In shell middens bones and shells are surviving indicators of the diet of the former inhabitants. Unless carbonized, the plants consumed leave no obvious trace.

A comparison of Californian and Fijian (Viti Levu Island) shellmounds reveals a striking similarity in the quantity of bone and an even more striking dissimilarity in the quantity of shell. In both areas bone constitutes less than onehalf of one per cent of the weight of the mound mass. In Fiji shell constitutes on the average 13 per cent by weight, whereas the average in California is 52 per cent—four times as great. The following speculations are based on these facts.

This paper begins with a discussion concerning the development of the term "atlatl weight" in archaeological literature. It then proceeds to analyze in detail data relative to 60 atlatl weights from 39 locations on the Plains area of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. Although most of the specimens are surface finds, a number are from systematically excavated, radiocarbon-dated occupations.

Differentiated primarily on their general shapes, five groups of atlatl weights seem apparent: Class I, loaf-shaped; Class II, end-ridged; Class III, long ellipsoidal; Class IV, zoomorphic; and a miscellaneous category.

Available evidence suggests that atlatl weights were being made, in the area under consideration, from about 2500 B.C. until A.D. 800.

One of the most encouraging signs that progress is actually being made in Southwestern archaeology is the appearance of several papers in which approximately the same answers have been reached by workers approaching the problem from different angles. The specific relationships of the modern Pueblo peoples to the various groups of the prehistoric past constitute one of the oldest queries for this region. It is now indeed satisfying to find that the theory of Pueblo origins with which Fred Eggan concludes his ethnological study, Social Organisation of the Western Pueblos (1950), largely aligns itself with Erik K. Reed's hypothesis, based on a broad summary of material traits (Reed, 1946, 1948, 1949a, 1949b, 1950), and my own suggestions, which parallel Reed's in the main, based on correlations of prehistoric and modern Pueblo kiva types and uses, related social organisations and pottery (Hawley, 1937, 1950a, 1950b,, 1951). Anthropologists are learning to work both ends against the middle!

Aerial photographs have revealed a "moat-type" enclosure earthwork, probably pentagonal in shape, at the Hopwellian Ogden-Fettie site in the central Illinois River valley.

In recent years several dugout canoes have been found in Ontario, but details are lacking for most. One raised from shallow water at Balsam Lake is badly eroded and appears to be of some antiquity. It is a sleek craft of unusual length, remarkably slim proportions and contour, and considerable rigidity, despite its apparent lightness in proportion to its size, because of its substantial bow and stern.

Antillean petroglyphic art reached its highest development in the technical excellence and lively artistic expression of the many petroglyphs in Puerto Rico. This report is the beginning of a systematic study of Puerto Rican and Antillean petroglyphs which is intended to trace stylistic developments through the Antilles to South American points of origin. Sixty surface prints were made at 13 sites in three regions of Puerto Rico, but only those from Salto Arriba, Icacos, and Caonillas are discussed in detail. The simple and accurate, though time-consuming method of surface printing is fully explained. There are two distinct local types or styles of petroglyphs in addition to the simple curvilinear and abstract designs. The swaddled infant type appears at least as early as Rouse's Period III and represents the beginning of a local petroglyph style. The later Capá type reaches its final stage during Period IV. This study confirms Rouse's placement of the Puerto Rican petroglyphs in his Periods III and IV (A.D. 350-1584), and demonstrates the development of local petroglyph styles parallel to the development and spread of Taino culture.

The aboriginal agriculturists discussed here lived in a somewhat secluded environment, the Connecticut River Valley from Bellows Falls to the Connecticut line. In this long-occupied territory, surrounded by high ridges of volcanic origin, heavily wooded, and watered by innumerable spring-fed streams, the cultural development of the inhabitants was apparently of a homogeneous nature. As late as 1636, when the English began to establish plantations throughout the valley, the natives were found united in a well-defined River Confederacy, with frequent intercourse maintained through river travel. While trade routes probably connected this section with many other parts of the country, cultural contacts had apparently persisted among the river tribes in spite of occasional raids of warlike groups from other regions.

Approximately 2400 stone and 77 bone and antler artifacts were obtained by extensive trenching of the Kayuk site, a large area on the banks of Kayuk Creek in Anaktuvuk Pass, Brooks Range, northern Alaska, where several Nunamiut Eskimo families now camp. No stratigraphy was noted and no structural features were encountered, but four fire areas were excavated. The most diagnostic artifact is the Kayuk point, a lanceolate form with finely executed parallel oblique flaking, which resembles most closely the Angostura point of the Great Plains. Other stone artifacts, some of which also exhibit the parallel oblique flaking, include blades, scrapers, angle burins, microblades, drills, and adz blades. Implements of bone and antler, mostly caribou, include harpoons, leister and fish spear prongs and barbs, and other forms common in recent and prehistoric Arctic sites. The Kayuk site is believed to have been a hunting camp used during caribou migrations through Anaktuvuk Pass by a prehistoric Eskimo group which probably wintered on the northern coast as do the modern Nunamiut. The Kayuk complex probably belongs somewhere in time between the Denbigh Flint complex and Ipiutak.

The word “archaic” appears in the literature of New World archaeology with more than one usage. In 1910, the existence of three levels of human remains was demonstrated in the Valley of Mexico. The lowest level, in which well-developed ceramics were included, was characterized by hand-modeled human figurines in contrast to the mold made ones of Toltec and Aztec horizons. The civilization of the lowest level came to be called “the archaic type” (Boas 1915). Tozzer (1916: 466), in a paper presented at the Pan American Scientific Congress, Washington, 1915, noted that the terms “tipo de cerro” and “tipo de montaña” had also been used, and suggested that “Archaic” was a more fitting term.

Paleodemography is a useful adjunct to archaeological reconstruction, but as a research tool it is relatively new and requires further study. This paper reports on a project in which the life-table method of modeling demographic processes, based on a sexed and aged sample from the community ossuary, was tested against census records of the population structure. Data were taken from cemetery headstones in a township in central Indiana, spanning the period from its first settlement by Euroamerican farmers in 1830 through 1972. Life-expectancy estimates produced from the life tables were essentially identical to those produced from federal census data. Paleodemographic models of population structure were statistically different from census tabulations but were similar in form, representing a "smoothed" estimate of age structure.

Abasic Question that must be answered for any archaeological site is, how old is it? Although some archaeological sites can be dated on the basis of archaeological correlations alone and although dendrochronological (Giddings, 1952, pp. 105-110) and radiocarbon methods give absolute ages for other sites, many sites can be dated only by methods based on the geologists’ knowledge of geographic and climatic changes during the last few tens of thousands of years. The dates of these changes are established in part by radiocarbon and related methods. Study of archaeological sites accurately dated by radiocarbon methods will amplify the geologists’ understanding of late Quaternary events.

The well known techniques of dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating need no discussion. The interrelations of methods that depend ultimately on our knowledge of Quaternary climatic and geographic changes are not always well understood, however, by archaeologists. The present paper is intended to clarify some of these interrelations.

Dr. Max Uhle's excavations at Moche in 1899 for the University of California yielded a collection of pottery and associated non-ceramic objects that remains the touchstone for Early-period finds from the Northern Peruvian coast.

Moche pottery has been published by Kroeber.The Mochica were imaginative as well as skilled craftsmen, and their ceramics is proof of an ability to express ideas and to handle tools with precision.

The unexpectedly high proportion of gophers to other animal bone in the Tijeras Pueblo excavation may indicate boys’ trapping activities. Relative completeness of large animal skeletons suggests large game was killed nearby.

In February of this year, James B. Griffin, Hale G. Smith, Raymond S. Price, A. T. Ewell, MacNeil Withers, and Ralph Barbour made a surface collection of the entire Crystal River complex and dug a five foot test (B) upon the occupational area designated by Moore (1903, , Fig. 16) as B.

Test B was made 140 feet from the north corner of the large shell temple mound A, at approximately the same place marked B by Moore (ibid.). It was found that the depth of this deposit was forty-eight inches. The test was taken down in the following levels: 1 through 8, and 10 were four inch levels, while 9 and 11 were six inch levels. The sherds collected from mound A and test B were similar in many respects.

This paper presents a method for quantifying "boundary effect" in square, rectangular, triangular, and circular study areas. It is based upon a very different, theoretically oriented modification of the classic computation methods, is applicable to the variously shaped study areas described, and produces results which approximate simulation data quite closely.

The use of systematically derived site location data in defining subsistence systems has increased markedly. However, the logical fallacy in the approach has never been discussed. Sites in a particular environmental setting may have been occupied for a variety of reasons at a variety of times (this is particularly true of "ecotone" sites). As a result, the assumption that a particular adaptive strategy may have been in force is, in the absence of any subsistence data, extremely questionable. Locational data may be useful in formulating hypotheses which can be tested through procurement of subsistence data, but in themselves they cannot be used to demonstrate the accuracy of a hypothetical subsistence system.

Emil Walter Haury (1904–1992) played a key role in the definition of southwestern archaeology. Raised in a Mennonite academic community in Kansas and educated at Bethel College, the University of Arizona, and Harvard University, Haury participated in the development of dendrochronology and gained extensive archaeological field experience with Byron Cummings and Harold Gladwin. Inspired by A. V. Kidder, he contributed greatly to our knowledge of Clovis, Archaic, Mogollon, and Hohokam. His definition of southwestern archaeology continues to be the foundation for the study of prehistory in the Southwest.

The fiftieth anniversary of a journal, especially one as important and influential as American Antiquity, is a time for celebration. It is also a moment for reflection both on the achievements of the past and the potential for the future. Major journals are mirrors of the intellectual history of the disciplines that they represent. They are also both intentionally or unintentionally shapers and trendsetters of that discipline. Time past, time present, and time future become inextricably woven in a consideration of their printed pages.