For reasons best known to him, McGregor has included in his recent book on Southwestern archaeology a brief statement regarding the midwestern taxonomic method, although this method is not used in the Southwest. The statement is in error on several fundamental points, and it seems important to publish a correction just to keep the record straight.

First: the interpretation of “diagnostic culture traits” as traits which are standard for a culture complex in all cultural comparisons (p. 61) is not in accord with the usual concept as employed in midwestern terminology. As originally proposed by Ritchie, and as previously pointed out in my review of Cole's and Deuel's Rediscovering Illinois, the diagnostic trait is determined by a specific comparison of two culture complexes, and applies only to a culture in that comparison. A trait which is diagnostic in one comparison may appear as a link trait in another, and so can not be generally diagnostic for a given culture complex in all comparisons.

The recent synthesis of Minnesota archaeology by Wilford has revealed the presence of Hopewellian-like materials in the northern part of the state. These seem thoroughly blended with “Lake Michigan” Woodland traits and may represent the feathering out of the Hopewellian complex and its integration into existing Woodland manifestations.

None of the “spectacular” Hopewellian traits are present in the Laurel and Arvilla foci, however, and it is doubtful if they can be properly called “Hopewellian.” In this connection I believe it may be of interest to note an early report of excavations at St. Paul, Minnesota, by T. H. Lewis.

Maya history can be divided into four great periods; the formative, the initial series, the Mexican, and the Mexican absorption. The formative period (prior to A.D. 300) comprises the Mamom and Chicanel phases at Uaxactun and coeval phases found elsewhere in the central area (Petén, British Honduras, Chiapas, Tabasco, lower Motagua, drainage), the northern area (Yucatan, northern Campeche, Quintana Roo) and, as we shall see, the southern area.

This group is characterized by low, domed shaped mounds located on the higher ridges and bluffs, and by village sites located on the second terraces in the bottoms adjacent to all weather springs and the larger creeks.

The outline submitted is based upon mound excavations and surface work in the village sites done on vacations and week-ends over a period of eleven years. No village site excavations have been made because they are all located in fields that are in crops during the time of year that excavation is possible. Thirty-four mounds have been opened and the thirty-fifth is about one-half completed at this time. Fourteen elevations that proved not to be burial mounds have been worked. It is of interest to note that none of these contained any limestone slabs or unworked mussel shells, while all mounds containing burials did contain these two items.

A unique technique of ceramic manufacture was practiced by the inhabitants of the Goheen site in Marshall County, Kentucky, ML 14. This unusual procedure was found in a salt-pan vessel from a midden pit, Feature 22. Apparently after the salt-pan vessel was made it was found that certain portions of the vessel walls did not come up to the thickness of the rest of the vessel. An additional coat of clay was added to the outside of the vessel, in the weak spots, thus reenforcing the vessel walls. The original exterior displayed textile impressions; the part that was reenforced was absolutely plain. It is the plain part that is important, for the potter who placed this secondary coat of clay on the exterior of the vessel was doing the archaeologist an unintentional favour–he was making a direct positive of the textile used to cover the mold from which the vessel was formed.

In June of 1937 my attention was called to a very stylized artifact found in the vicinity of the Indian Caves by Mr. John Nelson of Billings, Montana. Mr. Nelson had some very fine specimens of this artifact.

The location and description of these artifacts are described by Mr. Nelson as follows:

Among the less frequently encountered, yet widely distributed, items of material culture recovered in the Anasazi Province are tiponi, or Corn Goddess symbols.

In the excavation of the Evans Site in the Gallina region of northern New Mexico three tiponi were found. Two, the largest and the smallest, were in the North House; the third was in the South House. All were of sandstone and were simply-fashioned cones, flat on one end and bluntly pointed on the other. Aside from their shape, no distinguishing features were discernible. The largest was 48 cm. in height and 20 cm. in basal diameter; the smallest was 18.4 cm. in height and 15.2 cm. in basal diameter.

The tiponi found in the South House was one of a number of miscellaneous stones which had been used as fill in the bottom of the fireplace or had fallen into the pit.

In 1919, while exploring the basin of the Mariash or Pukcha River, one of the upper Amazon affluents, I found in Chavín de Huantar evidence of a culture that, up to then, had not been given due recognition. I proved that certain buildings and other products of aboriginal art found there belonged to a quite distinctive cycle of culture–that of the Chavín stone culture. Monolithic figures of serpents and felines, representing human heads, and stelae, obelisks, sundry utensils, and other objects decorated with incised or carved figures in plane, high or low relief, representing grotesque felines, serpents, fish, lizards and birds are the main features of this culture, whose area of diffusion had then been reconnoitered only in the provinces of Huari and Pomabama.

While attending the 1941 summer field session of the University of New Mexico at Chaco Canyon, the author hired four Navahos and partially excavated a small pueblo site on the talus about one-third of a mile up the valley from Chetro Ketl and on the same side of the wash. A small unit of at least four rooms and two kivas of middle Pueblo III time was indicated.

Standing upright on the bottom of the ventilator opening in one of the kivas was found a sandstone phallus measuring 9J inches in height. It was oval in cross-section and measured 8X7 inches at the base. The bottom was irregular, but the rest had been carefully carved and smoothed to represent most realistically the end of a phallus when erect. The specimen is now at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

During the course of field-work in the summer of 1942 two specimens unusual enough to warrant special notice have been located in private collections.

About 1900 a small mound was opened on the Marion West farm near Saxon, Meigs County, Ohio, along the Ohio River. Mr. West found the inscribed tablet (PI. XXXIX, lower) in this mound. The specimen was obtained shortly afterward by Mr. Richard Allen of Columbus, Ohio, in whose collection it is now preserved. This Adena tablet depicts the conventionalized bird design found on several other specimens of this type. It is particularly reminiscent of the Cincinnati and Richardson tablets. The Allen tablet is 8.9 cm. long, 1.9 cm. thick, and 5.1 cm. wide. It is slightly concavo-convex in cross section.

During the cataloging of a collection of some 650 tiny projectile points from the banks of the Columbia River in Columbia County, Oregon, an unusual specimen was brought to light. All but five of the points in the collection are under 3/4 inch in length and are proportionately narrow and thin. The five larger specimens were, then, immediately outstanding. Of these, one is of the corner-tang variety. It is 2.13 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 0.36 inch thick. It is made from a tan, slightly opalitic chalcedony,8 a material which is quite common in the collections of chipped stone artifacts from the lower Columbia River area.

The specimen is of the type that Patterson has called “diagonal corner-tang” and possesses a small crescent notch on the side opposite the tang. The tang is quite narrow and pointed. The chipping is somewhat rough and uneven, and on one side there appears to be something of a channel groove running approximately two-thirds the length of the specimen. This is, in all probability, quite accidental.

In American Antiquity for July, 1940, there appears a short article by Robin Drews, of the University of Oregon, entitled “Peculiar Wooden Tubes from Southeastern Oregon,” in which the author asks if these tubes may be “beads, gambling pieces, pipe stems, or what?” Recently I noted a scrap of ethnobotanical information which reminded me of this query and which, I feel, may throw some light on the subject.

Frederick V. Coville, in his “Notes on Plants Used by the Klamath Indians of Oregon,”1 has the following to say of. the Blueberry Elder (Sambucus caerulea): “ One curious use of the plant, now rarely resorted to, but formerly common among the Snake Indians, consists in punching out the pith from sections of the stem, ramming them full of large crickets, Anabrus simplex Hald., and plugging the ends. The contents of the stems were used for food in the winter” (p. 104).