In January, 1927, soon after my return from an exploring expedition in Peru under the Chicago (then Field) Natural History Museum, I arranged with Dean Frank H. Probert of the University of California College of Mining for quantitative analysis of samples from 17 specimens of ancient Peruvian metal objects selected by me from the Max Uhle collections in the University's Museum of Anthropology. Professor Walter S. Morley kindly undertook to make the analyses in person. On February 26, the last of the specimens were returned to the Museum, and soon after that Professor Morley turned over to me a typewritten sheet giving the proportions, to a hundredth of a per cent, of copper, tin, antimony, arsenic, zinc, lead, gold, silver, and silica or insoluble materials determined.

I filed the sheet, but when next I went to use it, it could not be found. Neither Morley nor Probert any longer possessed a copy by then, and both of them have since died.

When the Russians first crossed the Ural Mountains in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they found there a great number of native tribes. Some of these Siberian aborigines soon became extinct while others only diminished in number. Their territories shrank to insignificant patches of land—as is always the case in newly-discovered countries when western civilization comes into close contact with native primitive cultures. The degree of resistance of the native Siberian cultures to the invading Russian culture exhibits an interesting ethnological fact. It reveals that there were at least two strata in the aboriginal Siberian population—an ancient layer and a comparatively new one, or the Old-Siberians and the New-Siberians. The latter were both culturally and physically better able to resist the Russian invasion. Since the Old-Siberians were much weaker in both of these respects, they began to die out immediately after the conquest of Siberia. This does not mean, however, that the Old-Siberians were lacking in bravery or that they did not resist the Russians.

The striking of long, slender, parallel-sided flakes, or blades, from prepared cores has long been known in the Arctic and Mesoamerica. Small pointed blades with distinctive triangular cross section are also found in the Late Horizon in both mainland and island Canaliño sites in that part of the Santa Barbara Channel region of southern California which was ethnographically occupied by the Chumash.

Asiatic origins have, at one time or another, been suggested or at least considered for a number of traits connected with the manufacture and decoration of the earlier New World pottery. The well-known paper by McKern (1937) is among the most explicit statements on the subject. Griffin (1946; Sears and Griffin 1950a) has held similar views for some time. Like McKern, he has primarily in mind traits of the Woodland pattern of eastern North America, although he also mentions some non-Woodland traits among those which have counterparts in the Old World (1946, p. 45).

Since McKern's paper, the distribution in time of the traits involved has become a lot better established. With the help of the still suspiciously regarded radiocarbon dates, our perspective on ceramic history in the United States has been extended over a span which appears to be that of some four millennia. Among the more significant additions to the Asiatic half of the distributional picture first place must be given to recent Soviet work in eastern Siberia.

Hammering and embossing are the most primitive forms of metalworking and they appear at the beginning of the history of Peruvian metals, but they have maintained their popularity in that country during all periods until the present. It is an archaeological characteristic of the coast of Peru that most copper or bronze objects were cast and that most gold and silver artifacts were hammered to shape. The Peruvians not only hammered flat surfaces but hollow'goblets and even hollow figures of men and animals. These were made in various sections and were joined by solder, an art mastered at a very early period.

Several exceptions have been taken recently to the use of “guess dates,“ assumptions, hypothetical sequences, the theory of cultural continuity, and other concepts in eastern and middlewestern archaeology.1 These criticisms lay bare a division of opinion on several fundamental issues of method and theory, and it is the purpose of this communication to shed some light on the conflicting views. We may at the outset indulge in some labelling, not for purposes of name-calling, but to provide handles for verbal manipulation. It is the opinion of the writer that two trends in method and theory can be distinguished: one we may call “empiricist,” the other, “experimental.” Reasons for the choice of these rather mouth-filling terms will subsequently become clearer. Also note we do not use the word “school” this term implies a company of individuals, all subscribing to a special dogma, whereas the contemporary trends actually crosscut several “schools” in archaeological thought. In many cases, individual archaeologists exemplify both of these trends in their own work.

In 1940, at Great Neck, Long Island, Mr. Calmer Forsander found a waterworn glacial cobble with a crudely executed face on one side in an old stone wall bordering his property. Mr. Forsander knew that I had excavated the Baker Hill site, located about three hundred yards west of his house, and brought the find to my attention. The specimen is roughly egg-shaped and is composed of a crystalline material which appears to be indurated sandstone (Fig. 24). It measures approximately IS inches in length, 11 inches in width, and 10 inches in thickness. On one of the broader sides is a face, pecked and ground into the surface. The workmanship is crude and resembles that found on the pitted hammer stones common in the region.

To evaluate a model of the travel-route selection process for upper Ohio Valley Paleoindian foragers (13,500–11,400 cal BP), this study investigates archaeological data through the theoretical framework of landscape learning and risk-sensitive analysis. Following initial trail placement adjacent to a highly visible escarpment landform, Paleoindians adopted a risk-averse strategy to minimize travel outcome variability when wayfaring between Sandy Springs, a significant Ohio River Paleoindian site, and Upper Mercer–Vanport chert quarries of east-central Ohio. Although a least-cost analysis indicates an optimal route through the lower Scioto Valley, archaeological evidence for this path is lacking. Geomorphic and archaeological data further suggest that site absence in the lower Scioto Valley is not entirely due to sampling bias. Instead, evidence indicates that Paleoindians preferred travel within the Ohio Brush Creek–Baker's Fork valley despite its longer path distance through more rugged, constricted terrain. Potential travel through the lower Scioto Valley hypothesizes high outcome variability due to the stochastic nature of the late Pleistocene hydroregime. In this case, perceived outcome variability appears more influential in determining travel-route decisions among Paleoindians than direct efforts to reduce energy and time allocation.

Morphological similarities in bone technology between Old World and New World Pleistocene epoch assemblages are noted, and their implications are explored.

The calculation of populations supported by relic raised fields in Mexico and the role of intensive agriculture by the Classic lowland Maya are clarified.

In December, 1948, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., discontinued its collection of curios and presented the lot to the United States National Museum. Among other treasures was a votive ax depicting the “tiger” or “jaguar” god of tropical America in the style peculiar to the Olmec, or La Venta, culture. There are no accompanying data; even the name of the donor has been lost. In want of data and in other respects the ax is reminiscent of the half dozen like specimens preserved in public museums.

In their respective sections of Prehistoric Man in the New World, Heizer and Jennings refer to the San Dieguito type sites as belonging to Phase I of that culture. In a recent review of these sections Meighan emphasizes this allocation to Phase I and denies the validity of the division of the culture into phases, alleging that the entire culture sequence is based on an assertion by Rogers. On the basis of Rogers’ published reports, an analysis by Warren and True, and my own field experience, the type site is properly assigned to Phase III.

Fluted points, like many other artifacts, seem to be more common than previously thought. Once attention is called to a given item representative specimens are 'found in existing collections only waiting to be recognized. Smail (1951) has presented a discussion of many points of this type from the St. Louis area in Illinois.

Recently several interesting specimens have been brought to the Illinois State Museum and are here illustrated, due to their unusual combination of attributes and location. The first of these (Fig. 57) was found in Fulton County in 1924 by the late Frank Aidrich of Bloomington, Illinois. It is lanceolate in shape, WA inches long, 114 inches wide about % of the length from the base, and lenticular in cross section. Its very delicate chipping produced parallel long flake scars running from each edge to the center. The base is ground on each side and across the bottom.

A surprising amount of archaeological data can be recovered during uncontrolled site destruction if the recording technique involved (1) eliminates as much time-consuming writing as possible, and (2) is permanent enough to be of use during laboratory analysis. The use of audio-visual equipment and color-coded datum points seems to fulfill these requirements and has been successfully tested in the two-day salvage of 4-Mer-66, a small Yokuts Indian mound in Dos Palos, California.