A method of using the Mesoamerican pecked cross as a 365-day or 365 1/4-day calendrical device is proposed. The method consists of placing, removing, and discarding objects in the pecked holes of the arms of the motif in a prescribed sequence. This use does not preclude other uses or meanings of these figures, nor their function in calendrical reckonings more complex than the solar year.

The need for a more flexible index for radiocarbon dates with shorter retrieval times has led to a suggestion for the development of an electronic or punch-card data retrieval system. A suggested format for coding radiocarbon data on punch cards and two techniques for the rapid retrieval of desired information are discussed.

Some misinterpretations in Newman's argument are pointed out.

While Kintigh's (1994) proposed modifications of the methods I described in 1991 for estimating the mean number of simultaneous occupations and mean use span of occupations have certain strengths and weaknesses, they do offer a viable alternative approach. However, I show here that the original and revised methods derive from a different conception of settlement-pattern processes.

Archaeological finds from the Leavenworth and Sully sites in South Dakota have served to revive interest in the use of native-made glass beads by the Arikara and neighboring tribes of the Upper Missouri region. Although the distribution of these objects and the techniques involved in their manufacture are known, little has been said concerning their function. Ethnographic data suggests that one type of native-made bead, the sub-triangular pendant, was a forelock ornament employed in a ceremony known as the Blue Bead rite. Associations of native-made pendants with skulls from the Leavenworth site would tend to support this hypothesis.

The fact that Northwest Coast Indians obtained iron for tool making at least 175 years ago makes it unlikely that any literate person ever saw stone edge tools in use in this area, or even talked with an Indian who had seen them in use. Thus, interpretation of the function of stone tools in southeast Alaska is based on an estimate of the type of tools needed for the known aboriginal industries, experimental use of the tools, and Indian tradition. The use of 25 stone artifact types is discussed, including adzes and similar tools, mauls and hammers, mortars and pestles, lamps and pipes, clubs and fighting tools, projectile points, and ornaments.

During the summer of 1936 the Montana Archaeological Survey, then under the direction of the late H. Melville Sayre, investigated a campsite on the ranch of John Trask about nine miles above the mouth of Ash Coulee, a partly subterranean tributary which enters the Yellowstone River about three miles above Terry, Montana. The excavation was under the immediate supervision of Raymond Thompson. Due to unexplained circumstances field notes of this investigation were not preserved. Description of the manner of excavation was obtained from Thompson who excavated the site in a thoroughly scientific manner and who is not responsible for lacks in documentation. The writer was not present during the investigation and has seen only the artifacts in the Survey's collections. Though documentation is meagre, the recovered material is significant enough to the problem of westward movements of prehistoric ceramic cultures into the northwestern Plains to warrant description.

In the last decade the middle Rio Grande area of New Mexico has produced considerable cultural evidence which indicates the presence here of the paleo-Indian and related cultures. Finds of the classic hunting varieties are rare in the Rio Grande valley itself, although a scattering of Sandia, Clovis Fluted, and Folsom points has appeared. Far more common are sites of Cochiselike character, usually evidenced by deeply buried fire hearths, milling stones, manos, and occasional projectile points. Several groups of these sites have been studied in recent years and some of the fire hearths have been dated by the radiocarbon method. A burial possibly connected with these early sites has also appeared.

Whallon claims to have made a rigorous application of dimensional analysis of variance to the delineation of spatial artifact patterning at the site of Guila Naquitz. Questions are raised here pertaining to replicability and to the cultural formation processes of the archaeological record. These unresolved questions suggest that Whallon's optimistic claims for the utility of dimensional analysis of variance cannot be adequately evaluated at present.

Skeletal remains recovered and analyzed from Archaic and Paleoindian periods demonstrate less pronounced Asiatic/Sinodont features that distinguish them from present day Amerindians. This paper describes the metric and nonmetric traits that link a Middle Plains Archaic male (radiocarbon dated to 2220-2500 B. C.), found near Sidney, Nebraska, to Sinodonts, Sundadonts, and Paleoindians. Metrically, the Sidney male differs from Late Prehistoric and Historic Mandan and Arikara males (1500 to 1830 A.D.) from the same region in cranial vault height (auricular height p ≤ .02 basion-porion height p ≤ .07). His cranium is longer and higher (acrocranic Cranial Breadth-Height Index) than that of the more highly derived Mandan and Arikara males. Several of the Sidney male’s cranial and femoral traits show a blend of Amerindian and earlier protomongoloid traits, distinguishable from recent Amerindian populations. These traits suggest affiliation to a common Eurasian progenitor for Sinodonts, Sundadonts, and Paleoindians, and support the hypothesis that Plains Amerindians descended from the earliest wave of Paleoindians who crossed the Bering Straits. Tracing microevolutionary changes across time is a challenging, incremental process, not yet resolved by the limited Paleoindian and Archaic skeletal remains discovered to date. However, the intermediate skeletal characteristics of the Sidney male indicate gradual adaptation and suggest that natural selection most strongly influenced the adaptation of Plains peoples. Information presented here increases the database needed for future investigations of microevolution, gene flow patterns and the cultural history that may someday link early Archaic populations and Paleoindians to specific tribes among the modern Plains Amerindians.

From November 15, 1950, to April 7, 1951, an archaeological survey was conducted by the Smithsonian River Basin Surveys, in cooperation with the National Park Service and the Corps of Army Engineers, of the area to be flooded by the dam at Buford, Georgia. On the upper Chattahoochee River we came across an aboriginal cooking pit containing quantities of pottery which could be unhesitatingly identified as historic Cherokee. While a certain amount of confusion as to just what might constitute Cherokee ceramics was dispelled some years ago by the publication of Hiwassee Island, it does seem advisable to present the Buford material as an areal and temporal variant. It differs in some particulars from the Overhill pottery described by Lewis and Kneberg from the Little Tennessee; there are other differences from recently identified Cherokee pottery from the middle Etowah River in northwest Georgia; and again, it is unlike some ceramic assemblages from Lower Cherokee towns in northeast Georgia and western South Carolina.

A promising field for sites of ancient man lies in the region of the Estancia Valley, central New Mexico. This area was covered by the vast, extinct Pleistocene Lake Estancia, estimated by Antevs to have been at its height 15,000 years ago. The lake covered approximately 450 square miles and had a maximum depth of about 150 feet. Today, evidence of the lake remains in the form of beach terraces and gravels. Some 160 miles to the east are the Clovis sites excavated by Howard, while about thirty miles to the west is Sandia Cave, a site of ancient man excavated by the University of New Mexico.

An investigation of the relationship between water-level fluctuations and Northern Ojibwa community life has led to the discovery of a pictograph which offers useful evidence for dating.

For many years the people of Maine, parts of New England, and the Maritime Provinces have been told that an ancient group of Indians lived in the northeastern part of the United States and later moved into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. These ancient people have been called the Pre-Algonquian Group, The Red Paint People of Maine, and the Beothuk of Newfoundland, by various archaeologists who have excavated their graves.

These archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the graves represent a very old group of Indians, but they have not agreed on who they were, where they came from, or where they went. Mr. Charles C. Willoughby shows the distribution of the pre-Algonquian culture as covering all that portion of North America east of the Great Lakes, along the Saint Lawrence River and as far south as the tip of New Jersey.

In her recent article, "Credit Where Credit is Due: The History of the Chumash Oceangoing Plank Canoes," Jeanne Arnold questions our 2005 paper in which we suggested that a prehistoric contact event with Polynesians resulted in conveyance of the sewn-plank boat construction technique and a particular style of compound bone fishhook to the Chumash and Gabrielino of southern California. We agree with many of Arnold's views about the cascading effects of sewn-plank boat construction on Native societies of southern California, but question her dismissal of certain aspects of the empirical record, particularly the linguistics, in portraying this invention as strictly autochthonous. Here we recast aspects of the linguistic evidence that Arnold overlooks, provide evidence from oral history which she says is lacking, and discuss chronological issues that are much less straightforward than she suggests. We also mention implications of recent findings from South America. Finally, we submit that we have not discredited the Chumash or any other Native society in developing this hypothesis.

Archaeological site surveying and locational analysis of anthropological data depend in part on discrete subdivisions of geographic space. This fact is amplified in a recent proposal by Plog and Hill (1971) that outlines a numerical system for ordering stream channels and drainage basins as part of the statistical basis for correlation of site data. As proposed, however, their system is unworkable when used in conjunction with available geomorphic and hydrologic data. It is more convenient to use an established and standardized method of ranking drainage networks that allows correlation of comparable geomorphic data between and within basins of all sizes.