Many surface sites represent three different early complexes that generally occur in this area at separate locations and are not mixed with each other. The earliest occupation, perhaps late Pleistocene, is characterized by Folsom points and a type of Pinto Basin point. A second occupation, probably younger and occurring in a different area, is represented by Gypsum Cave points and a second, different type of Pinto Basin point. The third occupation, representing the Uncompaghre complex, and evidently the youngest of the three occupations, can be correlated with the Recent but prepottery alluvium of the region.

Vaillant's geographic and stylistic term, Mixteca-Puebla, is rapidly and unfortunately being supplanted by an ethnic and linguistic term, Mixtec, which has rather suddenly become a popular label for the final pictorial horizon style of much of Mesoamerica. The well-known dangers of using an ethnic or linguistic term for an archaeological manifestation are intensified in this case by the lack of systematic archaeological work in the Mixteca region. The great mercantile and religious center of Nahua-speakers rather than Mixtec-speakers at Cholula is suggested as the origin of the almost pan-Mesoamerican diffusion of the Mixteca-Puebla style in Postclassic times. Thus, Mixteca-Puebla, not Mixtec, should be used to describe this style which flourished in and probably originated somewhere in a geographic region dominated in late preconquest times by Nahua-speakers in the north and Mixtec-speakers in the south.

Maximum glaciation in eastern Siberia, the final glaciation, the mountainous area, and the land area exposed by moderate lowerings of sea level are plotted on a map to illustrate that two routes from northeast Asia to northwest North America were available for human movements. The southern route along the coastal shelf may have played a more significant role in the initial settlement of the New World than did the northern route along the Arctic shore.

A worked wolf cranium discovered in burial association at a Glacial Kame site near Russells Point, Ohio, is interpreted as part of an animal mask-headdress. This is the first record of the use of such paraphernalia by the Glacial Kame People, and probably one of earliest evidences of ceremonialism in the Ohio Valley.

Small blades, blade tools, and cores recently found at the Cahokia site, Illinois, represent a microblade industry probably affiliated with the Old Village stage of Middle Mississippian. The artifacts are described, and attempts to assess their probable functions are discussed. The available comparative evidence is insufficient to demonstrate the degree of historical relationship, if any, between this newly defined industry and such other blade industries in the eastern United States as Poverty Point and Hopewell.

In Illinois, the shells of fresh-water mussels are often found in large numbers in the middens of former Indian habitations which were located adjacent to rivers. Living representatives of the species present are usually common in the rivers of the state today. With knowledge gained through study of the habitat-demands of the different species as they now live, one is able to reconstruct the environment in which each species existed at the time when the mussels were taken for food. The picture formed by the combined habitat-demands of the different species is a portrayal of the river as it existed at that time. An analysis of the shells taken from a midden on Haw Creek, now often intermittent during summer months, suggests that it was a small river 2000 years ago. Other analyses of shells have shown that decided changes have taken place in other streams.

Artifacts of Archaic types, human bones, and a partly burned log have been recovered from three layers of sediments on the floor of a shallow limestone cave now under water. The skeletal remains include a skull from Layer 2 with naturally preserved portions of brain inside. The charred log from Layer 3 produced a radiocarbon date of 8000 B.C. ± 200 years. The age of the preserved brain may not be as great as that of the log and human remains in Layer 3. The radiocarbon date is the earliest known date for man in Florida and suggests that during the early Southeastern Archaic, man lived in limestone caves in Florida when the sea level was considerably lower than at present.

A comparison of Adena and Hopewell trait lists by a correlation scatterplot based on the Q technique is offered as an illustration of the use of a descriptive statistic to reduce the degree of similarity between two cultures to an index which defines a point on a dissimilarity-similarity continuum.

The difficulties of using B.P. for radiocarbon ages figures is discussed in terms of the contrast between an age and a date, and the abandonment of the B.P. method of expressing dates is urged.

The Hell Gap point, excavated from a cultural level dated by radiocarbon at 8890 B.C. (10,850±550 B.P.), is described by H. M. Wormington. It represents the oldest known cultural level at Hell Gap, an extensive multi-component quarry site occupied by paleo-Indian groups over a considerable period of time.

A copper-covered, wooden, human-effigy mask from a burial in a site of the Spoon River focus of Late Mississippi, about 1200-1400, probably was a rattle much like the specimen from Mound C, Etowah, Georgia.