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.

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.

Most earthen burial mounds of eastern North America have been destroyed—or have they? We review geophysical methods for assessing whether leveled mounds retain intact deposits or features. Magnetic survey holds promise for locating and evaluating leveled mounds because it is rapid and sensitive to magnetic variations associated with anticipated features such as pits and deposits of mound fill. As a case study, we discuss our magnetic survey of the Gast Farm site (13LA12) in eastern Iowa. The survey covered 8.64 ha, encompassing loci of one previously reported mound and possible geometric earthworks as well as Middle and Late Woodland habitation areas. Interpretation of survey results incorporated quantitative differentiation of magnetic anomaly types using GIS techniques, along with standard visual inspection. We found no evidence of geometric earthworks but identified at least six leveled mounds. Displaced mound fill appears to account for the earthwork-like features. We conclude that leveled mounds are detectable and may retain subsurface integrity. Their associated features, including burials, may be identifiable even when above-ground evidence has disappeared.

The Classification of pottery types has apparently already reached a satisfactory degree of descriptive accuracy. Although problems remain, numerous site comparisons and important cultural connections have been based upon pottery. Classification of stone artifacts is not in so happy a state. Wheat has also recently called attention to this fact (1953, p. 196): “If cultures predominantly lithic in complexion are to be correlated satisfactorily with each other … we must pay the same attention to artifacts of stone, bone, shell, etc., that has yielded such valuable results in the study of pottery.” Considerable difficulties are inherent in the classification of stone implements but close inspection shows that these are further increased by a terminology which occasionally serves as much to confuse the picture as to clarify it.

Such phrases as “leaf-shaped” or “triangular” blades are common in archaeological literature. Yet the descriptive accuracy of these terms rests upon a meaningful and generally accepted contrast between leaf-shaped and triangular which is not substantiated by the inquiry into their use as presented below.

The problem of the origin and distribution of semi-subterranean structures is an intriguing one. It is generally accepted that the semi-subterranean structure, earth lodge, or pit house, was one of a number of relatively unmodified traits of Old World origin found in North America. This paper reviews some of the literature on the pit house, and summarizes its development and distribution in the Eurasian and North American continents.

Laymen, believing that early man habitually lived in caves, commonly use the stereotyped term “cave man” in referring to our early progenitors in the Old World. This assumption was an inevitable development since occupational sites in western Europe are predominantly caves or cave shelters. However, some European archaeologists have suggested such sites were seasonally occupied–that they were the winter habitations of man during the upper Paleolithic. There is reason to believe different types of shelters were used during warm seasons since engravings of tents or more substantial structures (tectiforms) have been found on the walls of caves and cave shelters. A number of European archaeologists including Breuil (1910), Clark (1939), Childe (1950), and others have accepted tectiforms as evidence of the existence of artificial structures in western Europe during the last glacial advance. Breuil has gone further and compared some of the tectiforms in the Font-de-Gaume, the Dordogne Valley of France, to the summer huts of Navahos described by Mendeleff in 1896.

Feathers is critical of the selection of materials and the use of commercial clay in our earlier research. The use of shell temper from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico suggests that the properties of this material were considered useful regardless of the specific clay source. Furthermore, Feathers’s comments indicate the need for further discussion and understanding of the role of simulated use testing of archaeological materials.

Until recently there has been little attempt to trace the early history of the Navaho in the Southwest through their archaeological remains. While some investigators were studying Pueblo archaeology, they did record certain discoveries which tend to throw some light here and there on the earlier history of the Navaho. In the summer of 1937 a reconnaisance of archaeological sites, putatively Navaho, was made in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The sites were mainly on, or at the base of western Chacra Mesa, some eight miles east of Pueblo Bonito. Interesting information was gathered, particularly in regard to house types, pottery, burials, textiles, and certain other items of material culture which may be correlated with ethnological data on the Navaho.

An early eighth century pithouse was accidentally discovered in Mesa Verde National Park during the spring of 1939 when workmen were digging a trench for a new pipe line. Before the trench was dug the area was thoroughly examined so that the digging would not cut through any prehistoric structure. There were no surface indications of this pithouse. During the actual laying of the pipe line workmen discovered the floor levels of the pithouse visible on the sides of the trench. The Park Service authorities decided to excavate the structure to preserve anything of archaeological value.

The pithouse is located on Chapin Mesa, 108° 29′ 27˝ west, 37° 12′ 17˝ north, at an elevation of 7,200 feet. Today a thick forest of juniper and pinyon trees covers the entire area. The red topsoil is about 1.7 m. in depth and overlays a.layer of shale. The floor of the pithouse is 1.25 m. below present ground level and well within the limits of this topsoil layer.

In 1941–42 J. Frank Sterling, Paul Delgrego, and W. W. Yenney, amateurs who had become interested in collecting local Indian artifacts, excavated a rock .shelter on a stream flowing into Langford Run, near the town of Broomall in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Langford Run is a tributary of Darby Creek, which in turn flows into the Delaware River from the west at Eddystone, about ten miles southwest of Philadelphia. Further excavation, in a second shelter about 100 yards away from the first, on Langford Run proper, soon uncovered a burial, and contact was established with the University Museum in the fall of 1943 through the good offices of Dr. and Mrs. H. O. Albrecht, members of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological research in the Eastern United States is reviewed from the period of large-scale excavations sponsored by federal relief agencies to the present period of trend toward interdisciplinary approaches. An early interest was the identification of the archaeological ancestors of historically and ethnographically known tribes. The need for objective and descriptive classifications led to the development of the McKern or Midwestern Taxonomic Method. Recent developments include the use of functional and evolutionary concepts experimentation with statistics to validate analytical and classificatory techniques, discovery of stratigraphic evidence and the perfection of seriational techniques, emphasis on the value of geological and biological data and the combination of these with archaeological information to produce an ecological approach, and attempts at broad culture-historical synthesis. The introduction of radiocarbon dating, which exposed the extremely conservative time estimates of Eastern archaeologists by greatly lengthening the chronologies, is seen as the major contribution of the past 25 years.

Recently, two fluted points from Wisconsin were brought to the writer's attention by W. F. Spengler, a student at Phillips Academy. They are the property of his father, Mr. S. L. Spengler of Menasha, Wisconsin, who very kindly sent them to Andover for the writer's inspection. Both finds were surface finds, but in spite of this fact it seems worth recording them, since both are known to have come from the vicinity of Madison. The smaller of the two (PI. XXXVII, Fig. 2, a-a′.) is from the farm of TomHalverson and was found on a field close to the inlet of the Yahara River on the west shore of Lake Kegonsa. Its base, as is shown by the photographs, has the slight prominence characteristic of the type illustrated in Roberts' Fig. 3a and Plates 5b and 6b. Fine retouching has been used to finish the base. The channel flake., which is an extremely shallow one, runs to the tip without hinge fracture.

Jamestown, site of the first permanent English settlement in the New World, furnishes an interesting example of the use of archaeological techniques to put factual meat on abstract or theoretical bones. For over half a century, off and on, a succession of historians, architects, engineers, and archaeologists have sought physical evidence in the earth to identify the location of vaguely defined landholdings and buildings, the first fort built in 1607 by the first contingent of settlers, and clues to everyday living habits as shown by utensils and implements.

Almost all archaeological work in the Southwest in the past several years has been an attempt to establish a series of events in their proper time and space context. This implies as the ultimate objective the building of a spacial series of chronologies, each one of which will give as complete an historical picture as is possible to obtain from archaeological data. The particular emphasis which has been, and is being, placed on chronology has directed attention to the methods by which this end is attained. The method has been set forth in 1931 by Leslie Spier in an article in “Methods in Social Science.”

The list which Spier suggested is composed of the following methods: geology and paleontology, distribution, typology, stratigraphy, seriation, annual deposits, and documents.

A settlement pattern study is made of 160 prehistoric habitation sites along the Klamath river in northwest California to determine what environmental factors regulate site placement and population density. Topographic variables, especially gradient, were found to serve as negative criteria in limiting the possibilities of site location. Differential access to anadromous fish was found to function positively in favoring site placement and high population density. This finding supports Baumhoffs hypothesis that Karok population levels could be accounted for by available fish resources alone (Baumhoff 1963).

Aerial techniques have been proven effective for archaeological reconnaissance in several parts of the world.

This paper describes photoarchaeological techniques which were used in a survey of a section of the Potomac River, near Washington, D.C. Thirty-six stone structures and one major Indian village site were discovered. The stone structures were primarily stone fish traps and fish weirs. One of the structures was found to be a navigation weir, constructed by the Potowmack Company, founded by George Washington in his efforts to open up the American "Western Frontier," regions in Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Physical descriptions and locations of the structures are listed on the following pages, together with a comparative analysis of the structures. A recommendation is made for a site designation system which strengthens the standard Smithsonian system by adding Universal Transverse Mercator coordinates to them, thus simplifying location designation.

By utilizing archaeological associations of contemporaneity found at different sites and a few pieces of stratigraphic information, and by examining the patterning - the interrelationships of shape and decoration - of the pottery, it has been possible to define ten chronological units in the southern highlands of Colombia. The ten phases are grouped into two regional sequences: one with four phases at Tierradentro and another with six phases at San Agustin. Seriational as well as stratigraphic evidence suggests that the pottery from the burial caves of the Tierradentro region is older than the pottery associated with the shaft and chamber tombs of both Tierradentro and San Agustin and may date to the seventh or eighth centuries B.C. The earliest known shaft and chamber tombs appeared at San Agustin during the sixth century B.C. and, by the fifth century of the Christian era, were replaced by a new burial pattern, one consisting of interment in rectangular graves that were sometimes lined with stone slabs.

Dietary, paleoclimatic, and ethnohistoric evidence indicates that alterations in regional systems of exploitation and selective pressures were associated with the diffusion of farming in unrelated periods of Southwestern and Great Basin cultural development. Artifacts and coprolite/macrofloral remains from the Clydes Cavern and Hogup Cave Fremont sites suggest that the spread of maize farming coincided with: (a) the development of grass collecting; (bj the expansion of a grassland environment; (c) outside cultural contacts; and (dj genetic modifications in corn. Ethnohistoric evidence indicates that the diffusion ofNuma horticulture in the early historic period also occurred in a context of environmental change. However, unlike the Fremont example in which natural environmental modifications were present, the spread of Numa farming occurred as a result of disruptions to the native plant communities and the seed gathering cycle caused by external cultural pressures. Both examples demonstrate that while the specific reasons for the adoption and growth of farming differed depending upon the regional situation, the overall pattern of horticultural diffusion in the Southwest and Great Basin may have been favored by selective pressures involving environmental alteration, population expansion and contact influences.

A radiocarbon date of A.D. 398 ± 175 for the Davis site was published in 1951. The material dated was charred corn cobs from a submound house structure. A new radiocarbon date of A.D. 1307 ± 150 on corn cobs from the same structure would seem to be more accurate in view of certain archaeological interpretations and corn typology.