their function among socio-linguistic groups.

A plain stela has been identified at the site of Cuello, Belize. On the basis of stratigraphy and the accompanying cache vessels it has been dated to the latter part of the Late Formative, ca. A.D. 100. This date is approximately 200 years older than the earliest Initial Series dated stela so far known in the Maya lowlands, and comparable with some early dated monuments in the Pacific piedmont zone. Stela erection in the lowlands may antedate the secondary use of such monuments as vehicles for dynastic propaganda.

Many archaeologists continue to assume that spear thrower adjuncts were intended to serve some practical purpose related to the performance of the weapon despite the inconclusive results of the experimental use of the “weighted” spear thrower. Contrary to popular opinion, there is little evidence to substantiate the claim that atlatl weights increase the range or velocity of projectiles to any significant degree. A new approach to the problem is suggested by referring back to the original descriptions of archaeologically recovered spear throwers from the American Southwest. The fact that Basket Maker II atlatls were described as being characteristically flat in cross-section with surprisingly flexible shafts as well as reference to the former use of flexible spear throwers by A boriginal tribes of north A ustralia suggests that spear thrower adjuncts may have been intended as a means of exploiting the potential of such a weapon.

Chief Joseph Reservoir is located along the Columbia River in southern Okanogan County,Washington (Fig. 108). The general area is a rugged highland, underlain chiefly by pre-Tertiary resistant rocks, and marked by welldefined north-south mountain ranges separated by broad troughs, now well dissected, into which the present main tributary streams, such as the Okanogan and the Sanpoil, have cut deep narrow trenches to the Columbia. The highland, whose summits reach 7000 and even 8000 feet at the international boundary, slopes rather uniformly south and passes beneath the broad expanse of the Columbia Plateau, where flat-lying mid-Tertiary basalt flows conceal the older rocks (Flint, 1935, p. 171). Along the river the country is rather barren of flora and fauna, except for sagebrush and an occasional clump of pine trees (Fig. 109, a). Several miles north of the river the pine forests begin and extend north into Canada.

Since my synthesis (Ritchie, 1944) additional chronological and other data (Smith, 1950; Bullen, 1949) have accumulated for the New York area from interrelated field (Ritchie, 1946; also excavations of 1950 on same site) and laboratory (Ritchie and MacNeish, 1949; MacNeish, n.d.) researches. Among the significant sites recently excavated by the writer, which have contributed to the problem of cultural continuity are the Jack's Reef site, to be further excavated and reported on in 1951; the East Sugar Island site (Ritchie, 1949, pp. 3-24); and a group of Owasco and early Mohawk sites in eastern New York, excavated in 1949-1950 (Ritchie, Lenig and Miller, n.d.; Ritchie, n.d.). The Piffard site in western New York, excavated by Robert R. Hill of Rochester, N. Y., is another site showing transitional features. The chronological data accrue from the radiocarbon analyses of Arnold and Libby (1950, p. 7) made from charcoal samples obtained from hearths and graves on certain Archaic and early Woodland period sites in central New York.

Within the River Basin Surveys, Smithsonian Institution, administration and scientific research are closely integrated but separate efforts. The one depends upon the other and vice versa, throughout, yet they require different kinds of orientation. This basic principle of simultaneous integration and separation can and should be applied to all anthropological research. Problems that must be met in administration are those of finance and the fiscal year, personnel procedures, supply and equipment, geography and logistics, coordination of scientific needs and available funds, and finally specimen and record processing. All of these have their special aspects in the River Basin Surveys but apply in general to all phases of anthropological research.