Although Idaho’s Snake River Plain contains a trans-Holocene record of bison exploitation, archaeologists have rarely investigated carcass butchery strategies in the region. We fill this knowledge gap with a study of bison remains from Baker Cave, a late Holocene processing site on the eastern Snake River Plain. We hypothesize that these remains resulted from fat-seeking behavior in response to winter fat scarcity. We explore this hypothesis with a series of variables designed to measure processing intensity: Impacts per Element, Percent Complete, and Number of Identified Specimens/Minimum Number of Elements. All three variables generate similarly strong correlations with skeletal fat utility, suggesting that Baker Cave’s inhabitants organized processing efforts around winter fat scarcity.

New data from two sites in the municipality of San Blas, Nayarit, indicate that the practice of pecking petroglyphs in West Mexico is older than it has been possible to establish in previous studies. Petroglyphs at the La Coba site appear firmly dated to the Los Cocos phase (A.D. 200-600), and petroglyphs at the El Conchal site seem attributable to the Early Ixtlan phase (300 B.C.-A.D. 200) occupation. Hypotheses are offered regarding stylistic evolution of the pecked designs and their interpretation.

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.

The investigation reported here tested the use of a computer to assist in an ongoing archaeological excavation and survey. To provide rapid computer results, a remote terminal at the site was connected by telephone service to a time-sharing computer some 300 miles distant. Techniques developed and evaluated ranged from initial program preparation and testing through evaluation of field procedures in an environment involving an interactive computer. The ability to generate requested information rapidly enough to aid in tactical decisions affecting field procedures on a daily basis was demonstrated.

In eastern North America, Indigenous peoples domesticated several crops that are now extinct. We present experimental data that alters our understanding of the domestication of one of these—goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri). Ancient domesticated goosefoot has been recognized on the basis of seed morphology, especially a decrease in the thickness of the seed coat (testa). Nondomesticated goosefoot also sometimes produces seeds that look similar or even identical to domesticated ones, but researchers believed that such seeds were rare (1%–3%). We conducted a common garden experiment and a series of carbonization experiments to better understand the determinants of seed polymorphism in archaeobotanical assemblages. We found that goosefoot produces much higher percentages of thin-testa seeds (mean 50% in our experiment, 15%–34% in free-living parent populations) than previously reported. We also found that cultivated plants produce more thin-testa seeds than their free-living parents, demonstrating that this trait is plastic in response to a garden environment. The carbonization experiments suggest that thin-testa seeds preserve under a larger window of conditions than thick-testa seeds, contrary to our expectations. These results suggest that (1) carbonized, phenotypically mixed assemblages should be interpreted cautiously, and (2) developmental plasticity and genetic assimilation played a role in the domestication of goosefoot.

Identifying stone tool production techniques in the archaeological record can inform on prehistoric economy, time budgets, shared cultural practices, and the spatiotemporal occurrence of technological innovations and adaptations. The pressure flaking technique is one such innovation that appears on every continent Homo sapiens colonized. Pressure flaking has long been associated with the ability of flintknappers to produce small, regularly shaped flakes that were used to maintain particular edge shapes and resharpen dull tool edges with minimal loss of raw material. Despite the importance of pressure flaking, a method for supporting the identification of pressure flakes in the archaeological record is lacking. Here, we present a stone tool replication experiment that statistically compares flakes derived from bifacial pressure flaking and soft hammer percussion flaking. Our analyses show that pressure flakes are on average lighter, shorter, narrower, and thicker than soft hammer percussion flakes. Discriminant analyses indicate that pressure flakes can be correctly classified at a rate of 70 percent in a mixed sample. Furthermore, our findings validate the assumption that pressure flakes are less variable in form compared to soft hammer percussion flakes. Based on our results, we suggest quantitatively reevaluating the presence of pressure flaking in the global archaeological record.

The importance of being able to date accurately the remains of past societies has long been recognized by archaeologists. The problem has always been to find methods that work in the absence of historical records. Recent developments, such as tree-ring dating, have been great contributions, but they are not applicable everywhere. There is still a great need for new methods to supplement and extend the range of present dating procedures.

A large field of knowledge so far largely unexplored for possible dating methods is the physics and chemistry of archaeological remains. One area in this field is the study of naturally occurring radioactive elements. Some of these elements have been used by geologists to date ancient rock strata, but applications to archaeological materials have not been made. Recently, however, two possible methods for using radioactive elements to date archaeological remains have been proposed on theoretical grounds. It is not yet definitely known whether they will work, or how well. Further research is necessary.

The artifacts of rough stone consist of a crude lamp and some stone hammers, the latter unmodified by chipping or any other process.

Stone lamp. A. S. Darby found at Old Port au Choix a fragment of a lamp roughly made by hollowing out an ovoid or oblong boulder of sandstone (Plate XV, Figure 2, Number 1). The cavity is about 1¼ inches deep and is rounded from end to end and side to side. There is no wick ledge. The thickest part of the base is 1⅛ inches, but the walls decrease in thickness toward the rounded edges at the top. The hollow is slightly discolored by the blubber and there is an incrustation of burnt blubber on both sides of the intact wall. There is a large natural hollow in the base.

Another crude stone lamp was found by Israel Hutchings at the Cow Head site; it consisted of a hollow stone, judging from his description.

A recent paper by George R. Horner, covering work done by Wheaton College at the Fisher site, Will County, Illinois, contains several statements requiring comment. In order to comment on these points it will be necessary to outline certain material contained in an unpublished manuscript of the writer.

The well-known Fisher site, consisting of 12 mounds and over 50 house pits, was initially excavated by George Langford. Later work was conducted by several University of Chicago field parties, and a W.P.A. expedition. The site is located on the point of land formed by the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers as they approach their confluence and unite to form the Illinois. Four cultural horizons can be recognized at the site: (1) long-headed burials without grave goods in the gravel beneath the mounds, (2) three periods of Upper Mississippi occupation, (3) Late Woodland, and (4) Historic. We are only concerned with the Upper Mississippi occupations in the present note.

The Gordon site has been mentioned previously by Ford (1935, 1936) as site 61, the type site for the Coles Creek ceramic complex originally identified by a surface collection of 175 sherds. In his initial survey of the site, Ford placed it uppermost in the Coles Creek horizon, although the exact relationship of that horizon to other Southeastern cultures was at that time uncertain. Ford states:

As a means of celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the great Spanish expedition through our southern states led by Hernando de Soto and Luis de Moscoso in the years 1539-1543 a Commission was created in 1935 by act of Congress. The members of that Commission were appointed by President Roosevelt and included the writer who was made chairman by vote of the others. This Commission was authorized “to make a thorough study of the subject of De Soto's expedition” and report back to Congress “its recommendations for a suitable and appropriate celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of said expedition.” The latter part of the instructions being entirely outside of my experience or training, I devoted myself, along with certain of my fellow members, to a study of the career of De Soto, and particularly of the route pursued by his army, so as to determine what communities would be interested in the proposed celebration. This study was carried on for several years and its results incorporated into a “Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission” which was printed in 1939 by the Government Printing Office, as House Document Number 7.

A recently discovered sheltered rock scar covered with red pictographs, in Jalisco, west Mexico, is a major addition to the rather meager data on pictographs in Mesoamerica. It appears to contain a complex set of data pertaining to the cosmology of the relatively unknown Indians who inhabited the Jalisco coast during the last Pre-Hispanic period. Analysis of the scar has incorporated both the artistic symbolism of the nearby Huichol Indians, and concepts developed through archaeoastronomy. This analysis suggests that the ceiling pictographs record the use of sky transits of the sun, Venus, or the constellation Orion as wet-season/dry-season calendrical markers. Wall pictographs show the sun on the mountainous horizon, below which is the earth filled with symbols of plants and animals; among these stand shamans calling down the life-giving rain from the god(s) of the sky. I also explore the possibility that one of the ceiling pictographs is a record of the appearance of the Crab supernova in the sky in A.D. 1054.

Controversy exists over the geographic placement of the ethnohistoric Itza capital called "Tayasal." At the heart of this dispute are the differences and limitations inherent in the use of either archaeological or ethnohistoric data to solve the problem. As presently understood, archaeological data do not support the traditional placement of Tayasal in Lake Peten-Itza.

Evidence indicates that the interior culture of Chukotka was using bronze implements at the end of the second and beginning of the first millennium B.C. and the population had become somewhat sedentary. The similarity between late Neolithic and early Bronze Age of Chukotka and the pre-Eskimo Arctic cultures of America is apparent; it also is probable that during this period Chukotka formed part of the area of development of the Yukagir and the Chukchi. The first significant archaeological collection from Chukotka, made by N. P. Sokol'nikov in 1904-07, can be divided into two main cultural groupings on the basis of stone-working techniques; the older group, probably from near Ust'-Belaia, is typical of the continental Neolithic of northeast Asia, and the other group appears to be of the “splitting adz culture,” 7th-8th centuries A.D., and probably was found upstream from Markovo. Burials from the Ust'-Belaia cemetery had associated stone artifacts and pottery similar to ones from Yukutia and the Lake Baikal region of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age; further corroboration of this dating includes associated bronze artifacts and a radiocarbon date of 2860 ± 95 B.P. from another mound in the same cemetery site.

Recently renewed interest has been focused upon the occurrence in the Plains area of the archaeological complex often termed the “Southern cult.” This complex is found over a wide geographic area and in association with varied cultures. It occurs throughout the southeastern United States, and extends north and west along the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys. It has been found in eastern South Dakota, eastern North Dakota, and in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. The complex is characterized by specific art motifs and ceremonial objects, including masklike whelk shell gorgets, and the cross, forkedeye, and hand-and-eye motifs. The complex was apparently fundamentally dependent upon a horticultural base, and is associated in nearly every case with platform mounds. Sites often thought of in connection with the Southern cult are Etowah (Georgia), Moundville (Alabama), and Spiro (Oklahoma). The author has recently examined materials in the collections of the North Dakota State Historical Museum for artifacts related to the complex.

The earliest literary reference to a fluted point occurs in a work written in 1722 by Francisco Ximenez. This specimen and others from Guatemala are discussed in the light of recent discoveries from neighboring areas.

Aboriginal northern Great Lakes fishing strategies varied with season, target species, and organization of the labor force. The placement of Woodland archaeological sites complied with the structure of these fisheries, but their locations do not reflect prey specificity or one specialized technology. Rather, resource-general locations suggest an essential step in the process of specialization. Flexibility in settlement and social styles existed among prehistoric foragers of the midlatitudes, as did a variety of solutions to food-getting problems. Slow, accretional processes rather than temporally discrete growth processes were responsible for Late Woodland site characteristics in this region. Stable locational-selection patterns are visible through reexamination of the historical data base and through statistical analyses of environmental factors associated with sites at a number of Woodland localities.