Two magnificent works of art, in the form of carved human bones, have recently been discovered in archaeological excavations in southernmost Mexico. The sculptures are noteworthy for several reasons.

First, they are in themselves masterful works of craftsmanship. Few bone carvings approaching these in composition or technique have ever been found in Middle America. Second, works of art of such quality have not until now been reported from this region of central Chiapas in southern Mexico, an area just beginning to be known archaeologically.

The occurrence of sherds of Southwestern pottery in several localities is noted. These sherds are briefly described and are discussed in terms of probable trade routes between the Southwest and southern California.

In the summer of 1936, while travelling on Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatchewan, a collection of potsherds was brought to me by a trapperprospector, William Douglas. These sherds were found in what appears to have been a well-established camp site on an island about one third up the lake. The lake itself is approximately 140 miles long and, like most lakes of the Precambrian Shield, filled with thousands of islands. The find was quite a random one but because of the high latitude would seem of particular interest. The position of the site is approximately 56°35" north latitude. To complicate the problem is the fact that both historically and in the tradition of the Crees and Chippewyans the lake has always been the almost exclusive territory of the “Idthen-eldeli,” Caribou-Eater branch of the Athabascan-speaking Chippewyan. The Churchill River, into which the outlet of Reindeer Lake flows seventy miles to the south, has traditionally and historically been the dividing line between these two peoples.

Graphemes T-757 and T-788 (Thompson 1962) are identified as a single sign representing a rodent. Intermediate forms are cited, the use of the sign in glyph T-1.60:757 is discussed, and its substitution for T-501 is noted. It is suggested that before Thompson’s catalog can be successfully used for statistical comparisons it needs to be converted to a catalog of signs by investigations of the use of the individual graphemes in context.

In October, 1939, an atlatl and an atlatl dart were brought from Lassen County, California, to the Lillard Museum for examination. These pieces had been found in Susanville in the collection of Mrs. McDow, whose husband had obtained them from an Indian, Charlie Paiute, formerly a resident of the Susanville area.

The atlatl is made apparently of willow; is 75 cm. long; averages 21 mm. in width; is 10 mm. thick at the distal end and increases to 13 mm. at the handle. The wood has been stained with a red pigment (a very similar stain may be obtained by grinding hematite, adding water to it and daubing it on wood). It is black and greasy, apparently from dirty hands, at the handle and along the edges paralleling the groove.

Contra Costa County lies east of San Francisco Bay, between the southern shores of San Pablo Bay, Carquinez Straits, Suisun Bay and the San Joaquin River, on the north, and Mount Diablo on the south. This peak, the highest of the many ranges of hills, reaches an altitude of 3800 feet. The terrain is very diversified. As to prehistoric inhabitants, Kroeber places the entire area in Costanoan territory, while Schenck mentions the Yachicomnes, etc., names, perhaps of Spanish invention, which mean nothing.

Charles P. Bowditch reproduces about seven different signs as hieroglyphs for Kin, “day,” in his fundamental work on the Maya calendar. They are: (1) the sun-disk, (2) the head of the sun-god, (3) the head of a sun-bird, (4) the dog's head, (5) the conch, (6) the inverted Ahau and (7) the composite glyph day-sky, sun-disc and Caban. There can be identified still a few more hieroglyphs as representing the same idea.

In this paper we shall treat of a new sign, generally composed of a quincunx (a variant of the character for “greenstone”) and a skull (Figure 1, a, b and f), for which the value “day” can be proved.

This paper critically assesses Cottrell's model of prehistoric exchange of jasper said to have been transported through the Mojave Desert to the Tomato Springs site in coastal southern California. We point out numerous conceptual and analytical errors which cast doubt on Cottrell's interpretation of the Tomato Springs site as a control center for the importation, production, and trade of this supposedly nonlocal material. Cottrell has not demonstrated a desert origin for the jasper found at Tomato Springs, and thus has no grounds for testing any of Renfrew's distance-decay models. The presence of local natural sources of jasper better explains the occurrence of this mineral at Tomato Springs and nearby sites.

Among my earliest memories is the shoe box of “Indian rocks” that my father kept on a shelf behind the kitchen stove. These he had found and brought in to keep as curiosities. Although he knew some of the local collectors and at least one buyer for E. W. Payne of Springfield, Illinois, he never thought of selling any of his finds, so when I came along there was a small collection waiting for me.

This brief statement is presented as a summary of the archaeological sequences as they have been postulated to date in the Texas area. It is a compilation of the results of investigations by.several dozen archaeologists who have worked in the area during the past quarter century or more. Necessarily it is brief and only a bare minimum of description of each cultural group has been included. Also, the sequential alignments are for the most part tentative. Only in rare instances has extensive field work established definitely the positions suggested. The McKern system of culture designation has been used to indicate groups and subdivisions of groups throughout, although the term aspect tends to have more of a temporal than spatial implication.

Errors in Vierra and Carlson's (1981) presentation of Bartlett's test for significance of a correlation matrix are discussed and appropriate corrections offered.

A corroded white-metal lip plug from Guerrero was shown by wet-chemical and spectrographic analyses to have originally contained over 99% lead. After reviewing 16th-century eyewitness accounts, linguistic evidence, the mineral resources of Mexico, the technological problems involved in the primitive extraction of lead from its most common ore, galena (PbS), and the few early lead artifacts reported from Mexico, the authors state their opinion that the smelting of lead ore and use of metallic lead were known before the arrival of the Spaniards and that there is no valid reason to doubt that this object was made before the Conquest.

A recent article by Rogers (1986) hypothesized that spurred end scrapers were a temporally diagnostic artifact indicating Paleoindian occupation in Kansas. Examination of the distribution of this artifact in northeastern Colorado indicates that, besides being a part of Paleoindian assemblages, it also occurs in Middle Archaic (McKean complex) and Dismal River contexts.

One aspect of the recent article by Drennan (1976) merits some additional discussion. This has to do with the units of time that can be discriminated by seriation methods. One advance claimed for the new method proposed is that it allows for time placement within 25 years or so, stated as “ … finer than most traditional seriation.” In an article published 17 years ago, I showed this degree of time discrimination, with a much simpler graphical method of seriation.