Weakly bound composite materials such as low-fired pottery, bricks, mortar, and indurated soils can be disaggregated by ultrasound with no significant chemical or physical alteration of individual component grains. The components may then be separated by size, shape, density, magnetic properties, etc. This allows mineralogical, bulk chemical, trace-element, thermoluminescence, or other analyses of individual separates as well as determination of their relative proportions in the composite.

The hypothesis is advanced that Yellow-bellied Marmots (Marmota flaviventris) are affected in their geographic distribution by seasonality of precipitation in such a manner that their presence in Southwestern archaeological sites indicates a minimum of about two inches of winter precipitation. Application of this hypothesis to past changes in marmot distribution in the Navajo Reservoir District (northwestern New Mexico and adjacent Colorado) indicates an early period of high effective moisture produced predominantly by summer rains. At about A.D. 700-800, there occurred a change to dominant winter precipitation which lasted until ca. A.D. 1000 or later. This model agrees with previous work based on faunal analysis but is exactly counter to that proposed on the basis of alluvial and pollen studies.

In recent years, the importance of seasonal dating in archaeology has been widely acknowledged. To this end, relatively sophisticated methods of determining the season of death of cockles (Chione stutchbury) from coastal midden sites in New Zealand, have been developed. These methods can only be applied when the midden deposits contain cockles and those middens are normally found in the vicinity of lagoons, sandy beaches, or estuaries. However, the Echinodermata are endemic to the rocky shore sub-tidal zone, and recent research in New Zealand on one species of echinoid (Evechinus chloroticus) has defined growth patterns which are seasonally dependant. This research has provided the basis for exploring a method of determining seasonal dates for midden deposits containing Echinoidea. This method, when fully developed, should prove useful for extracting seasonal data from middens which do not have any cockles, and will provide a further means of cross-checking seasonal dates.

In a recent article in American Antiquity, Muller (1984) challenged the claim that Mississippian salt production was a specialized activity. He made a useful distinction between special activity sites and specialized production in his study, but by limiting his investigation of Mississippian specialization to a single task at a special purpose site (the Great Salt Spring in Galatin County, Illinois), he fails to prove or disprove his hypothesis that no non-leadership specialists existed in Mississippian society. Muller's article also raises some issues about the relation of economic specialization to levels of social complexity in prehistoric cultures, and about measuring the degree of economic specialization in a society from archaeological remains. These issues are addressed in this comment.

Before rushing into a revision of archaeological chronologies based upon the dates recently published in Memoir 8 of the Society for American Archaeology, the possibilities for the contamination of carbon should be considered. The dates given so far are from specimens found in widely divergent deposits and environments; they come from caves, bogs, Egyptian tombs, lake beds, deep deposits, shallow deposits, wet deposits, dry deposits, exposed deposits, and excavations; from material carefully removed and from other material which may have been molding in storage for years. The recognition of this diversity alone should produce caution in accepting radiocarbon dates as unassailable. Contamination of samples for dating can occur at a variety of times. It could happen prior to discovery or during excavation and removal, or in the archaeological laboratory, or even in the laboratory where the dating is done.

Of the criticisms advanced by Bird on the article entitled “Early Man in the New World,” some are held to be pertinent to the purposes of this article, and suggestions are made for their clarification; others do not seem to be directly relevant and no modifications are attempted.

Irwin and Wormington (1970) employ cumulative curves to assess overall similarity between artifact complexes of the Great Plains. Properly applied, ogives are relevant only to R-mode phenomena. Numerical taxonomic aids are advanced as procedures more ef ficacious for such Q-mode analyses. Numerical taxonomy and computer techniques in general are currently within the reach of every archaeologist.

The projectile points described below are surface finds discovered by Oscar Lewis within a few miles of his ranch located about twenty miles south of Glendive, Montana. As some of the types represented are those which have been found to have considerable antiquity elsewhere and the complex is similar to that recorded in Pictograph Cave I, a cultural horizon buried under two other prehistoric and one historic horizon at Pictograph Cave near Billings, Montana, their occurrence in this locality is of interest.

In the summer of 1940, a site with an industry new to the region of the western Great Lakes was discovered near Killarney, Ontario, in the course of a survey of the Manitoulin District by the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Brief notices of this work have appeared in the press and in professional publications, and some of the readers of this paper have already seen the material. A mpre complete report than is possible in the present paper is in press.

In 1915, while making ethnological investigation? among survivors of the Tadoussac band of the Montagnais Indians at Tadoussac, Quebec, Dr. Frank G. Speck, of the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, learned from the Indians that stone implements had been found on a sandy hill north of the village. From the surface of the site he collected about three hundred chips and stone artifacts which are now in the National Museum of Canada. Another lot of about two hundred and fifty specimens collected by him are in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. In 1927, this and other sites were investigated by the author, who made a careful search of the exposed surface of the area between Tadoussac and Moulin Baude River, about three miles to the east and gathered about one thousand instructive specimens besides several hundred chippings.

Although noted authorities contend that percussion flakes made with a wooden billet are thinner and shapelier than those made with a hammerstone, this experimenter wishes to report that he can see no difference, even when he strikes off the flakes himself. He begins to doubt that anybody else can tell the difference.

Along the eastern side of the Great Valley of California is the Sierra Nevada, a great mountain chain 500 miles long and 75 wide. The Sierra Nevada has a gradual western slope and an abrupt eastern face fronting the arid Great Basin. The long western side, which contains the main timber belt, was heavily populated in its lower elevations in the pre-Caucasian period. In contrast, the High Sierra above 5000 feet was visited only seasonally by aboriginal groups. The archaeology of this latter zone is little known because it has been assumed that archaeological remains are scanty, and, as a consequence, little work has been carried on. Recent investigations have demonstrated, however, that at some of the seasonal campsites repeated occupation over a long period of time resulted in fairly extensive accumulations of occupational debris.

During the late fall of 1953, exploratory excavations conducted at Vermilion Valley in the High Sierra of Fresno County provided evidence of an extended period of intermittent habitation at an aboriginal camping place.

Rowe (1950) in his review of Andean Culture History by W. C. Bennett and J. B. Bird, 1949, makes certain critical observations on the use of the horizon style concept as a unifying device in the reconstruction of Peru-Bolivian prehistory. Not only Bennett but Kroeber (1944) and I (Willey, 1948) are included in these analytical criticisms. As this is a subject of general importance to Andean archaeology, and in view of my stand on it, I would like to call attention to some of my previously expressed ideas.

Ultrasonic cleaning, a technique of wide industrial application, is suggested as applicable to archaeological artifacts. Speed and superior cleanliness ought to be its principal merits. A review of various ultrasonic methods and some pilot tests reveal an incapacity to handle large quantities of dirt. Preliminary cleaning may solve this problem. Two direct mechanical methods of ultrasonic cleaning are proposed as they offer simplicity, ruggedness, economy, and field adaptability.

Although southwestern archaeologists have for years been greatly interested in the classification and description of pottery, their investigations have been primarily centered on the pottery of the Pueblos and other sedentary groups, and comparatively little attention was given to the ceramics of the nomadic or semi-nomadic southwestern groups. Within recent years some studies have been made on Navaho and Western Apache pottery, but as yet there have been no detailed studies of the pottery of such peripheral nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes as the Ute and Southern Paiute. Therefore, it seems well worthwhile at this time to present the following brief notes concerning the results of several years of archaeological field work in the Southern Paiute area.

In the deep recesses of “3rd Unnamed Cave,” a karst cavern in Tennessee, evidence for an ancient association between dark zone cave art and chert mining has recently been documented. The art comprises petroglyphs on the ceiling of a chamber more than 1 km from the cave entrance. On the floor below the art, natural sediments were excavated prehistorically to obtain high-quality chert nodules. Radiocarbon age determinations place the mining during the Terminal Archaic period. Studies in lithic technology, geoarchaeology, and petroglyph description are presented.

This paper gives the results of test excavations conducted at the Lake Jackson site, Leon County, Florida by the Florida Park Service during the months of April and May, 1947. During this time systematic excavations were made in a portion of the village area lying in the vicinity of the large mounds for which the site is well known. These excavations were preliminary in nature, and it is hoped that they will be followed by more definitive study.