Excavations, not yet reported in detail, at sites adequately documented as having been occupied during the 18th century make it possible to outline Creek and Cherokee cultures of this period. A comparison of the outlines indicates similarities and differences which may be of some importance in the archaeology of the area in which the Cherokee and various “Creek” groups were the dominant cultures in the contact and early historic periods, namely, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina.

As W. H. Holmes pointed out in 1905, our archaeological investigations need to be “supplemented by the rich materials derived from the study of the living peoples.“1 In accordance with this line of thought, I have tried to correlate some findings of archaeology and ethnology in relation to the small but controversial archaeological problem of fetishes and toys. The clay figurines and miniature pots illustrated in Plate XII were made as toys by contemporary Navaho children living in the region between the Chaco and Blanco Canyons, New Mexico. The toys represent two women with the characteristic Navaho skirts and headdresses, three miniature vessels (a handled mug, round-bottomed cooking vessel, and crude dish), and thirteen animals, including two dogs, a sheep, ram, mare, donkey, two horses, a cow, chicken, buck, and two goats. The faces of the women have been pinched to suggest a nose but otherwise they are featureless. One dog, the sheep, cow, two horses, and one of the goats have black glass beads for eyes.

In a recent article J. Alden Mason (1951) called attention to 2 small Chinese figurines found in local archaeological collections in Mesoamerica. One was from Azqueltan, Jalisco, Mexico and is now in the University Museum, Philadelphia (catalog number NA- 11808), and the other was in the Vitalino Robles collection of Quezaltenango, Guatemala. Both are of a soft stone and were described as “crawling infants.” While browsing through a collection of archaeological objects in an antique shop in Guatemala City I came across another small Chinese figurine similar in most respects to the ones described by Mason. The shop owner, unaware of the Oriental origin of this specimen, was sure that it must have come in with the other artifacts from Kaminaljuyu, a large archaeological site on the outskirts of the city. The figurine has been presented to the University Museum (catalog number 54-4-1).

Like the Quezaltenango specimen (Mason 1951 Fig. 1, a), the stone figurine from Guatemala City is an opaque yellowish-amber color with reddish veins and has a very soft, soapy texture (Mohr scale 2.8).

Diez-Martin and colleagues (2021) experimentally reduce four bifaces and argue that the resultant flakes are smaller and less uniform than those found at the Welling site (33Co2). Welling is an early Paleoindian (Clovis) site excavated by Olaf Prufer over 50 years ago. Based on the experiment, the authors conclude that the site was a “collector-like” base camp and that our previous interpretation must be incorrect. Here, we argue that Diez-Martin and colleagues have mischaracterized our conclusion regarding the purpose of the site, and may have insufficiently addressed data that detract from their new interpretation.

A body of literature has grown up on the archaeology of the American Arctic region in recent years concerning a core and blade industry. Nelson (1937) and Rainey (1939), who were among the first writers to note the evidences there of this industry, called attention to the occurrence of “prismatic flakes” in association with prepared flint cores. The first use in the Eskimo area of the equally singular term, “lamellar flake,” to my knowledge appears in Wintemberg's (1939: 89-91) paper on the Dorset Culture, wherein we find the term “lamellar flakes” used in ostensibly the same descriptive sense as “prismatic flakes.” Leechman (1943: 370) discusses “laminate blades” at a later date in the Cape Dorset sites under the heading “narrow flaked blades.” Although Johnson (1946) still later refers to “prismatic flakes,” the die was cast and the term “lamellar flake” was adopted and accepted by some in Arctic archaeology.

In the field it is often difficult to distinguish black manganese dioxide from specks of charcoal or other organic materials. Misinterpretations can be avoided by testing the earth material with a small amount of potassium periodate which will oxidize any manganese to the highly colored permanganate ion.

A small collection of stone artifacts from an esker-ridge site at the edge of the Barren Lands, which includes an Agate Basin point and two Lerma points, but apparently no microblades, may be the earliest so far recognized in the Canadian tundra.

In their comment, Challis et al. (this issue) find fault with several aspects of my earlier paper on rock paintings in the Didima Gorge, South Africa (McCall 2010). In this reply, I acknowledge that they may be correct in certain assertions concerning rock shelter altitudes. I argue, however, that the significance of these “altitude adjustments” for my broader arguments concerning variability in San rock art site use patterns is minor. I close by considering more substantive challenges for the use of quantitative analytical methods in the examination rock art assemblage composition and landscape-scale variation.

In my Studies on the Inscriptions of Chichen Itza I gave tentative datings of a number of buildings and monuments on the basis of Tun-Ahau combinations contained in their inscriptions. The list is repeated here as Table I.

Three Olmec sculptures are frequently thought to represent copulation between human beings and jaguars, an important element in what we are able to reconstruct of Olmec belief, but evidence and parallels discussed here suggest that this interpretation of the sculptures is incorrect. Alternate explanations which are consistent with a new view would assign an aggressive, ritual, or allegorical meaning to these sculptures and to certain other related Olmec representations.

This reply seeks to answer the comments by Neff and Schiffer et al. by stating the following: 1) evolutionary theory in archaeology is limited by the overextension of biological attributes to nonbiological artifacts, such as pottery; 2) evolutionary theory when applied to technological studies has an underlying technological determinist implication, and hence is inappropriate for use in the study of ancient technologies; 3) the subfields and disciplines of ceramic studies in archaeology are becoming increasingly isolated from each other and from the mainstream of interpretation, as evidenced by exclusionary bibliographies, language and study groups; and 4) ceramic studies are best approached on a contextual, case-by-case basis.

The central Colorado Plateau contains an exceptional density of cultural resources. Historically, however, archaeological investigations have overlooked the late Pleistocene and early Holocene record of this region. As such, there is currently a biased understanding of the earliest human occupations and adaptations. The regional Paleoindian record is reviewed here to assess the nature of initial human occupation of the area. Projectile point typologies, toolstone selection, and site distributions are used to characterize the land use patterns used by the region's earliest inhabitants. Results suggest that as early as circa 13,000 cal BP Clovis groups were familiar with the lithic landscape and habitually made use of local materials. Subsequent Paleoindian populations maintained relatively consistent levels of occupation throughout the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Finally, the presence of classic Southwest, High Plains, and Great Basin–related lithic technologies suggests that the central Colorado Plateau was part of early interregional land use strategies.

O'Brien, Lyman, and Leonard's comment misrepresents my paper and obscures the problems evolutionary archaeology faces. In particular, I took the ongoing operation of natural selection among modern humans as one of my fundamental assumptions and I did not limit evolution to genetic change. The assertion that the selectionists have identified the operation of natural selection in the archaeological record fails to meet the most basic standards of archaeological reasoning.

In a recent summary of our knowledge of Eskimo archaeology in Siberia (Chard 1955b) the present writer cited a reference to the existence of remains of underground houses on the west side of Anadyr Gulf, and inferred from this a possible extension of prehistoric Eskimo culture in this area considerably to the west of its presently known range. One of these rumored sites has now been investigated, with highly interesting results (Okladnikov and Naryshkin 1955). The culture revealed was not the classic Eskimo found at all other coastal sites around the Chukchi Peninsula, but instead is a blend of Eskimo with a distinctly different complex whose affinities lie far to the south on the shores of the Okhotsk Sea.

Major migrations into the West Indies emanated out of South America. For the most part, tropical forest traditions were transplanted, but it is obvious that these traditions were influenced by a markedly different environment. People who had previously known a river-tropical forest habitat now encountered the sea with its currents, winds, swells, and expansive transportation potential. Islands, sometimes with limited fresh-water conditions, also presented new problems as well as new opportunities for settlement. Recent work in the Virgin Islands points to the strong influence of environment on the settlement patterns of pre-Columbian peoples. With the advent of extensive archaeological research in the Antillean area, new and valued interpretations must be sought in the cultural-environmental complex.

This paper analyzes archaeological remains from Verkholenskaia Gora in Cis-Baikal and discusses the placement of this culture in the archaeological sequence of the Baikal region. The tools are classified on the basis of manufacturing technique and technological function. The discovery of a bone arrowpoint at this site may increase the antiquity of the bow by several millennia. A comparison of the materials from Verkholenskaia Gora with materials from other regional archaeological assemblages suggests that the site was occupied at the end of the transitional period that extends from the Palaeolithic of the Mal'ta stage to the Neolithic. Verkholenskaia Gora is therefore assigned to the Siberian Mesolithic.

The validity of the reasons adduced by a group of excavators for the willful destruction of a temple pyramid at Tikal is questioned and a greater sense of responsibility among archaeologists is urged.

The problem of the “plummet-stone” is a general one, as can be seen from its widespread distribution. They are found in New England, the Middle Atlantic States, Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, California, and it would seem that they are likely to occur in other localities in the United States. They also have been recorded for all eastern Canadian provinces as well on the Northwest Coast. In addition, the Eskimo in many cases have “plummet-stones” which in instances are very similar to the bola stones.