Recent disagreement on the nature of Maya hieroglyphic writing calls for a reappraisal of the historical sources, and an examination of alternative methods of decipherment. Unfortunately, no one has both a thorough grasp of the subject and an unbiased attitude.

Extending over a wide area in northern and central Europe great beds of peat cover stretches of moor and occupy valleys and depressions where sluggish drainage has favored the growth of marsh vegetation. More than any other soil type they are entirely dependent in substance on the vegetation which they support. Thus they are peculiarly reflective of changes of a climatic nature, and this, combined with the preservative effects of bog acid, both upon pollens and artifacts, has made them a peculiarly effective medium for investigation. While most thoroughly studied in Europe, peats occur in both the northern and southern hemisphere wherever conditions permit. Typically and most extensively however, they are a circumpolar phenomenon closely attendant upon glaciation.

The Maya habit of abandoning a hut after the occupant's death and the readiness with which they moved communal sites may seriously affect archaeological estimates of population.

Survey and tests in Grenada indicate three major ceramic periods. The first, A.D. 0-700, is a typical Caribbean extension of the Saladoid-Barrancoid tradition of Venezuela. The second is represented by burnished, red-painted pottery with rim points and horns associated with black-and-red-painted cazuelas. A thick, crude ware which frequently exhibits deeply scratched surfaces characterizes the third. A late phase with finger-indented rims is associated with historic materials. These ceramic traditions are correlated with the pre-Arawak, Arawak, and Carib Indians.

This research revisits the question of the most likely paths traveled during the 1540 entrada of Hernando de Soto and colonizing efforts of Juan Pardo about 20 years later by utilizing the spatial modeling method of geographic information system (GIS) analysis to evaluate the favorability of different paths and place them within the context of recent archaeological and ethnohistoric research. Analysis results make the larger anthropological point that GIS route modeling should explicitly take into account the size of the party traveling. Routes for small parties are not the same as optimal routes for large armies such as de Soto’s, which included hundreds of people, pieces of equipment, and livestock. The GIS-modeled routes correlate with the distribution of contact-period archaeological sites and attested eighteenth-century routes. More accurate estimation of Spanish routes allows us to better model the Native American social, economic, and political nexus of this period, showing that the residents in far eastern Tennessee were probably part of a dynamic borderlands between the chiefdom of Coosa to the west and the ancestral Cherokee heartland to the east. This anthropological refinement in GIS modeling will be useful in investigating ancient paths of interaction in many parts of the world.

One of the greatest concentrations of the Hohokam in the desert of southern Arizona was in the region of Phoenix where the westerly flowing Salt River was tapped to supply the arable lands with water.

Many theories have been woven about these prehistoric canals which lined the valley and were plainly visible to the first settlers in 1866. As is only natural, the early pioneers noted, followed, and reused many of the Hohokam canals. Through such close association, the farmer and hydraulic engineer became curious as to the story behind them.

In the Summer of 1953, archaeological investigations were again carried out by the National Museum of Canada on the early Sheguiandah site, Manitoulin Island. Previous work (Lee 1954a) showed that the hilltop had been occupied by at least 4 successive cultures. These were represented by: (1) a thin surface scattering of what is probably Point Peninsula; (2) a prolific level of materials closely related to George Lake 1 (Greenman 1943); (3) a thin level producing early projectile points; (4) a level of large blades not identified culturally. A number of problems demanded further examination. Insufficient charcoal had been found for radiocarbon dating. Professional archaeological and geological opinions on the dates had ranged so widely as to be almost useless. Two of the 4 cultural levels remained unexplained and the presence of another was suspected. The level of projectile points was too thinly represented. No bones had been found, although part of the site was regarded as a habitation area.

In response to the comments on our 1989 paper “Prehispanic Saltmaking in Belize: New Evidence,” we agree with Valdez and Mock that it is possible that some Prehispanic saltmaking sites in Belize may have been oriented toward the preservation of animal-protein resources, but caution against extending the interpretation of their NRL site to the status of generalization. While we may have misinterpreted Marcus, we wish to clarify that we never implied that salt production was a causal factor in Maya state formation.

A type of Mexican folk pottery first collected in 1920 at Cuernavaca is demonstrated to be of Iberian derivation and to date back as early as the 17th century. It has been found at Ft. Jesus in Mombasa, Kenya, and at the kiln site in the Old City of Panama. The pottery is decorated with inlays of small tesserae of feldspar and occasionally other minerals. Incision, stamping, low relief, and red paint are often associated decorative features.

During the 1950 and 1951 seasons, field parties of the Missouri River Basin Survey carried on a series of excavations in the vicinity of the Oahe dam near Pierre, South Dakota. Most of the work was done at two earth lodge villages, the Dodd site (39ST30) and the Phillips Ranch site (39ST14). On the basis of the archaeological material from the Dodd and Phillips Ranch sites, and from a series of previously excavated sites located within a thirty-mile radius of the Dodd site, it seems possible to set up a sequence of cultural complexes for the area, complexes which follow one another in time and which appear to represent a series of modifications in and accretions to the earliest one known for the area.

The Dodd site, located on the west bank of the Missouri River about six miles upstream from Pierre, provides the basis for the chronological seriation of the material.

In this paper we examine some of the relationships among mortuary features, individual identities, and group identities in the context of the Ridges Basin community, one of the earliest village communities in the American Southwest. Architectural and biodistance data suggest that more than one ethnic group composed the Ridges Basin Pueblo I community and that these groups occupied different house clusters throughout the basin. Mortuary data are examined for patterning in body arrangement, context of interment, and treatment to corroborate the presence of different groups within this community. Results indicate that groups and individuals performed mortuary rituals and incorporated particular rare and exotic items that aided in the construction of personal identities, particularly gendered identities, and that ultimately came to represent and reify group distinctions. It is suggested that, in early villages, elaborations of both gender and ethnicity in mortuary contexts provided accessible and highly visible and noticeable avenues of distinction in the absence of formally instituted leadership and group identity categories.

Several valuable classifications of flint points have been formulated but few of these have attempted to distinguish between those points having diagnostic value, and the numerous forms which are found rather indiscriminately over a large series of cultures and which may or may not have value as cultural determinants. Points which have been used by archaeologists as diagnostic determinants seem to be inseparably connected with distribution studies of complexes and traits. An illustration of this is the small finely chipped isosceles projectile point so diagnostic of the Middle Mississippi phase. This identical point is found in the Southwest where unfortunately it is found among several different cultures and in several different time horizons so that it does not have diagnostic value in this general area. Or again we might consider the highly diagnostic laurel leaf blade so typical of many components of the Red Ochre phase.

Slick rock village (4Tul 10) was excavated by a Smithsonian Institution River Basin Surveys field party under the direction of the writer between June 20 and July 30, 1950. It is one of nine very similar sites which will be covered by the reservoir pool to be created by the construction of the Terminus Dam on the Kaweah River. This particular site was chosen for excavation because it showed less evidence of modification by recent cultural activity than any other of the threatened sites. Intensive excavation at a single site (rather than test excavation at several) was chosen as the preferable approach to the archaeology of the Terminus Reservoir area because we had hoped that concentrated excavation at a single site would yield an integrated account of at least one ancient community in this region. Such an account would be particularly interesting in the light of the extraordinarily full ethnographic literature on this area (Gayton, A. H., 1948 a, b; Latta, F. F., 1949).

Some eleven years ago, about three miles outside of Lebanon, Oregon, on the north side of an extension of the foothillsof the Cascade Range, a rancher, in cleaning out his spring, discovered a fossilized bone of a large mammal. In response to his communication, Dr. S. B. Laughlin of the Department of Sociology at Willamette University, in Salem, went to the site with Professor Monk and Professor Clark, and carried out an excavation. Part of a mammoth tooth was found, a portion of a tusk, and a small bone chisel made from the rib of a mammal perhaps the size of a deer.

This locality was called to the attention of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon by Professor Laughlin's son within the past year; and in May, he and Cressman, with a number of assistants, went to the site to carry out further excavations.

Near Killarney, Canada, three raised beaches of former Great Lakes stages have cultural material in circumstances indicating contemporaneity with the construction of the beaches 7000 B.C. and A.D. 1. The physical conditions demonstrating this contemporaneity are set forth in detail, with illustrations of artifacts in situ in gravels. The several components of two sites are distinguished, and a workshop with most of the artifacts in unfinished condition is described and illustrated. The geology, which involves Postglacial uplift of the Lake Huron basin along with rising and lowering levels, is fully outlined.

The amateur archaeologist is a valuable resource that has always been available, but too often one not fully developed. The formation of amateur archaeological societies is one way to coalesce the various interests and skills of non-professional or avocational and professional archaeologists in the pursuit of archaeological knowledge. The founders of the Society for American Archaeology recognized the value of bringing together all those interested in and working in archaeology when the organization was formed in 1934. To this day the Society is not an organization for professionals only: it still encourages and accepts amateurs as members.

The origin of the old stone tower in Newport has been an important problem in the ancient history of American archaeology for something over a century. The argument swirls around two questions. Who built the tower? When was it built? There are two possible answers to the first of these questions; the second question can readily be answered if the first can be solved. Either the tower was built by persons unknown at some time in the pre-Colonial period; or it was erected in Colonial times shortly before it is first mentioned in the documents. And there is a shortage of the documents on this problem until the development of the nineteenth century romanticism. Either there was no interest or there was no problem. Up to about 1800, moreover, a clear line of legal documents traced the structure as well as the land on which it stood as belonging to Governor Benedict Arnold. The legal documents are supported by strong local tradition that the building was a stone mill. Specifically, in 1677, three documents, including Arnold's own will, mentioned the tower, and for the next 100 years other mention is rare. Thus, at the outset, we see that the controversy over the origin of the tower is recent.